Turkey, Apple and Cheddar Quesadilla

Ceri makes me laugh all the time. It’s probably why we work so well together. When you collaborate for a small business, you often find yourself in the weeds, and if you can’t laugh while you’re in the weeds then you’re just, you know, in the damn weeds. Recently, while working on a document we were passing back and forth by e-mail, Ceri wrote the line “Remember that aversion you had to leftovers when you were single? Wasn’t that cute?” in a section about dinners that double as lunches. It wasn’t just a funny line, it was so me! I used to be blasé about leftovers. (Oh, that stuff in the take-out container, sure I’ll bring it with me. Maybe I’ll eat it, maybe not.) I grew up in a family who believed in the importance of good food and definitely didn’t believe in waste. In fact, we have this inside joke with my parents that they’ll eat anything, even if it’s long (and I mean looooong) past its expiration date, because they can’t bear to throw anything out. There’s also the fact they have stomaches of steel. So it’s pretty incongruent that I used to turn my nose up to leftovers as if they were a box full of bile.

Photo by Maya Visnyei

Now all I can think about is how I can get leftovers out of a meal. “If I double this, will I get two lunches out of it?” I’ll wonder. Or “What if I Triple it, an extra dinner?” It’s about getting the most out of my groceries and my time in the kitchen. If you’re Canadian and you just celebrated Thanksgiving this past weekend, there’s a good chance you’ve got a lot of turkey leftovers right about now. So this simple lunch or, hell, why not make it dinner, is a great way to repurpose your bird. (I spy with my little eye the Apricot Cocoa Balls in the background that are school-safe and coming to the blog soon!) I bet leftover stuffing would also taste pretty amazing inside these little envelopes of love. Isn’t that a cute idea?