Cows, dogs and magic wands: Creative solutions for leftovers

Fact: I hate leftovers.
Fact: I hate throwing away leftovers.
Fact: I hate creative complicated recipes about what to do with leftovers.

Now that I have that out of the way let me get on with my story.

At 5 o’clock one evening, I opened the fridge for some milk for my shaam ki chai and I spotted a bowl of leftover chhole. That bowl had been sitting in the fridge since last night’s dinner.

I’ve said this earlier and I’ll say it again, leftovers are a pain. The trouble is, either everyone wants them (depending on whether it is higher or lower in preference compared to the current menu), which is a sure shot recipe for strife. Or nobody wants them, which means they will remain leftover forever.

Also, they totally upset the current meal calculation.
Fact: Leftovers breed leftovers.

That’s how the day-old chhole came to be sitting in the fridge.

A little annoyed by their presence, I wondered what I should do with them.

Maybe I should adopt a cow.

I’d once thought of getting a dog to solve this problem of leftovers, but dogs these days eat their Kibble or Pedigree or whatever. They’d probably turn up their flat-little snooty noses at day-old chhole.

Hence, cow.

I could feed her the leftovers and be done with. That’s what generations before us did. My father still goes out for his morning walk with last night’s chapatis for stray cows.

Cows are accommodating. They eat everything. Once, one of them even ate up my sister’s chemistry journal. Truly.

So my cow would sit peacefully in the balcony and chew up whatever was served.

However, there’s a catch. I do not see her lumbering all the way up to my third-floor house in a high-rise building. Also, I’m not sure a bunch of gau-rakshaks wouldn’t descend on my home, it being election season and all (pardon the double negative, the chhole situation is interfering with my grammar).

Back to the problem at hand, I glance at the chhole. How easy it would be to simply dump them in the bin. But my hands refuse to obey me. And it’s all my parents’ fault. All those years of conditioning!

If I’d spill a little bit of salt my mother would say, ‘You’ll be made to pick that up with your eyelashes one day’. I am not quite sure which day or where or by whom I would be made to do that. Perhaps, it would happen after I died and went to heaven (assuming I would go to heaven). Except, that would negate the whole purpose of heaven. I mean, it wouldn’t be much of a heaven if they made people collect spilt salt with their eyelashes.

Or it could happen in my next life. Unless, I turned up as a fish. That would be a curveball. Mum’s theory really has major holes.

In any case, I had no wish to pick up chhole with my rather meagre eyelashes in any of my future lives.

So then I considered just eating them up – sitting at the table and getting rid of them. It’s not like I’ve never done it. That’s one reason the weighing scale always tips the wrong way.

I upraise the bowl: Nope. Not possible! There’s just too much of it.

Finally, with annoyance bubbling up, I get to mashing the darned chickpeas. I make a pretty good job of it, pouring out all my frustration. No cows or dogs were coming to my rescue – it was just them and me.

I crumble in a few slices of bread then chop in some onions, green chillies and coriander. As I knead the final dough I find myself calming down.

I roll out round balls on the palms of my hands and put them onto a hot girdle. I flatten them with my spatula and turn them around slowly in the sizzling oil. Within minutes they are crackling away, brown and crisp.

I wave the spatula like a wand and get a fairy godmother vibe. Didn’t I just transform those leftover chhole into scrumptious cutlets?

The facts (refer top) don’t change, though. It’s only occasionally that I choose to wave my wand. So my problem remains unsolved.

Meanwhile tell me, have you had a similar fairy godmother moment? If there’s a recipe involved, share it pretty please. Also, have you ever thought of adopting a cow (or dog) or is it just me?