Chopped At Home

Did you ever watch the show on the Food Network where three cooks each get a basket of unrelated food items and are asked to create a dish using them? It's called Chopped, and I wonder sometimes how they can create anything good out of such strange items. Well, my refrigerator was filled to the brim last week with a little of this and a little of that, and I decided to take all these little bits of food and recreate them, some in soup, others in a main dish. The soup was a no brainer. I had some leftover tomato sauce, a small portion of black beans, kale that was about to go bad, leftover cilantro, a half onion and a portabello mushroom. I added to these ingredients a can of chicken stock, chopped zucchini, chopped carrots and some fresh chopped spinach. I seasoned with salt, and ended up with a thick, delicious vegetable and bean soup. Great way to get rid of the old veggies. I had some leftover chicken from a rotisserie chicken we had eaten a few days before. I also had some green chile verde sauce that I didn't know what to do with, sliced Jarlsberg cheese that was ready to go bad, and some homemade pickled beets that I'd had around forever. I chopped the chicken, combined it with the chile verde sauce, added some white sauce for a thickener, and sliced the cheese to put on top. I was going to layer it with tortillas, but I just heated the mixture and topped with cheese. I served corn tortillas on the side. I took the pickled beets and added some chopped tomatoes, and red onion and a little extra olive oil. The pickled beet juice served as the base of the dressing. It was a delicious little salad, nice and light, to go with the heavy Mexican chicken dish. I'm no cooking expert, but I sure did appreciate how difficult it is for contestants on Chopped. You really have to use your imagination. I now have an uncluttered refrigerator, but in short order it will again be filled with lots of leftovers. In my effort to NOT be one of the Americans that waste over 28% of their food, I will try again in a few weeks to create something out of nothing.