Things to Do with Leftover Cheese

Wow. You have an incredible party celebrating a significant event with all your loved family members in attendance. You send invitations, plan for the location, order food, decorate the venue, set up the music, and the attendees come. In addition to a meeting and greeting of the guests, there is a toast, photo time, and good cheer held by all. The food, the food is awesome. Meatballs, cheese balls and crackers, bruschetta with sliced french bread, a veggie tray and yes, you guessed it, a cheese tray. Havarti, jalapeno jack cheese, a smoky cheddar and an herbed white cheese fill the tray adorned with grapes. For dessert, there's a delicious white cake with cream cheese in the middle and a delightful, fluffy frosting. Since the party begins after meal time, about 30 guests nibble and munch, but come nowhere close to devouring the entire spread. What to do with all the leftovers?

The good news is that all of the foods above can be and were re-created in new forms to offer a delicious solution to the no food waste concept. Yes, new items will be purchased to invent additional treats, but it works very well. Here's what was left over:

A 3/4 full crock pot with meatballs in a delicious sauce.
At least 16 oz. of 3 types of olive, artichoke and tomato bruschetta spread
2+ pounds of veggies - carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes + dip
At least 400 cubes of cheese
Lots of crackers
Cake

Two days post party, we had another smaller gathering with 14 people in attendance, and here's what we did with it:

Meatball Sandwiches - We first reheated the meatballs on the stove and cut up the Havarti cheese cubes into small pieces. We purchased bolillo rolls - submarine sandwich rolls - split them in the middle, toasted them in the oven with butter and garlic salt, then laid cheese in them, meatballs second and cheese on top. They were toasted in the broiler, cut in half and served. All of the meatballs were consumed, along with probably 40 chunks of cheese.

Broiled Bruschetta - The bolillo rolls were split lengthwise and spread with the olive, tomato and artichoke mixtures and topped with the cheese, sliced into smaller pieces. All of the spreads and about 10-15 cubes of cheese were consumed. Yum-eee.

Fresh veggies and Dip - all of the leftover veggies were set out with the dip and at least half were eaten and the dip finished off.

Cheese and crackers - at least 25 cubes of cheese were taken and the majority of the crackers were eaten.

Cake - The pretty top of the cake was sliced and served with other holiday goodies.

After the second gathering of the food, leftovers of cake, veggies, crackers and cheese, cheese and cheese remained! Here is how they were incorporated into daily use:

When the hosting party left on an airplane back home, a bag with 20+ cubes of cheese and the remaining crackers went with them. For dinner one night, the veggies were incorporated into a salad, and three days later, chopped and cooked in with Lentil soup. Almost daily, a piece of cake was had. And the cheese ... put on a grilled cheese sandwich, used as a topping for black-eyed peas (jalapeno cheese made it so tasty!), the smoky cheese was placed on lentil soup and random cubes were used as food fuel. But there is still cheese left!

Down to fifty cube split evenly between smoky cheddar, jalepeno and herb cheese - this next week will see it slowly wane down. Used as food fuel, in the remaining lentil soup and possibly a quiche, the cheese should be gone by the end of the week. The lesson I hope to impart here is that leftovers, especially cheese, which lasts a long time in the refrigerator, should be consumed, and not tossed out.

Thank you to my sister Jenny and brother-in-law Matt, for having the 25th anniversary party in Austin and leaving us with all the cheese!

Book Cook

I've just decided that my book must have some aspect of cooking in it - if not the whole theme - maybe a cookbook? I have the general concept of the book which is about the life of a citygirl who grows up and has babies and then moves to the country with her husband who travels all the time. The lifestyle there is very different, and she embraces it, because she sees that many of the people she now lives near were once cityfolk themselves. But the lies, the deception, the failures as well as the joys, the successes and friendships that she sees and endures will make it a page turner!
Back to the cooking - as I sat here at my computer, attempting to write and edit (for work) I decided to cook something substantial, yet quick, to get my brain going. I sliced a piece of Asiago cheese bread, pulled out some eggs, onion, fresh garlic, butter and poured a bit of olive oil in the pan. The small skillet heated up while I chopped the onion and peeled the garlic. I scraped the onions into the hot pan, added a small piece of butter in and stirred. When the onions began to turn clear, I squeezed in the garlic from its press and stirred some more, then pushed down the bread in the toaster. The eggs had been cracked into the bowl and whipped, and as the smell of garlic wafted off the pan, I poured in the eggs. As they sat, the toaster popped up and I put a pat of butter on it to melt as I stirred the eggs. As they became firmer, I pulled the grated mozzarella cheese and salsa from the refrigerator. After sprinkling the eggs with cheese, I spread the softened butter on the crispy toast and cut it in half. The eggs came out of the pan and I spooned a hearty portion of salsa to the side of the eggs. Yum-yum.
There's nothing I like describing more than food, and so that must be incorporated in my book!
I love to share recipes too. :-)

Heart Month

February is the month of hearts with Valentine's day right in the middle, but it's also American Heart Association Heart Month, and very appropriately so. In my efforts as a writer/editor, I have been pursuing topics that are healthy to the heart such as exercise, healthy eating and healthy snacks, and it all seems so easy to read, write and edit about it.
In a perfect world, it is easy to live a healthy lifestyle. No life distractions to take you away from exercising, no unhealthy foods attracting you with their smell or visual appeal, and no unhealthy items on the grocery item shelves to distract you from organic oatmeal.
The reality is that with more than one person to keep track of, that is, if you have a family, you can be so easily pulled away from that fitness routine or exercise plan. Transportation to school or other events, athletic competitions and dance recitals and practices, music performances and play dates take your time outside the home, plus shopping, mail and oftentimes outside work. Once home, you've got laundry, meals to prepare, homework to attend to and general housekeeping. Sometimes, that just leaves little time for yourself to get dressed for exercise, exercise, shower and dress.
My solution on those days is to park a little farther from the school or grocery and walk quickly, run up the driveway more than once to check the mail, stretch while I'm in my office working and waiting for the computer to complete a task, and maybe even walk back and forth a couple of times from the baths to the laundry room to get in that extra walk.
Regarding healthy eating, I believe in the rule of everything in moderation. I only occasionally stop in to get those yummy smelling french fries or buy a tasty frappuccino at Starbucks. I stick to the outside edges of the grocery store where the fresh fruit and produce and dairy and meat items are located. Yes, I have to travel to the baking, canned foods and cereal (oatmeal) sections often as well, but the fresh food areas are your most healthy and without processing.
American Heart Month is near and dear to my heart because for at least ten years I volunteered on the communications committee, fundraising and board of directors for the AHA in San Antonio and Dallas. Living a healthy lifestyle is just part of doing what's good for your heart, which leads to a happier life.

Recipes for Life

I love to bake. It requires measuring, mixing and cooking, using specific ingredients to make it just right. Baking I consider to be different than cooking because you need to follow a recipe a little more closely for items such as pies, cakes, cookies and candies than you do for a roast, green bean casserole or scalloped potatoes. To me, baking means sweets and cooking means real meals.

I'd like to draw an analogy between recipes for life that are baking and cooking related. Things that we should do, such as brush our teeth, shower, eat healthy foods, get rest and exercise are the baking items. The cooking can include watching TV, staying up late, eating those delicious sweets that are baked and sleeping late. Our lives are basically one big cooking show, because we never live our lives strictly by the recipe of what we should do, and it needs to be that way.

The recipe for a happy healthy life includes all of the above.

Is It Alzheimer's?

Am I in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease? Key indicators:

Start a sentence and can't finish it.
Put things away and can't remember where they are.
Cannot remember names - family, friends and acquaintances.
Don't remember words to express what I'm talking about.

This would be described as MCI, or mild cognitive impairment in the textbooks, because I can still perform all the ADLs, Activities of Daily Living, and my language, attention, cognitive function and verbal ability are still okay. I have found some information at www.issueswithalzheimers.com, and there are a whole slew of informative sites from our dear government promoting awareness of the disease.

Of course, it could be that I just have too much on my plate, with two active children and a husband to maintain. Also, the fact that I'm writing and working for about five different clients every week could have something to do with it ...

Giving Thanks

When asked on Sunday by pastor Greg to write down what we are thankful for, I had a writingfest of all the awesome gifts that I have been given by God. These things included my faith, my awesome family, noting prominently my husband and children, my good health and capacity to work, a happy life and other specific topics relating to the above.
Today, however, as I took a walk in the beautiful neighborhood in which I live, taking in my vitamin D in lovely 75 degree weather, I noted something that I had forgotten to be thankful for. My Life.
Almost 19 years ago, I was told that I had a very dangerous, golf ball sized tumor in my brain. It was totally surrounding my carotid artery and my optic nerve. I was young and carefree at the time and admit that it really didn't concern me that much. I was unmarried, had no children and had lived a good life. I didn't need any more than that.
The second thing that I forgot to write down that I was thankful for was prayer. Had my extended family and their friends, and their friends not been praying in earnest for me, I would not have felt the calmness and serenity that came over me as they stuck the first needles into me and wheeled me off into surgery. I seriously never had any lack of confidence or fear that things wouldn't turn out as successfully as they did.
Fast forward to 2010, where my faith in Jesus Christ and his love is stronger than ever. I have not only the supportive family that was there for me in March 1992, but also a family of my own with a husband and two precious daughters. This family would not be here if I hadn't listened to my sister Melanie and her husband's advice to go see a doctor about the little "episode" I had while on the phone with her.
This experience taught me that while we want to concentrate on the small, everyday things that we are thankful for, it is important to also remember the big "WOW" gifts that we take for granted.

Credibility of Stories

How much credibility can we give our children when the come home with outlandish stories of their teachers and other students at school that day? One daughter reported that she saw one of her middle school coaches plucking another coaches eyebrows during the workout session. She said that she had gone to the athletics office to ask a question when she came upon them.
Then there's the story about the two students, girls, who had spent $120 and $107, respectively, on spirit beads. They drained the stash and left no beads to be purchased by other students. My youngest daughter went to buy a string or two at 50 cents each and found that there were no more. When she saw the enormity of the number of beads on one of the girls she asked if she could purchase one and was promptly given a "no."
These are the recent WOW topics that I am pondering.