I’ve always hated using up leftovers. Perhaps it’s because I’m continually ready to move onto the next thing. Leftovers mean that I’m eating what I ate yesterday or the day before that, all over again. It’s like Groundhog Day when actually it’s a whole new day and I should be eating something different!
Fortunately my husband loves leftovers, so I’m not quite as wasteful as I could be! He can happily eat the same thing for days on end (well, 5 days max apparently!).
For years I’ve thrown leftovers away – not just the remains of last night’s dinner, but a quarter of a pot of cream that was used for something else last week but is now going off, or the excess square of pastry that wasn’t needed for the top of the pie. It’s a regular source of irritation that recipes hardly ever use the amounts of an ingredient that it has to be purchased in. Butter comes in 250g pats, so why do SO many recipes want 225g?!
Recently though, I’ve started to be more adventurous and see these things as a challenge – my very own Masterchef “what on earth can I do with that?” moments :-)
So, there’s the well-known adage that if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I’ve brought my own interpretation to this recently:
If life gives you leftover puff pastry, make quick and
easy Apple Tart.
If life gives you half a pot of sour cream, make Mocha
Sour Cream Cake.
Now, this brilliant use of leftovers may be thanks to my recent acquired passion for Masterchef Australia and the cooking inspiration that it’s re-ignited in me. But possibly it’s also due to what I’ve been learning over the last couple of years and have already mentioned in this blog – that it’s important to try to make the best of what life throws at you and turn it into something good and productive whenever possible!
This might be getting repetitive for you – and if so, then I apologise! – but repetition is a key way we learn. In most things I’m a fast learner, but in life lessons I can be so slow sometimes :-)
My life/writing “leftovers” (or things that I’d rather get rid of and not have to deal with!) are things like this. Recently I was overwhelmed by some unhelpful emotions that made me feel like a tsunami had smashed me off my feet, spinning me round and round so that I couldn’t think straight and didn’t know which way was up. Before I finished dealing with those thoughts and that situation, I wrote down exactly how I felt. I’ve just read it back and its power surprised me, because today I’m feeling happy and peaceful. If I hadn’t captured the intensity and depth of those emotions by writing them down, then I would have forgotten how it felt (I am incredibly forgetful!) and not gained any benefit from the pain. I hope not to end up in the same situation again, but I can redeem it somewhat by using it to give depth and authenticity to the experience of the protagonist in my YA novel.
A few weeks ago I had a dream/nightmare which began with a grey cloud coming closer and engulfing things, a bit like a CBRN incident. As it developed I lost contact with my family. When I woke up I recorded the fear, uncertainty, frustration and helplessness I felt in that situation. I’d already been planning to include a scenario like this in my YA novel, so again an unpleasant experience will be turned into something more positive.
Both of the “leftover” bakes were fabulous (there are other examples I could have shared as well) and the Mocha Cake has actually become my new favouritest cake. Consequently, I have to admit to being very happy with my newfound talent of embracing, rather than chucking, annoying leftovers! I’m even more pleased though that my writing means I can take difficult, distressing, irritating and nasty situations, grab the essence of them and utilise them to improve my writing, rather than just suffering them.
There will be good stuff in my books too!! Those feelings seem easier to remember and articulate though as, thankfully, they’re more common that the crappy stuff in my life :-)
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