Many, many years ago I, with my parents and a friend, drove to Florida for the Orange Bowl game. I don’t remember the game but do remember Fort Lauderdale, lots of fun for a couple of young ladies. I also remember my friend ordering a cheeseburger for breakfast at a restaurant in Louisiana where I couldn’t understand a single word the waitress said. The sounds coming from her mouth made no sense to my mid-western ears. Her southern accent was so strong she may as well have been speaking a foreign language (funny, the things a person remembers). Anyhow, the waitress understood us and didn’t bat an eye over the order of a cheeseburger at 7:00am. I, however, thought it was pretty strange. Why would my friend order a cheeseburger for breakfast? She said she simply didn’t like breakfast foods.....well, okay, to each her own I guess.
Now, here I am, nearly 60 years later, having a stuffed green pepper for breakfast. Have I gone crazy? I must admit that fried eggs have lost their allure in the last year or so, but a stuffed green pepper? For breakfast?!
My husband and I have started having two, rather than three, meals a day. If we’re hungry in the middle of the day we eat a banana, some nuts, some easy snack. For the most part we don’t miss having lunch and I love the freedom of not having to prepare that mid-day meal. Has this new habit taken a few pounds off? Nope. Maybe it’s because some of those healthy nuts are chocolate coated....
What has changed is my use of leftovers from supper. I try but can’t seem to cook the perfect amount for two. Inevitably small amounts of leftovers end up in the fridge. Being thrifty, almost to a fault, and determined not to waste food, the odd bit of this or that makes its way to the breakfast table or, in a changed form, to another night’s supper. Splitting one stuffed green pepper between the two of us, adding an egg and a slice of homemade bread - delicious for breakfast. Leftover potatoes are always good too, or a slice of pizza, or the rest of that piece of meat I just couldn’t find room for last night.
What’s in the fridge and near its useable end often dictates what we’ll have for our next meal. We have a propane fridge (uses no electricity), one of the little adjustments we made when choosing an off-grid lifestyle back in 1985, and by today’s standards it’s small. This to me is an advantage. I can actually see what’s in my fridge with very little shifting about, and since I have limited space I can’t keep piling more food in until I forget what’s in there, only to throw furry smelly stuff out when I discover it too late in a fridge mining expedition. We have compensated, to a degree, for the smallness of our fridge by having a dumb-waiter to the cellar. It keeps things like beer, pop, ketchup, eggs, etc. sufficiently cool and frees up fridge space for stuff that requires a colder environment. But I’m wandering off my topic, maybe not as far off as my husband does when telling one of his stories, but.... anyhow.... back to the fridge’s contents forming my meal plans. If I spot something that needs to be eaten, if at all possible it works it’s way into the next meal. Salad tonight? You bet, before that lettuce goes bad. Pudding for dessert? Of course, the milk in near the end of it’s useable life. Those two pieces of leftover chicken? Add onions, veggies, canned mushroom soup, a few pieces of potato and cook it up in a fry pan - slumgullion, one of my mother’s favourite meals. Tonight it’s broccoli, it’s flowers are starting to bloom. Tomorrow? The rest of that moose curry might be good over a bed of rice.
Traditional meals begone! Maybe tomorrow we’ll have soup for breakfast.
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