Several years ago when my Aunt Ginny and Uncle Jack moved to Mississippi Aunt Ginny gave me a box of recipes that she said were her mother’s — my grandmother’s. I looked through the box a few years ago and planned to try a few recipes at some time in the future. I never did get around to that and since I was feeling a little lazy today, thought I would take a look at the recipes in detail. About half of the contents of the box consists of recipes clipped out of magazines or newspapers and the other half consists of booklets containing recipes that fit a theme or use a particular brand or style of cooking.

The oldest booklet, copyrighted 1941 and written by the Culinary Institute of America, is called 500 Delicious Dishes from Leftovers. The introduction begins, “Rare indeed is the day when a modern housewife could not find in her refrigerator all sorts of odds and ends in the way of food. And it is these leftovers that challenge the imagination of the alert homemaker.”

Here is a recipe for leftover ground meat and leftover noodles:

Fricadellons with Noodles

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fat
• 1 cup dry bread softened in 1 cup water
• 2 cups leftover ground meat
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 1/8 teaspoon alspice
• 1.4 teaspoon salt
• Dash pepper
• 3 cups leftover noodles
• 1/2 cup warm milk

Brown onion lightly in 1 tablespoon fat. Press water from bread; add onion, meat, egg and seasonings. Mix well. Shape into small balls or flat cakes and saute until crisp in remaining fat. Moisten noodles with warm milk and reheat. Make a ring of noodles, fill center with Succotash and border with the fricadellons. Serves 4.

I won’t be making that — or anything else in the book — but won’t toss the book in the trash either. Let me know if you need a delicious dish recipe from a leftover, I bet I can find one for you.