Then there's the fact that the local Mexican restaurants always bring enough chips to feed 8 people, when there are only 2 at the table. I do usually eat some chips at the restaurant, because they're sitting right in front of me and I'm hungry. (I'm weak!) But I can't leave the leftover chips at the restaurant (because horror of horrors, the restaurant is just going to throw them away!!), so I take them home, where they sit with my ever-growing mountain of store-bought, friend-brought tortilla chips. Because - and I don't know if I already mentioned this - I don't really like them.
Alright, so what to do with all those little broken triangles of corn and oil? (appetizing, right?) They go stale pretty quickly, but they really never spoil, which is one thing I'll give them credit for. It's pretty easy to spread them evenly on a baking sheet and pop them in at 400F for a few minutes to crisp back up. But then I just have crispier chips that I still don't really like.
So I perused the interwebs for ideas (okay, I actually just googled "ways to use up tortilla chips") and here are some great ideas I found:
From Mother Nature Network
1) Top a casserole with them. This sounds like a pretty good idea for Mexican-type casseroles (my recipe for a super-duper easy tortilla tower casserole coming soon!), but it's not really all that inspiring. Still, it's definitely an easy and quick way to get rid of stale-ish chips.
2) Chop them up in a food processor and use in place of breadcrumbs. Now THIS is a really motivating idea - you can bread tofu, vegan stuffed jalapeños, or vegetables and bake or fry them. You can even use them as a filler for vegan meatballs! I would have never thought of this on my own.
From The Kitchn
3) I love commenter ohwoah's idea: "If you are me, then this week you dropped them into the almost empty jar of queso and stirred them around and ate them with a spoon, so as not to waste any. Not every day is for grownups." Obviously I'd love it if the commenter had used vegan queso for this, but in the spirit of not wasting food AND eating dip straight out of a jar with a spoon just for fun, this may be my favorite idea of all.
From VegWeb
4) Tortilla Soup! I scoured VegWeb, my favorite vegan recipe website, to find the most popular tortilla soup recipe of them all. Just look at those photos! YUM! I've never made tortilla soup (actually, my girlfriend is more of a soup connoisseur than I am), but I think I'm going to have to do it now! I would add more chips to the recipe - some ground up to thicken it, and some in slightly bigger pieces to go throughout and on top.
VegWeb user Niecey's tortilla soup... MUST. EAT. NOW.
From me
5) Take them to work with dip. I did this once to get rid of some leftover restaurant chips. I set them out with some hummus and people went to town. Plus, you'll be everyone's new favorite coworker (but let's be real, you already are, aren't you?)
6) Give them to a homeless person. I'm not kidding, leave the restaurant with chips in hand and on your drive home, if you see someone who looks like they need a meal, give them the chips. You'll feel good about it.
If none of these ideas tickles your fancy, there are plenty more out there on the internet. I just pulled the ones I thought were most interesting and vegan-friendly. If all else fails, you can just eat the damn chips or feed them to the birds on your patio, but I really prefer to use human food for humans! I believe we have a moral responsibility to eat the food that has been provided to us, because we are fortunate enough to have a secure, steady supply of nourishment. Some people aren't so lucky, so we owe it to them to not take our food for granted.
"I believe we have a moral responsibility to eat the food that has been provided to us, because we are fortunate enough to have a secure, steady supply of nourishment. Some people aren't so lucky, so we owe it to them to not take our food for granted." <--That mentality is why I grew up as a fat kid. =/
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that, and I can see where you're coming from, but I think there's a big difference between not wasting food and eating too much food. My next post is actually going to be about the "Clean Plate Club" and how this blog is NOT akin to that mentality. I recently saw a WW2 propaganda poster from the UK, and it said, "Take only what you need, but eat all you take." There are ways to not waste food that don't involve eating it yourself (like sharing it with others)- and this blog definitely doesn't encourage overeating.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't necessarily indicating that you were encouraging people to overeat, but merely just stating that growing up -- I heard that over and over. It literally guilted me into cleaning my plates and feeling terrible about not eating what was available to me. On top of the fact, that I would get scolded for not finishing what was served to me. I'm really happy to hear you will be posting an entry to distinguish to people the difference between wasting food and overeating. I think it will serve as a vessel to educate people, and hopefully make a difference in someone's dietary life. AND *fingers crossed* help prevent someone from being a victim of the "Clean Plate Club" as I was.
ReplyDeleteAlso! Tortilla Soup is the bomb!
Agreed! I totally get what you're saying. My mom wasn't like that, but I remember going to friend's houses and their parents forcing us to finish our plates even when we were full. Not a great mentality!
ReplyDelete