Leftovers Dinner ExperimentI

Wow. I have not posted in almost a year

Whoops!

I have been busy with the kids and trying to find work that won't send me back to the hospital as well as working on costumes for my modeling and doing photo shoots.

Whew, I've been busy!

But, I wanted to share with you my experiment the other day for dinner.

I have been trying to be better about using our leftovers. Why? Because, money. I hate wasting money. Especially when we don't have much of it.

So, I looked at what I had in the fridge and threw something together. And, it was fabulous! The boys loved it (even though they balked at first because it contained ingredients that they don't like) and wanted more!

I'm not clever enough to have a name for it yet. Maybe y'all can help me think of something.

So here it is:

Leftover Ham and Cheese Toast? (It's a name in progress)

Ingredients: (measurements are a guess since I was just throwing things together without a recipe)

-bakery loaf sliced (4 were used in this recipe, but that is going to depend on the size of your loaf)

-4 TBS butter

-1 TBS garlic (more or less to suit your taste)

-2 TBS pizza sauce

-1/2 cup sliced tomatoes

-1/2 cup shredded ham

-1/4 cup thinly sliced onion

-1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella

-salt and pepper to taste

Took a bakery loaf that I had left over from a party and sliced it up. Didn't use the whole thing. Put the rest back in the fridge for another day!

Preheat the oven to 400. Placed the bread on foil covered baking sheet.

Next, I took 4 TBS of unsalted butter (I still have the high blood pressure issues,  so I use unsalted. But, feel free to use whatever butter you like) and about a TBS of fresh minced garlic and mixed them together. To make the mixing easier, I melted the butter in the microwave for about 30 seconds first.

Spread the garlic butter mix over the sliced of bread. Then, pop this in the oven and let the butter melt and the bread toast. I think I left it in there for about 5 minutes (I was prepping everything else and wasn't looking at the time)

I took some left over cherry tomatoes from a veggie tray from the party (why does no one ever wanna eat those? lol) and cut them in half. This probably would be great with sliced Roma tomatoes, but I was using leftovers vs buying new stuff.

Once the bread was toasted, I took about 2 TBS of pizza sauce and a baster to baste the bread with just a touch of sauce over the garlic bread.

I had some leftover lunch meat from making the sandwiches for the party, so I figured I would throw those on as well. I also added thinly sliced onion, but I forgot to take a photo of that.

I just took about 1/2 cup of lunch meat and sliced it so it looked shredded. I honestly think this recipe would be great with cubed ham, but, again, I was using whatever I already had in the fridge.

Here you can see how the pizza sauce is just lightly covering the bread. Too much sauce will make the bread soggy (which defeats the purpose of toasting it earlier). I just spread the ham out evenly between all the slices.

Next, I put the tomatoes on. I thought that this would be too much tomato (my kids hate tomatoes), but it was actually really good like this. After this, I forgot to photo adding the onion on top. But, you get the picture here.

Lastly, you cover it all with shredded mozzarella. We like a lot of cheese. It was about a cup to 2 cups worth, honestly. Be careful about dropping the cheese on the foil next to the bread- it will burn in the time you are waiting for this all to cook and melt and make the kitchen smell like burn cheese. 

Once you have your cheese on, you pop it in the oven and toast it until the cheese starts to brown on the top. I think the total time I cooked these was 20-25 min. But, I had A LOT of cheese on there. You just kind of have to eye ball it and keep checking on it every 5-10 min.

So, here's a close up! The tomatoes were nice and roasted and the cheese was just starting to brown. The bread was firm and toasty and not soggy (which I hate). The onion was subtle and the garlic was just enough without overpowering the fast of the food. 

Super simple recipe to throw together. Most of the stuff you probably have in the fridge (minus maybe the loaf)

If you try it, let me know!