With all of the entertaining I’ve been doing over the past few weeks I have been eating a lot of leftovers. Like most people who love food, I hate wasting it. I also get almost as much pride from inventive re-use as I do from creating the original successful dish!

The only left overs from the Valentine’s Dinner was a little crab dip. Not to say it wasn’t good – I doubled the recipe and there were only 6 of us!

For my dinner, the left over dip went back into a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes (until warm throughout) while I chopped some leftover red bell pepper and prepared a bed of arugula (about 2-3 cups). The Porkslap beer was left over from the Superbowl party and was poured into a glass, which can make all the difference.

Voila – a wonderful dinner! The concept is simple: keep salad greens on hand and most leftovers can be re-invented. After the Superbowl party I even made salads with the left over pulled pork, the blue cheese dip from the chicken wings as dressing and chopped tomatoes from the chili as topping!

I admit turning leftover’s into salads doesn’t really qualify as an “inventive reuse” but it’s definitely better than wasting!