Sunday, May 15, 2022

The Destiny of Dinners

When I make a dinner, I still have not adjusted to there being only two of us, and eating less for dinner to boot.  My joy is to have a second dinner already made to be eaten two nights later.  My wife considers that those leftovers are actually lunches, perhaps even many lunches. She seeks wealth in ready lunches, I seek them in ready dinners, and we both try to claim food as wealth for ourselves.

Restaurant leftovers are different.  It is their destiny to become lunches, not a follow-on dinner.

Leftover pizza, of course, is breakfast, as is any kind of pie if you are in New England.  Well, probably not chocolate or chiffon pies.  There are limits. The "pie for breakfast" stereotype referred more to meat pies, but somewhere about fifty years ago some of us started embracing it and fruit pies came to be included as well. I read years ago about a diner that serves a lot of early morning hunters and fishermen (and probably route delivery people as well) that would include whatever was left over from yesterday's pies on its breakfast menu the next day, which sounded like a charming custom to me, but I have never seen it myself.  My guess would be interior Maine.

7 comments:

james said...

As Churchy La Femme says, “Anything handy is perty favorite.”

Sponge-headed ScienceMan said...

You need to visit Helen's Restaurant in Machias, Maine (northern seacoast). They are an institution and if they are open, pie is on the menu. Especially wild blueberry pie. I can personally attest from grad school field trip days.

Christopher B said...

I don't know why but I only want eat a given dinner menu once in a week if it can be reasonably avoided. Lunch is different as I happily eat the same turkey sandwich and raw veggies every day, and will eat yesterday's dinner leftovers if they look good. Leftovers become dinner if there is sufficient quantity for us both to eat (side dishes added as necessary) otherwise it'll be somebody's lunch.

Mike Guenther said...

I've got cooking for two down. I buy family packs of meat, bring them home and break'em down into meals for two. Sometimes get three meals from a single family pack.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

That's the theory, yes.

Donna B. said...

I can do scrambled eggs & toast for two. Otherwise, I'm probably making food for 10.

Dad said...

HomeChef. It costs us ten dollars a serving, but there is no shopping or planning, and there are no leftovers. The meals are universally very good to excellent, and the variety is wide. I do all the cooking, and it makes my sweetheart happy. She did the cooking when there were five of us, so now she gets a well-earned holiday.