Survival Sunday 219: Mother's Day Leftoverstravaganza

It's Mother's Day, here in the good ol' U S of A. If you celebrate this heavily-commercialized holiday which was basically just started by a lady saying "we should probably be nicer to our moms, guys" a long time ago and got consumed as most nice sentiments do by Hallmark, then you might consider giving your mom the day off in the kitchen. The popular meals to make for mom are breakfast, brunch, and steak dinner or something like that.

But what if mom isn't big into breakfast? What if she's not one for mimosas and avocado toast for brunch? (That sounds vile, btw). What if she's not into going out for dinner or having her house smell like meat all night?

What if you can't cook?

Well, if you have a mom who likes noodles, here's what you do:

You make a salad, then you hunt down some leftovers.

Leftovers acquired, you proceed to making your mother a bowl of ramen with a tasty salad on the side! Perfect lunch!

And your mom doesn't have to gripe about the leftovers in the fridge!

"But Casual!" You might say. "I've never made a salad on my own outside of a salad bar! What do?"

Well, my friends, you should pick yourself up some fresh veggies because salad is better fresh, and grab some bagged mix. Yeah. I'm advocating for premade salad mixes. Why? Because lettuce is a pain in the tuchus to prep and I've never been that good at it. It's so cold that you rapidly lose feeling in your fingers as you wash and wash and wash and wash and wash and you still end up with sand & bugs...

So yeah. Bags. Get your salad in bags.

Just... check with the CDC first, because apparently the stores & companies aren't too great at washing your salad either...

Here we have a honkin' great cucumber, a nice red bell pepper, and some Roma tomatoes.
If it were up to me, there would be a yellow and a green bell.
And some onion.
And maybe some broccoli...
But this is what we had!

The American Mix has lettuce (iceberg and possibly something else), carrots (yay!), cabbage (double yay!) and those nice pieces of radish I always used to be freaked out by but am now obsessed with. It's a decent mix.
I was apparently not supposed to use the whole bag of baby spinach, but since no one had told me that at the time, in it went!
Trust me, more spinach is better :P

Cucumbers can be a trial, sometimes. They're slippery once cut, they're round so they roll, and getting one out of the plastic is kind of a nightmare. I abated this by only rolling down the plastic as far as I had to, lopping off the half I was using, and then tying the loose plastic like a misbehaving bread bag. Or something else. You can use your imagination.

After you wash your cucumber, you can make your life easier by taking a veggie peeler to the dark green skin.
I made my cukes a little more square than some, but it worked out just dandy in the salad!
Slice your cucumber so that you get these medallion/coin shapes.
Life Tip: You don't need a big knife for veggies. You just need a sharp one.
A very sharp one.
Cut carefully.

Inspect your pepper. That's hard to do while taking a picture, but here you go.
Make sure the sticker is off and give the nightshade a nice wash too. (Peppers and tomatoes are nightshades).
If you have pets, keep this pretty veggie away from them. Both dogs & cats have issues with plants in the nightshade family.

Here's half of the pepper. As you can see, I avoided the stem, but there's still some seeds & pith (the white bits).
I carefully (almost surgically) removed the parts I didn't want to eat before slicing it into pieces.

I love how 1990s this one turned out!
Slice your pepper up until it looks right to you!
I like to have nice long pieces so that I can jab a fork into them comfortably!

Up til now we've been using a regular paring knife.
Now that I'm going after tomatoes, I have to switch to the tomato knife.
This thin, flexible blade is the sharpest knife in the house.
Use an extremely sharp knife for tomatoes!

I used two Roma tomatoes for this.
Here we see a tomato I halved, then sliced and cut down the middle.
You can slice your tomatoes however you want.
I just don't like big chunks of tomato...

Here we have our cornucopia of veggies!
Again, I would've liked some onion.
Yellow, red, or green onion is great in salad!

Here is our salad placed in the biggest salad bowl we own.
I hadn't mixed it yet, but once it was all mixed together, it looked pretty boring, so I just kept this shot.

Enjoy your salad with your favorite dressing!
I've had this mix with cesar dressing, but this bowl is mixed with some sriracha mayo which I think was superior.
It's also really good with a nice balsamic vinegar and some olive oil!

Now that we've got our salad finished, pop that in the fridge and grab your leftovers. I had leftover pork loin roast that I brought with me to make our ramen, so that's what I used!

Shio Ramen is good but a little bland.
Let's make it more interesting!

Cut your protein/leftovers into manageable chunks.
This was easy with the roast, since it was very tender.
I also removed most of the gelatinous fat that was left behind.
You can use a tiny bit of that in the bottom of your bowl/serving vessel to add a richness to the broth!

Prepare your ramen as usual, adding the leftovers right as the water starts to boil but before you add your noodles!
Let the water come back to a boil, then add your noodles.
I used the correct amount of water this time, so I just had to pour the whole pot into our bowl and mix it
together with our scallions! It was delicious. We added some sesame on top (it came with our ramen) and bam!
Instant hit.

Since I'd put the meat in before the noodles, the whole dish had a nice porky flavor. Whatever you use - roasted veggies, chicken, beef, lamb, tofu, seitan, etc - add it before your noodles and let the water come back to a boil. This means you don't have to microwave anything and make it toughen up! You can use other broths, too - I'd imagine a salt or vegetable based broth would be good for vegetarian options (kombu broth rocks, and miso is marvelous), and if you had leftover fish, maybe a more bonito-y base would be more appropriate?

The point is, this is something easy you can make for mom, and the best part is: you probably won't have to go shopping! Well, maybe for salad supplies, but if you've got noodles, soup, & leftovers, you will not go hungry.

And noodles be cheap, yo.

Cheap is good.

Happy Mother's Day if you celebrate it!

Happy Sunday if you don't!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC