Food this weekend was all about using up leftover ingredients in the fridge without leaving the house. When you cook for yourself, you end up tossing a lot more stuff than you'd like, especially produce. The amazing Debbie Meyer GreenBags and BreadBags have helped alleviate a lot of that, but I still want to eliminate as much waste as possible. Plus, it was raining really hard and I was in no mood to go out.

Some of it was easy: to use up the rest of the roasted red peppers I needed for the yellow rice & chicken dish I threw them in with a new batch of the yogurt & lemon hummus and it turned out fantastic.

To use up the half head of cabbage leftover from the soup last week using what was on hand, I poked around the 'net until I found a few recipes for cabbage stroganoff. I went with this one (halved) since it did not call for beef bullion cubes, which I do not have. Yes, it's true. It came out as a kind of sweet and sour cabbage casserole, not stroganoff-y at all but quite yummy. I actually didn't have any paprika on hand either, so I tossed in some cumin, turmeric, cayenne and a tiny pinch of cinnamon to get a kind of Middle Eastern flavor to go with the last of the plain hummus served on cracker bread. I think you can pretty much use any spices you want and it'll come out ok. I used greek yogurt in place of the sour cream, so between this and the red pepper hummus that was pretty well taken care of, too.

The cabbage casserole made enough for 2-3 large side servings, so last night I broiled up a yellowfin tuna steak I found in the freezer (olive oil, cracked black pepper and chopped dill from the ill-fated tofu stroganoff experiment). Yes, I ate a large piece of fish and it wasn't at all bad. Thank goodness the weather was fairly warm last night so I could keep the windows open and get rid of the smell.

When I was buying the pico de gallo for the rice & chicken, the checker mentioned how much she liked that particular brand and often used it to perk up her homemade linguine with clam sauce. Tonight I mixed up a batch of my mom's clam sauce and tossed in some pico de gallo at the end (I have a lot left since I didn't think it worked with the chicken) and it adds a whole new dimension to white clam sauce. Try it sometime.

Mom's White Clam Sauce

4 servings

1 stick of butter
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cans minced clams & juice (which happen to be on sale for $0.99 this week at Rite Aid)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp Italian seasoning
salt & pepper to taste
1/2 cup white wine
juice from 1 lemon

Melt butter, add garlic and saute for a few minutes. Add the other ingredients except for lemon juice and simmer for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Serve over linguine.

Next time I will probably add the pico de gallo a few minutes before taking off the heat to soften the onions a bit but not make the tomatoes too mushy.

I also discovered that Isis loves clams. Really loves clams. Koosh is not interested in the least, but Isis keeps banging on the pantry door because she thinks I'm hiding them in there.