Today’s lunch was an ensemble of leftovers, easily thrown together minutes after I had returned from a wintry rendezvous with the Union Square Greenmarket.

I knew when I had asked for a pound of fresh tagliatelle earlier in the week that it would be too much for just the two of us, but it looked so good inside the glass case at Luca Donofrio’s pastificio inside the Flatiron Eataly, and it was so inexpensive, I decided it would just be rude to order less.

We enjoyed most of it on Wednesday, with some leftover pigeon sauce, when it had basically been the only part of a meal that wasn’t a leftover.

Today some of that same pasta became the central leftover feature of another meal. The amount not used 3 days ago today, tossed then in a bowl with olive oil, covered,  and placed in the refrigerator, became an almost instant lunch for the two of us, simply heated with a little olive oil and mixed or sprinkled with some more leftovers that had been hanging around the kitchen: one herb that had already been chopped, a bit of crushed dried heatless pepper, and some toasted homemade breadcrumbs (that had not been used on a smoked eel pasta)

Even the bread had been ‘leftover’ from earlier meals, but, while purchased days ago,  the Bread Alone sourdough miche was still fresh.

The whole meal was far more delicious than the negligible effort it required would have suggested.