Works for me Wednesday!

On a scale of Food Network Chefs, I’m somewhere in the middle between Sandra Lee and Rachael Ray. I use a lot of boxes or cans or pre-prepped ingredients, but I do pretty well when faced with fresh ingredients and a hungry crowd.

Recently, I’ve been coming into the “ends” of things at cooking time. The last of the mustard, the last of the pasta sauce, the last of this or that. Not enough to really “do” something, but enough to flavor something, maybe.

One of my favorite tricks for jars of pasta sauce has been adding the pasta to the jar during meal preparation. Once I’ve poured out the sauce I can, I take a big scoop of pasta and pour it into the jar. Next, I close the jar and shake it, using the pasta to capture drips and drabs of sauce, then pour the contents back into my serving dish.

But that still leaves quite a bit of sauce in the jar to finish up or rinse down the drain before the jar joins the rest of the recyclables. I happened to have planned ahead a tomato and lentil soup for the next day, so instead of rinsing the sauce down the drain, I added drinking water to the jar, shook the sauce and water to make a think flavored soup, and added it in place of the required water to the tomatoes and lentils ready to go. If I hadn’t had the soup ready to go, I could have frozen the liquid to use another day.

The same is probably true for the mustard I just rinsed away, too. Mix it with a little water or chicken broth, then add to a baked chicken dish or chicken crock meal. Spice it up with the last of the container, rather than washing all those flavors away.

To find this and other great WFMW ideas, check out the home Mr Linky of WFMW here