36. Leftover ratatouille

Mr Neff and Muffin have a wonderful bond. They especially enjoy talking to each other after supper. That has little to do with tonight's post, apart from the fact that every meal is better when shared with friends. Muffin really wishes we'd share the ratatouille.

So what do you do with one serving of four-day-old ratatouille (once you've explained to Muffin that she can't have it)? Well, you look in the refrigerator to see what it might go with--and what might need to be eaten before we go out of town and the housesitter comes. I don't want to gross out the housesitter, who is a good friend.

Yesterday I noticed green bell peppers on sale for $1, so I bought one. And last night I noticed half an onion that seems to have taken up permanent residence in the lower crisper. It is obviously an effective crisper, because the onion was in good shape. I also noticed a half-empty can of chipotle chilis in adobo sauce left over from when I made black bean stew.

So I began cooking the way I nearly always do, by pouring a little olive oil in a frying pan. I chopped the onion and added it, then did the same with the pepper along with a little bit of the adobo sauce. After four or five minutes, I dumped in the leftover ratatouille.

Meanwhile I warmed up two frozen cheese tamales (from Trader Joe's) in the microwave, and then warmed up a small amount of frozen corn with a smidgen of butter.

I arranged the ratatouille-onion-pepper concoction on half of each plate, snuggled a tamale up to each vegetable pile, and arranged corn on the other side of the tamale. And that, plus a bite of dark chocolate with hazelnuts (from Aldi), was lunch.

This morning I threw a pile of stuff (onions, dry lentils, carrots, sweet potato, celery, canned tomatoes, chipotle in adobo sauce, and, eventually, some diced turkey sausage) into the slow cooker, and for supper we had lentil soup with whole wheat bread. Tomorrow's lunch will be similar. Perhaps identical.

And now, back to editing. I really want to finish my current project before we go. Leftovers help.