"leftovers" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• Has all the green food coloring numbed your mind enough to fail a St. Patrick's Day food and drink quiz?
• These bags promise to prevent your favorite carb from turning into stone -- for up to two weeks.
• Translate Irish into Italian with corned beef and cabbage pizza.
• Or, have breakfast for dinner with this hash recipe.
• Hard-boiled eggs are the new calendars.
• Before the next holiday, brush up on your matzo knowledge.
• What are you thoughts on whiskey the day after? We thought so.

It seems like everyone wants to learn how to be more efficient when it comes to home cooking. Here are some easy, smart ways to use up odds and ends from the fridge shelves to the back of the pantry.

Cold Coffee
Fill an empty ice tray with leftover cold coffee for smoothies with pick-me-up or homemade iced-coffee drinks. You can even make your own iced mocha by blending low-fat chocolate milk with iced coffee cubes.

Lone Carrot
Carrots are delicious with chocolate. Make your favorite chocolate baked good "grate," by grating a carrot finely and stirring it into your store-bought brownie mix, favorite chocolate cake or muffin recipes.

When I was a senior in high school, I participated in the first-ever Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Since confidentiality laws prevented me from accompanying my psychotherapist parents' to their sessions, I ended up trailing a server at an upscale restaurant – an assignment that probably would have made Gloria Steinem shudder.

I'd never been in a restaurant kitchen until I cleared tables at The Lord Fox, a fabulously patrician eatery that still serves beef Wellington and crab-stuffed avocados. I recall having two concurrent revelations that day: Servers don't get a lunch break, and most diners leave food on their plates. To the disgust of my schoolmates who'd also landed the restaurant work gig, I nibbled on leftover steak sandwiches, ate the bacon out of BLTs and finished off any remaining French fries before rinsing the dishes.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

A sausage ricotta arugula pizza will cure hump-day doldrums.

Poll: Who doesn't like cooking with animal fat? Bacon, anyone?

Iron Chef Michael Symon cooks breakfast at Williams-Sonoma to promote his new cookbook, co-authored by Michael Ruhlman.

Transform Thanksgiving leftovers -- odds are you still have some -- into a Kentucky Hot Brown sandwich.

Test your knowledge of Texas' beloved Dr Pepper.

Once the food coma of Thanksgiving passes, it's time to consider Christmas foods.

Stuff stockings with these essential food-inspired gift ideas.

"Love Your Leftovers: Feed Your Friends & Family for Next to Nothing"
By various authors
Photography by CICO Books
CICO Books -- 2009
Buy it at Amazon

With Thanksgiving 2009 now over, many are already contemplating how to transform their leftovers. "Love Your Leftovers" offers welcome creations to use your leftovers in simple, delicious, unexpected ways -- provided your pantry is stocked with a few non-essentials.

See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.