Covid Cafe: Leftovers, Sides, and Convenient Foods

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Good day to you, chefs. When are leftovers breakfast or dinner and can a side dish become a meal? Wholeheartedly yes on both accounts. Here's a smattering of the delicacies you've been sending our way. Please do keep them coming...

Phyllis's leftover chicken piccata with roasted veggies

 

Holly formerly taught high school kids a Foods class (I'll bet they're thanking her now). 

She writes: This is a Puerto Rican recipe we made for a class.  Kids chose recipes related to their background. 

Maila’s making stuffed potato skins. She says they're a favorite of her grandkids.

After baking russet potatoes, scoop out interior while still warm...more eaily done before they've cooled.

I prefer using a potato ricer rather to a masher to create soft and smooth mashed potatoes which I mix with grated Parmesan cheese.

I refill the scooped out potato skins, add very crisp bacon, top with mozzarella cheese, and broil.

Carolina's mixing her holidays

I celebrated Cinco de Mayo with my favorite traditional Mexican Christmas Eve meal: Bacalao a la Vizcaina, which is dish made with salted cod. Not being a cook, I bought the frozen version available at my local wine store, La Naval.  

Bacalao, originally from Spain, is a little labor intensive as you must rinse the cod several times the day before to dissipate the extremely salty taste. The rest is easy (though how would I know!). Also, how can anything with lots of olives be bad? 

Bacalao is at the top of my list anytime of the year.  I ate it daily while in Portugal a few years ago. Here is the recipe. I added the avocado...not in the traditional recipe.  

My comida today, supplemented with a Pinot Grigio

What a delicious time you're all having.

Music

Eddie Harris

Poetry

Today

By Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.