What to do with eggplant...

Ohhh, I had forgotten how busy the start of the school year is!  After a crazy month of August, I finally get to sit down and post a recipe.  Hooray!  This is a recipe I made a couple of weeks ago.  I loved it!  It was a fabulous mixture of tastes that you wouldn't necessarily put together regularly.  We bought our Sicilian Eggplant and all the peppers from our local farmer's market.  If you can't find a Sicilian one, just use a small regular one.  Happy cooking!

Tortellini with Eggplant and Peppers
Ingredients:
1 Small Sicilian Eggplant, peeled and diced
1/2 TBSP Salt
1 Fresh Banana Pepper, diced 
1 Poblano Pepper, diced
1 Small Onion, Diced
1 TSP Minced Garlic
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1 Can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1/3 Cup French Onion Dip
1/2 Can of Milk (use cream of can)
2 Bags of Meat Tortellini

1. Pour olive oil and eggplant into a large skillet.  Sprinkle salt on eggplant.  Saute on high.  When skillet is hot, add peppers, onion, and garlic.  Stir frequently.  Saute until eggplant softens.
2. Add cream of mushroom, French onion dip and milk to skillet.  Lower heat to medium, continue stirring frequently.  Cook until bubbly and thicker (about 15 minutes).
3. While finishing sauce, cook meat tortellini in a separate pot following directions on package.  Mix sauce and cooked tortellini together and serve.  Serves 4 to 6 people.

What to do with leftover pork and white rice?

For some people, the crockpot or slow cooker is a winter time cooking tool.  For me, it is useful all year long.  You can cook other things besides soups and stews in them, they are easy to use and they require very little energy.  On Monday, we grilled pork steaks at my brother Mike's.  We had a large pack and at the end was a small roast.  It seemed like the butcher got tired of cutting the steaks.  It wasn't a problem because I knew I'd be able to make a What's for Leftovers recipe with it.  So after we were finished grilling all of the pork steaks, we threw the little roast on the bbq and let it cook while we ate.  On Tuesday, when I was planning our dinner, I realized I still had a carton of white rice left from Chinese takeout over the weekend.  Presto, Apple Butter Pork and Rice was born.

Apple Butter Pork and Rice
Ingredients:
1 to 2 Lbs of Cooked Pork*
1/4 Cup White Wine
4 Packs Soy Sauce
1 TBSP Apple Butter
1 Cup Apple Juice
1 TBSP Garlic
2 Packs Sweet n' Sour Sauce
1 TBSP BBQ Sauce
1 1/2 Cups White Rice, Cooked or 1 Small Take-Out Carton

*You can use any kind of pork.  I used the little pork butt roast and a pork steak.  Feel free to use roast, steaks, or chops; whatever you have leftover.

1. Cut pork into thin slices and place on the bottom of the slow cooker.
2. In a separate bowl combine wine, soy sauce, apple butter, apple juice, garlic, sweet n' sour sauce, and bbq sauce.  Pour over pork.
3. Cook on high for 1 hour, stirring occasionaly
4. Pour rice into slow cooker, mixing into liquid.  Cook on low for another 20 to 30 minutes.  It's finished when your rice is completely heated.

What to do with 1 fish filet?

The other day I looked in my freezer and I realized I had a single, white fish filet. I'm guessing it was Tilapia because that is what I normally buy. What was I going to do with 1 fish filet??? How did it even get in there??? I figured I probably needed to use it since I couldn't remember the last time I had bought Tilapia. So last night, we had Seafood Salad Melts for dinner. On Sunday, Andy had brought home a loaf of Rye bread from church. I cut it up into slices, piled on the seafood salad and melted cheese on top. It was a nice change from heavy, hearty meals. It was also very easy to prepare and clean up.

Seafood Salad Melts
Ingredients:
1 Pouch Tuna
 1 Package Immitation Crab Meat (8oz)
1 Filet White Fish, cooked
1/4 to 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
1 TBSP Creme Fraiche (use sour cream if you don't have this)
1 TBSP Honey Mustard Salad Dressing
1/2 Tsp Minced, Refrigerated Garlic
1/4 Tsp Onion Powder
Pinch Salt
Fresh Bread Slices (I used rye)
Butter
Cheese Slices (I used colby and swiss)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Break up white fish into small pieces. In a mixing bowl, combine tuna, immitation crab meat, and white fish.
3. Add mayo, creme fraiche, honey mustard, garlic, onion powder and salt. Stir.

4. Cut bread into slices. Butter one side. Put in oven and melt butter.
5. When butter is melted, flip bread. Pile seafood salad on the other side, then top with slices of cheese. Put back into oven until cheese is melted.

What to do with leftover bbq chicken and milk?

I gave Celia and Charlie a cup of milk this morning with their breakfast.  A little while later Celia comes up to me and says, "Mommy, there's something wrong with this milk, it's going to make me throw up."  I started to laugh at her and asked Andy to try the milk (He's our official taster of things that might have turned bad).  He said the milk wasn't bad, it just needed to be used today or tomorrow.  So voila, Chicken and Vegetable Soup with Dumplings.  It was a perfect homestye soup for this rainy, cloudy Sunday.  It also used up the rest of the chicken that we grilled last night.  Thanks to my Mama for helping me figure out the homemade dumplings.  I had only made them with Bisquick up until now.  They ended up being really easy to make.

Chicken and Vegetable Soup with Dumplings
Ingredients for Soup:
2 Cups Cooked, Chopped, Chicken
2 Carrots
1 Small Yellow Onion
1 Green Pepper
1 TBSP Garlic
6 Cups Water
1 Tsp Salt

1. Chop carrots, onion, and green pepper.
2. Put chicken, carrots, onion and green pepper in a large soup pot.  Add garlic, water and salt.
3. Cook on high so soup will boil.  Cook until carrots are finished and onions are translucent. 
4. Start to add spoon size dumplings to soup.  Let soup continue boiling.  After the last dumpling is dropped in the pot, cover and cook for 7 to 8 more minutes.  Dumplings will plump up and expand.

Ingredients for Dumplings:
2 Cups Flour 
1 1/4 Cups Milk
1 Egg
Pinch of Salt

Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl.  This will be a wet dough.  After finished mixing, drop into soup pot by spoonfuls 

What to do with ham and green peppers?

Who would have thought?  This is what I asked myself when our ham and chicken kabobs turned out absolutely delicious tonight!  I love ham, but I've never bar-b-qued it.  However, we have a lot of ham.  A couple of weeks ago, hams were on sale at our local grocery store and I bought a huge one!  It was so big that I cut it in half and froze half of it.  Earlier today, I took out some chicken to cook tonight, but my thighs didn't thaw out, only the two boneless breasts did.  Needless to say, when I went to make these Asian Kabobs for dinner tonight, I had to improvise.  Lucky for us and all our What's for Leftovers' readers, they turned out to be some of the best kabobs I have ever made!  Feel free to use whatever veggies you have on hand.  I used our last turnip, which actually turned out to be really good as a kabob veggie.  I hope you can get out and enjoy the nice Spring weather and bbq these kabobs some time soon!

Asian Kabobs
Ingredients for the Kabobs:
1/2 Large Red Onion
1 Medium Yellow Onion
2 Green Peppers
2 Colored Peppers (I used red and yellow)
1 Turnip
2 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, Cut into Chunks

15 Large Chunks of Ham

1. Soak your kabob sticks in water so they won't catch on fire on the bbq pit.
2. Cut up vegetables and meat into large chunks.
3. Load up six kabobs sticks with the vegetables.  Load up four more with the meat, rotating ham and chicken. 

Ingredients for the Sauce:
1 Cup Red Sweet n' Sour Sauce
1 Cup BBQ Sauce
1/4 Cup Honey
1/4 Cup Soy Sauce
1 TBSP Minced, Refrigerated Garlic

1. Mix all ingredients together and divide into two bowls.
2. Baste both sides of veggies kabobs with sauce in one bowl.  If there is sauce left, pour over veggies.  Then baste both sides of meat kabobs with sauce in the other bowl.  If there is sauce left, pour over meat.
3. Cook kabobs on bbq grill over medium-low heat.  Make sure chicken is finished cooking before removing from heat.

What to do with leftover bratwursts and canned corn?

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and Spring is in the air- hopefully!  It's a perfect day for cajun food!  Okay, any day is a perfect day for cajun food.  I myself have never been to New Orleans, but my husband Andy has for Mardi Gras.  According to him, Mardi Gras is crazy and the food is great.  He loves cajun food, so he was a big fan of this dish!  From start to finish, it will take you less than an hour, and you can feed a crowd of 5-7 adults with it.  Serve some toasty french bread on the side and you'll have a feast!

Cajun Rice

Ingredients:

1 Box Red Beans and Rice

1 Small Onion

1 Green Pepper

1 Orange, Yellow, or Red Pepper

1/4 Cup Canned Corn (this is all I had, you can add more)

2 Bratwursts

1 Cup Chopped Ham

1 TBSP Garlic
1 Can Tomato Soup
1 Can Diced Tomatoes
1 1/2 Cans of Water (use the diced tomatoes can)

1. Dice onion, green pepper, and colored pepper. Put into a large soup pot with red beans and rice mix.
2. Cut up brats into small pieces.  Add brats and ham cubes to pot.
3. Add garlic, tomato soup, diced tomatoes (with juice) and water to the pot.  Mix all ingredients together.
4. Cook covered, on high until rice mix comes to a boil.  Stir occasionally so the bottom won't burn.
5. After rice starts to boil, turn heat down to medium and cook covered for 20 minutes.  Continue stirring occasionally so rice won't burn on the bottom.
6.  After 20 minutes, uncover and turn off stove.  Let sit for ten minutes to thicken up and cool.