Easy Meals That Keep Giving

Sunday nights at Cafe Drake are often low key yet oddly productive. A good routine to develop is the Sunday Supper that provides plenty of leftovers for mid-week makeovers. Case in Point: the dinner above is a simple affair - brown rice, Indian dhal and beet salad - but each of the ingredients, if prepared in bulk, can be re-used in ways that need not be boring or tiresome. Cafe Drake stuffed greenmarket bell peppers the following evening with rice tossed with chopped olives and shredded cheese; the dhal was dumped in a quart of vegetable stock and tarted up with a cup of sherry for a lentil bisque; a routine beet salad hit the blender with more stock and added veggies (and apples) for a chilled borscht brought to work for lunch. All from one meal prepared in about an hour and 1 quick trip to the grocery store. The remaining sauteed leafy tops from the bunch of beets disappeared a few hours later as a healthy midnight snack.