Many stretch cooking recipes will yield some very nice leftovers, but several of these recipes actually yield two complete meals, the original, and then a second, which will be eaten the next day, or some day after that, but is too distinctive in its own right to be called a "leftover."
The most vivid example is ham. I love the definition of "eternity" in the classic "Joy of Cooking" cookbook: "Eternity is a ham and two people." The original recipe, of course, is baked ham. That one original recipe spawns a whole tree of second recipes, which take up several pages in the cookbook.
For the second recipe I am about to give you, the original is: spaghetti. There are a million original recipes for spaghetti, but the one I am referring to is the traditional spaghetti with meat – either hamburger or sausage – in a thick, rich, tomato-based sauce. That kind of spaghetti is very good, with garlic bread and a green salad, and its offspring recipe is just as good and totally different, even improved. In fact you will find some people – I am one – who would argue that the best reason for making spaghetti is so, a couple of days later, you can make Spaghetti Casserole.
You want to make enough of the original spaghetti to have plenty left over. After dinner, if you haven't already tossed the sauce into the pasta, do so. You should have at least a pound of pasta and three cups of sauce to put into the refrigerator.
When you want Spaghetti Casserole, dump the cold left-over spaghetti on a chopping board and chop it roughly. Place it in a large mixing bowl and add a can of drained corn, a 4-oz. can of button mushrooms, a quarter-cup of canned, sliced jalapenos (or more, or less, as you prefer), and a can of whole black olives, with the olives cut in half. Pour into a greased casserole dish, sprinkle liberally with cheese, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
If you have leftovers from this dish, it is great for breakfast, spread cold between slices of sourdough, but that's another story.
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