Ten Minutes to Dinner: How to Use Leftovers Creatively for a Healthy Meal

If you are buying healthy food, then your refrigerator is likely to have healthy leftovers. Imagination is the most important ingredient to putting disparate items in your refrigerator into a semblance of dinner. Staring at food does not a healthy meal make.

Get a new perspective by taking food out of the refrigerator.  This accomplishes two goals: 1) you can inspect the food and make sure it is still fresh, and 2) you can see if older leftovers are behind what you have just removed and use them first.

I happened to have on hand left over grilled salmon and 1/2 bag of snow peas. My condiment shelf contained a jar of Suhki's Cilantro Salsa a fabulous combination of water, cilantro, lemon juice, peanuts, garlic, jalapeno, sugar, vinegar, ginger and salt.  The package suggests using it with pasta. It is great to keep on hand to enliven  almost anything.

In my pantry I usually keep a box of  Barilla Farfalle which is low in calories, 200 per 2 oz, or 1/4 cup which when cooked  swells to twice that.  I used 1 cup of pasta because that complemented the amount of salmon and snow peas I had and would ensure that my efforts would  create a second meal for the next day.

Basically, all I had to do to prepare dinner was boil water.  I threw in the pasta and when it was almost cooked added the snow peas. After draining, I combined the pasta and vegetable in a bowl with the salmon and a tablespoon of cilantro salsa.

It was good enough to serve guests.