Groceries have gotten so ridiculously expensive. I’m back to shopping specials and patronizing stores with a better dollar value like Aldi. I am also trying to not waste food and use leftovers creatively.

Last Thursday a houseguest arrived. Thursday evening I made a roast pork Friday evening I made chicken cacciatore.

The thing about recipes with sauces is sometimes the sauces grow – like a stew you always end up with more gravy than stew at the end. That is the same thing with the chicken cacciatore. It left me with proper leftovers in two rectangular containers, plus a quart container of a beautiful tomato sauce. That was the result of the cacciatore. It has no chicken in it, but it’s tomatoes and onion and garlic and bell peppers which can be converted perfectly to a base for chili.

But you have to adapt the sauce, so I started with another onion in the bottom of my Dutch oven. Two that I had chili, spices, salt, and cumin. I sautéed the onion, a smidge and then I added a bag of frozen corn not frozen corn and sauce, just plain old frozen kernel corn. Is that is cooking I had a small jar of diced up Goya pimentos in my Lazy Susan, so I drained them and tossed them in as well

After the corn and onion and pimentos, cook and take on the hue of Mexican Street corn because of the spices, my next add is 2 drained cans of red kidney beans. These are 15 ounce cans and the brand is Dakotas from Aldi and they’re very good beans.

After I added the beans and give it a stir, I added the roast pork cubed into bite-size pieces and give everything a stir and let it cook on low for a few minutes.

Finally, I add in the tomato sauce from the cacciatore, and stir in more chili powder and about 3 teaspoons of the Dona Isabel panca hot pepper I keep on hand. It comes in a small glass jar and it’s basically kind of saucy and thick. It stays in your refrigerator along time after opening so I had a jar that was open.

The chili now cooks on low until dinner time. I will give everything a stir every now and again to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of my vintage Dansk Dutch oven.

Leftovers can be fun they don’t just have to be what it was originally and it doesn’t take much imagination to turn one thing into something else.

If you do something special with leftovers, leave me a comment and tell me what you make!

Thanks for stopping by.