Last night, Jonathan said to me, I’ll make dinner, and (in my mind) I said, HALLELUJAH! He pulled out a can of tuna, a can of sweet corn, a box of pasta and some mayonnaise. When I was five years old I made myself a tuna sandwich every single day for lunch. That April when I dropped out of kindergarten I told my mother I was never going to eat tuna again. Pasta, tuna, sweet corn surprise is just too close, so I made dinner.
If you have good leftovers it’s easy to motivate yourself to use them. You can call it Leftover Surprise. There were olives sitting in a marinade with grape tomatoes from the other night, there were a few noodles mixed around with peas from Ferd’s dinner, half a loaf of French bread from breakfast, and a bunch of arugula. I chopped up the olives and tomatoes, and I had instant topping for either stuffing into a piece of baguette with fresh mozzarella, or heaping onto a little toasted slice. I rinsed off a can of cannellini, drizzled them with my olive oil from the gods, some fresh lemon juice, some smashed garlic, a little red onion, some Parmigiano Reggiano shavings, the arugula, some salt, and black pepper. I cracked a few eggs into Ferd’s dinner, whisked them around, added salt and pepper and parm and poured the whole thing into a little frying pan that was hot and was swirled with butter for a frittata. I dalloped in a few tiny spoons of mascarpone. When it was set on the bottom, I slid the egg mixture onto a plate, and then flipped it back in, just for a few seconds so that it was still wet in the middle.
There was even some of Ferd’s birthday cake that I had tried to hide from myself in the freezer; but I found it, and it was delicious.