Life without a Microwave

When I recently began life in a new kitchen, Elspeth encouraged me to not get a microwave. I believe her reasons were (in no particular order) - saves space, saves energy, and saves living beings such as myself from any future discoveries that microwaves were zapping us full of bad.. um, micro..waves.

Happily, between my trusty stovetop, my trusty oven, and my trusty toaster oven - leftovers can usually get heated up quite easily. When push comes to shove, I also take leftovers to work for lunch quite a bit - where I heat them up in a microwave. However, on days like today, the absence of a microwave pushes me to make a new and improved meal out of what might otherwise have been a sad cold (or microwaved) pile of yesterday's meal.

My CSA (the meat one, not the veggie one) tends to provide meat that is packaged and labeled, just like at the grocery store - but with very specific labels... not so much about the cut of meat as what they think you should be doing with it. Last round, I ended up with "kabob beef" and this time, I ended up with "fajita beef" - so, fajitas it was. Beef (with salt, pepper, some lime juice, and some soy sauce on it), an onion, and a red bell pepper, tossed about in the cast iron pan (my favorite kitchen item!)... wrapped up in a tortilla, and tada.

Okay - so that brings us to this evening, with the leftover fajita business, staring up at me from the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. Kinda hard to heat up in the absence of a microwave, and I'm a real advocate for finishing up leftovers before they go bad and need to get thrown out. Soooo... I thought about it, and realized that what I really wanted to eat was a quesadilla. Guess what chopped up fajita fillings make? Awesome quesadilla fillings! I heated up the chopped up bits, stuck them between two tortillas (you guessed it, in the cast iron pan) with some cheddar cheese and chopped up jalapenos.... and, honestly? This meal was better than the first.

Take that, sad microwaved leftovers. Take that.