Mezze-Filled Calzones (A Tale of Leftovers)

This was going to be pizzas.  Then I realized I had extra sauce and decided to do them this way, with the red sauce as a dipper and the pesto inside.

Some people draw a blank about how to repurpose leftovers.  I hate wasting food, and only do it if it's obviously spoiled or I suspect it of having made me ill.  That's very rare.  In this house, leftovers get frozen in lunch portions or turned into something new.  That's often stir fry, soup, burritos, or pizza.  Sometimes quiche, but I'm still traumatized by the price of eggs.  I'm learning how to make casseroles. 

When the amounts in the new mezze recipes I tried ended up being far too much for the four servings I planned, they turned into the "pizza" toppings on my meal plan.  Folding them into calzones happened when it looked like there was too much for just a pizza topping, plus wanting to use the dipping sauce.  I didn't use up quite everything, so it went back into the freezer to throw into some Sloppy Joes a week later, which kind of turned into Sloppy Moussaka because of the eggplant and mozzarella.

I got a little fancy with the crust, kind of turning it into an onion bagel to use up a green onion.  Most onion bagel dough has poppy seeds in it so the bakers can tell it apart from plain dough, since finely diced yellow onions are invisible in dough.  I considered putting parmesan in it too, but there's already two kinds of cheese on the inside.

Part of keeping a frugal pantry that saves you money and doesn't waste food is finding ways to use what you already have.  The calzones were really good and exactly what I wanted at the time.  Yes, I made the dough from scratch and the whole thing took close to three hours, but I did not go grocery shopping at all to make this meal.  In fact, the only thing I ended up needing that entire week was fruit to go in my yogurt.  Look at what you have before deciding what to make all week, and you'd be surprised to see how much you can save.