Leftovers: Golumpki Meatballs

So you open the fridge and there is a pound package of hamburger that's a couple days old. Oxidation has begun to make it look less appealing ...

Hmm. There's the leftover rice from two days ago when you made chicken piccata. Half a yellow onion lingers in a storage bag. Out in the garden, the stumps of three harvested cabbages still have big blue leaves living and waiting for someone to love them.

A couple months ago, I watched a food show in which some man threw his meatloaf ingredients into a stand mixer. Why not let the Red Lady Kitchen Aid stand mixer do all the dirty work? Throwing the meat, an egg, and the rice into the mixing bowl, I flipped the switch, and off she went, effortlessly and evenly mixing the ingredients. Why did I never think of this before?

Salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.

The big blue leaves of the cabbage -- and a few outer leaves from a Napa cabbage in the back yard planting -- got wilted in a frying pan filled with boiling water. Into the Cuisinart food processor those leaves went, with the leftover yellow onion and a couple cloves of garlic left over from a salsa construction the day before. (Shh, I stole about three heaping tablespoons of Bernie's salsa and threw that in with the meat, egg, and rice mixture, too.) Having chopped to hell and back the cabbage leaves, onion, and garlic, I mixed those in with the rest. Go Red Lady, go.

I could have cooked the meatballs in the oven for three hours, but instead I placed them into a pressure cooker, with a can of tomato sauce dumped over them: 8 minutes at 15 pounds pressure. Cool off the burner for five more minutes, then cool the pressure cooker until the lid is safe to open under cool running water.

Then I walked away until later in the evening, when I carefully scooped the meatballs out and put them in storage containers for today's meal. Not only do they taste better the second day, but they're a lot easier to handle when they're cool. When they're hot, they fall apart. All the liquid from the pressure cooker went into a separate container.

That was yesterday. Today, I gently reheated the meatballs in the microwave on a low setting while I made fresh potatoes for mashed potatoes, and heated the reserved juice after adding a tablespoon of corn starch to thicken it just a little. (Flour works, too.)

Oh, yeah. Who'd have thought leftovers and discards could taste so good?

P.S. Don't forget the ketchup drizzled across the meatballs. You just would not believe how good that is.