“¡Come! ¡Y Calla!” … It’s what we call dinner when we don’t know what to call it!
My husband, a refugee of sorts, who grew up in Chilé and left during the dictatorship of Pinochet was familiar with the concept of “making do”. His childhood taught him to follow this notion in all things. Stray socks from the neighborhood kids and some twine became a soccer ball. Scrap materials became household fixes. Shoes were repaired not replaced. You never bought seeds to grow more food … you saved and grew your own from the food that you just ate.
And dinner, was whatever grandma could put together.
If at the table, staring down at your plate, you found the dish to be one you couldn’t recognize and you dared ask her what it was … she would inevitably always respond – “Come y Calla”.
It translates from Spanish to “Shut-up and Eat”.
So of course the day would come in our little American family of 4 that money would be tight and groceries low and I would have to come up with something. Staring at this chunk of ham, this half bag of frozen corn, a stray onion down in the bin, part of a wilted green pepper and a loaf of bread … I wondered, what in the hell I was going to make for dinner.
Blessed with internet access, a creative mind and a raging appetite “Creamed Ham and Corn over Toast” was born in the Meneses household. And when the kids … just babes then, looked down at their plate with some slop over toast, they inevitably asked “What’s this?” And before I could apologize or ask for forgiveness or better yet, come up with a name … my husband piped up- “It’s called Come y Calla”. “Mmmmm…”, my wee-sized daughter remarked as she took her first bite, “… this Come-Calla is good!”
And so “Come Y Calla” transposed another generation. Since that day, Come y Calla has taken on many forms when pantry oddities, refrigerator and freezer scraps were turned into meals.
When all you have is a bag of onions and stale bread and cheese, check the spice cabinet – if you’ve got beef bouillon – you’ve got French Onion Soup for dinner. Save your carcasses from a ham, turkey or chicken dinner … boil those suckers and make soup. An orange in the fruit bowl, a head of lettuce and those hard noodle things that come with Chinese carry-out make a ‘good enough’ asian salad – especially if you have orange marmalade in the fridge to throw together with vinegar, some spices and olive oil for a vinaigrette. Panzanella salad is a great way to use up that french bread loaf that got stale and is now hard as a brick – combined with tomatoes, mozzarella and whatever other veggies need to be used up in the fridge. And zucchini fritters or zucchini bread are great ways to use up those giant, tough- skinned zucchini you grew in the garden because you didn’t harvest often enough.
Learning to “make-do” is a life-long skill that carries life-long pay backs. Saving money and resources is an obvious benefit, but taking on creative challenges, expanding your food horizons and boosting your confidence in cooking are the much more delicious by-products of thrifty food creations. And what if it’s a flop? Who cares….it was left overs…you’ve probably had worse meals that you’ve PAID for. And if nothing else, it’s a story to laugh about later.
Now more advanced in their ages, the kids have started to question the dinner title when “Come y Calla” comes around again. “This is Come y Calla?….. I thought Come y Calla was something else.” We play along and then my husband and I exchange a secretive wink. They don’t know what it translates to. One day they will and they’ll probably feel some injustice has been done to them. But after they get over it… I hope they see that Mommy did her best. And that some of the best meals we had were surprises that came from the days when we had the least.
Below are a few of my “Come y Calla” recipes … ones that ended up a hit and I jotted down. But don’t go shopping. The point of “Come y Calla” is to find your own hidden treasures waiting to be created. And when you manage to create a good one … you’ll be more proud of that dish than you are of the gourmet meal you spent a fortune to create. Because you saved your family money AND created goodness from scraps. Not to mention … perfecting this skill will make you a valuable asset in the zombie apocalypse 😉
If you’re looking for additional inspiration, Rachel Ray has some fun “Bottom of the Jar” ideas to use up the last morsels of condiments in the fridge. There are also some fun websites that allow you to plug-in the foods you have on hand and use a database to search for recipes using these ingredients. These websites can also help you to discover good swap-outs if you don’t have a particular ingredient on-hand but want to go forward with the recipe anyway.
Here are several of the top “search by ingredients”/recipe creation websites:
http://www.supercook.com/#/recipes
http://www.recipematcher.com
http://www.recipepuppy.com
http://www.cookthing.com
http://myfridgefood.com
Amanda’s Come y Calla recipes:
Creamed Ham and Corn
Ingredients:
1 cup of cubed ham
1/2 small onion, diced
1/4 green pepper diced
2 handfuls of frozen corn
2 TBS flour
1-2 cups milk
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
garlic powder, chicken bouillon, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper for seasoning
-Sauté cubed ham and veggies in butter until the veggies soften and the onion is lightly browned.
-Season sautéed ham and veggies with a dash of garlic powder, 1/2 tsp chicken bouillon, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, and crushed black pepper.
-Add 2 TBS flour to milk. Whisk.
-Pour milk and flour into ham and veggies mixtures. Stir until it thickens.
-Add the chopped hard-boiled eggs and mix into ham and veggie mixture.
Serve over toast or biscuits
Shrimp and Grits
Ingredients:
1 cup dry grits
2 cups milk
1 cup shredded cheese-whatever you have
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped or sliced
2 cloves garlic sliced
1 large sausage-preferably uncooked and pulled out of casing or crumbled
1 lb uncooked shrimp
seasonings: 1 tsp chicken bouillon, black pepper, garlic powder, swirl of olive oil, sprinkle of old bay, drizzle of hot sauce, splash of beer
eggs if you have them
In a pot, boil 2 cups of milk and 2 cups of water with chicken bouillon. Add grits. Stir occasionally. Add black pepper and garlic powder. Once grits are soft and cooked, stir in shredded cheese. Remove from heat.
In a saucepan, add olive oil, bell pepper, onion, garlic and sausage. Sauté, crumbling sausage and mixing with veggies as you go. Add shrimp. Cook just until pink.
Stir in Old Bay, hot sauce, beer if you have it and cook just a few more minutes.
Spoon the sausage, pepper, onion, shrimp mixture over the cheese grits and serve with fried or poached eggs.
Stay Happy, Stay Healthy!
