French Onion Soup using leftover sourdough bread, those last-few onions, old white and red wine. It may look like bread with melted cheese, but there is soup under there. Find the full recipe here. We modified it to use week-old red wine in addition to some white, and it had a richer and sweeter taste. The hydrangeas were picked (poached) from the flower bushes around the building where I work.
Leftover salad into which we threw in the some tomatoes and some oranges. To the right is leftover pasta in a homemade pesto sauce using some free basil, supplemented with fresh basil from our front yard, "bottom of the bag" walnuts because we don't have pine nuts, garlic, and orange juice because our lemon tree is out of lemons.********
Several people have commented that it must cost a fortune to eat this way ("gourmet," they say). In fact, the opposite is true. The three of us share all our groceries which comes to about $25-30 a week per person for practically everything we eat (breakfast, lunch, dinner), aside from the occasional eating out. Most, if not all of the meals (salad and wine included) have cost between $3-7 a person. A couple things that probably helps us cook restaurant fare at a fraction of the cost:
1) We eat mostly vegetarian
2) Spices, dried herbs, oils and vinegars are probably the best investment. We save a lot because we make our own sauces and dressings in small quantities that are all used.
3) Buy produce that's in season.
4) Nothing goes to waste.
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