Don't let that rice to go waste!

Looking for recipe solutions? Attention! Our colleague in arms, Evan, has launched this fantastic website, Farmers Market Locator, to help you find farmers markets across the country. In addition to searching by location, you can even search by product and form of payment! Thank you for your hard work, Evan, on behalf of all who benefit from your site. Please visit and use his site regularly, and make sure to get the goodies nearest you for your takeout reuse recipes!

What are your recipes for reusing takeout boxes? Do you ever bring them to restaurants and ask to use them for pick-up orders? Joshua, of Grill-A-Chef, who offers free advice to aspiring cooks at Chelsea Market, recommends doing so. He has been successful with restaurants who are willing to use his clean takeout containers again. What about bringing permanent tableware, rather than temporary? Have you tried this? What is your recipe for success? Let us know! We await your responses.

 There is room in a box for two eggs. If one, why not two? If two, why not three? Where do you go with a problem as big as hunger? This time of year is a good time to reflect on the fact that the most important thing is to start somewhere. This pic is from the Dec. 25th giveaway!

What do you do with this much extra brown rice? These are two real-live views of our fridge from a few months ago. We ordered Chinese food for four, and later that night, one of us got hungry again and ordered a dish from the joint on the corner that delivers until 12am (this was a particularly intense ordering-in day). The remaining unopened boxes could either be given away, eaten soon, or saved until they got crunchier and made into something later.

And this is another view of our fridge:

We need your ideas for those recipes that involve the rice staying put! We tend to reheat our brown rice from takeout and serve it a week or two later. Inevitably, it’s a little dehydrated, but it works. Do you use water, broth, or something else to make your rice stay “ricey”?Have you found a way to use crunchy rice in recipes? What about on top of savory pies? Take a walk on the wild side: what about crunchy rice instead of typical cake crumble in certain recipes? Submit your ideas to us!

A San José, CA reader suggested this nifty recipe for reusing extra rice:

1. Take your extra rice (sticky rice is ideal) and form tablespoon-sized orbs, using a little warm water to mold them
2. For extra flavor, sprinkle sesame seeds on them, or better yet, roll them in sesame seeds
3. Dip them into soy sauce from your extra packets
4. Voila: rice orbs thanks to San Jo!

Sent from a Brooklynite with a mobile phone cam. She saves dijon mustard packs from deli takeout but the packs sit unused for ages, she said, hardly competing with her mustard jars. She was relieved to find a use for them, and added that mustard goes naturally with eggs.

Got a good idea on the topic of spices?

Extra soy sauce packets are natural go-to items for your box, but we’ve also experimented with extra Indian food sauces (and ketchup), like the ones here: