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By Root 613 0

brains, or eggs fried in a lake of bacon grease, the hot fat spooned over the yolks. Some dishes are rustled up out of what’s around the fridge and in the cupboard, rustic meals that could be made better, but left unimproved, provide a decent feeding. Both members of one couple we spoke with make their meals entirely out of what they can buy in liquor stores—jerky, trail mix, pretzels, Ritz crackers with peanut butter—which they dine on whether together or alone. While having a liquor store as one’s main food source doesn’t sound quite right, there is an argument for a dinner consisting of a Scotch and a bowl of peanuts. There are days when that’s a perfect meal—days when lunch lasted too late or one was stuck in town at a meeting, days when one wants a little soothing sustenance when it’s all over, but not much. Whatever the approach, here are some of the simpler dishes made mostly by men, though not entirely, on their own. In case you’re wondering why there’s not a lot of meat here, it’s because meat looms larger in the next chapter. This is the “healthy eating” part of men cooking for themselves.

Something both men and women frequently express enthusiasm for is the leftover. With leftovers one can cobble pieces of former meals into new ones without investing a lot of time in the process. In addition, eating leftovers has ecological implications, which we discovered through an article that came over the Internet called Eat Leftovers, Save the World. Good title, big message. It came from the UK but no doubt applies to the US as well. It seems that discarded food accounts for a fifth of the United Kingdom’s carbon emissions, and decomposing food releases that most potent of greenhouse gasses, methane. The 6.7 million tons each year of so-called garbage—we say “so-called” because much of that food is still edible when disposed, apparently—creates an even bigger problem than packaging waste, and it represents a third of all food purchased. Amazing! (Martin Hickman, London Independent, November 2, 2007)

Knowing this should make us want to eat our leftovers. Or, if we don’t like leftovers, it might encourage us to cook less in the first place. And failing that, we might want to compost those foods we don’t eat. Patrick, a reluctant composter who laughed at my piles of vegetable peelings rotting in the backyard until he read this article, now brings home buckets of scraps from his studio to add to those very heaps that will eventually nourish the garden.

“It’s one small step for mankind,” Patrick announces as he adds his contribution to the compost pile.

Despite the considerable advantages to eating leftovers, we discovered that there are those who openly detest leftover food, those who wouldn’t dream of taking home a partially eaten dinner from a restaurant or reheating food left from another meal. But mostly we love the foods that remain, depend on leftovers, seek them out, and are grateful when we find them. And for reasons other than ease and convenience.

Peach farmer and writer Mas Masamoto, for example, turns to leftovers when he’s alone because, he says, “I immediately miss my wife, and leftovers are a way of reliving a meal. I have often wondered how someone eats after a spouse or partner dies. Reliving a meal can be both sad and yet memorable. Besides, leftovers are usually not that bad.”

For less contemplative men, leftovers are favorites because all you have to do is reheat them, if that. There are some leftovers that started out hot but have been known to go down cold, like frittatas or roast chicken. Even spaghetti. Then there are those that actually develop flavor as they sit, like stews and soups. One remaindered food that works well for some is polenta.

Patrick describes his joy at encountering a bowl of leftover polenta and sliding it into a pan of hot olive oil where it sputters and hisses before finally falling apart. It really was a little too wet for frying, but no one else would see how messy the final dish would look. Besides, frying has its own special appeal. After five minutes Patrick manages