Emily Siner

It's a typical Tuesday night in my kitchen.

I open the fridge before dinner and, ugh, they're the remains of yesterday's takeout.

A half-eaten rotisserie chicken still on the bone, a couple of raw vegetables, and I usually end up saying something like this.

Oh, there's nothing in the fridge.

I don't know what to make.

But cookbook author and chef Margaret Lee has a different outlook on my sad Tuesday night fridge.

To her, these odds and ends from previous meals aren't the roadblock to dinner.

In other words, think of the end of one meal as the beginning of the next.

That's takeaway one.

Food writer and chef Tamar Adler is the author of The Everlasting Meal, which is basically a love letter to the style of cooking.

The day I talked to her, she was putting together a salad for her lunch.

She looked in her fridge.

Found like a half-eaten burrata arugula salad.

Burrata is a soft cheese, and it had kind of melded into the arugula and tomatoes.

I might have tossed it right then and there.

These byproducts of yesterday's meal are the foundation for today's.

Maybe you have some leftover rice lying around.

Tamar says that is the perfect start for tonight's dinner.

And just because the meal is built from leftovers doesn't mean she treats it like a second-class dish.

No, she's trying to give these ingredients new life in their new form.