Summer as an adolescent is a restless experience. At least this was the case with the adolescent summer I remember best– the three months following our move to Montana–which found us virtually friendless, transportation-less, and apparently lacking any propensity for meaningful creative endeavors. And so, with all manner of orthodontic tortury plaguing our jaws and the just-as-attractive opaque silver lipstick coating our lips,* we turned–as you might expect three conflicted sugar-loving hermits to do–to the comfort of Maury, country music videos and a seemingly endless supply of boxed pudding mix.
A daily portion of televised domestic conflict can lead a person to do some unnecessary things–like allow their picture to be taken by a younger sibling while wearing opaque lip gloss. Or to spend almost an entire summer inside. But, perhaps it was an overdose of Toby Keith in a tank top that led us to one day combine a questionably old box of graham cracker crumbs with instant pudding and top it with some candy covered nuts and grated almond bark. Not so far-fetched perhaps, but my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Then, there was the day when we squandered an inordinate amount of perfectly good fruit by covering it in vanilla instant pudding. If you have never tasted this, I feel I’ve let you down a bit by not being able to describe it, but the truth is I found it so unpleasant even under the judgment-squelching clutches of boredom that I have not eaten it since.
I hope you have not lost confidence in my culinary skills because I am about to share something of a recipe with you. I tell you all this to suggest that perhaps my food-related prowess lies not in the invention of recipes, but in the re-imagination of items that might otherwise go to waste. While I’m sure those almonds tasted like Reba McEntire’s hair as we ate them in front of what must have been our forty-fifth top twenty CMT countdown, I maintain that if that was our best creative invention that summer, at least we can stay we didn’t stop at the instant pudding fruit salad.
Today, however we turn to savory rather than sweet. If I were to write a food blog, perhaps I would call it something like “Delicious Dregs,” and would consist of posts regarding two part recipes, wherein the first part would require you on one day to make a full-on recipe I had found somewhere else, and the second part would suggest, on a different day, that you remove the leftover contents of your previous dinner from a tupperware container in the refrigerator, throw them in a frying pan with extra cheese, maybe additional butter, some fresh herbs, or an egg, and cook until parts of it caramelized and transformed into a new meal. Bam!
Or maybe I would call it “Cheese is a Miraculous Thing.”
Oh, HEY. Or . . . “After Dinner!” As in after the dinner you made from scratch.
Either way, the power of cheese never ceases to amaze me, and so I present you with “Delicious Big Bowl Quinoa” refrigerated, re-imagined, and refurbished.
First make this recipe and enjoy it for dinner.
I generally halve it if making it for two people, and I’ve used a pretty wide variety of vegetables: asparagus, broccoli, green beans, even frozen peas. When finished, just put all leftover ingredients, excluding feta and walnuts, into the same container.
For part 2.
Remove leftovers from refrigerator. Pour a little olive oil into a skillet and warm over medium heat. Spoon a pile of quinoa mixture onto the pan and sprinkle it with tiny cubes of cheese–could be feta, could be cheddar, as I used. Allow this mixture to heat up, you can toss it a little to distribute cheese, but end with it in a circle.
Make a well in the center and crack an egg into the hole, allowing the white to seep through the grains. At this point you could treat it like you treat a fried egg. If you like them sunny side up, just allow the white to cook completely. I flipped the egg briefly, it was easy because the egg had adhered to most of the quinoa, so it was all one piece.
Last night, I ate this plain with some salt and pepper. Today I had it with guacamole. I briefly considered, last night, eating it with some garlicky plain yogurt, but then realized I had eaten yogurt for two other meals and a snack, and decided to refrain.
But, lest you think this more complicated than it really is, here are the simplified instructions.
For delicious transformation of quinoa, potatoes, and onions:
Dump leftovers.
Sprinkle Cheese.
Crack Egg.
Cook until done.
*And by “our,” I mean “my.”
