Party snacks and leftovers

We had a couple people over Saturday night to celebrate Mike's birthday.  Yes, this was also the weekend that I managed to catch a cold.  But I didn't want to cancel at the last minute.  So we went ahead with our party prep plans with frequent hand washing for me.

It was a late party so we weren't providing a meal.  But we did want to have plenty of snacks available, and I wanted to make sure that at least some of them were healthy.  Mike made chocolate espresso cookies and strawberry lemonade cookies, so he had the sweet treats covered!  I decided on watermelon salsa with tortilla chips and raw veggies with a vegan green goddess dip.  I used the version of the dip with tahini instead of avocado since Mike is allergic to avocado.  So it wasn't that green, but it was delicious!

Chips and watermelon salsa

Of course, we had leftovers and we repurposed them into dinner for the week.  We roasted the remaining veggies for 40 minutes at 425 degrees and I turned the dip into a tahini herb sauce by heating it up, thinning it out with water, and adding soy sauce, smoked paprika and garlic powder.  This was a bit of an experiment but it worked out surprisingly well.  We served the veggies and sauce over rice.

 

Green goddess dip in the background

The watermelon salsa had some left overs too.  The plan for it is to drain out the excess liquid and sautée it up with some black beans to make tacos.  Black bean mango is a combination I've seen before so I think it should work equally well with the watermelon.  And it's already got the onions, peppers and cilantro chopped up in there.

And the cookies, well lets be honest, there were no leftovers of the cookies!

So that's how I repurposed party left overs.  Any favorite tips or recipes for repurposing left overs?  I'd love to hear them!