Tamar Adler

NEW YORK >> Not too long ago, Tamar Adler’s husband was tidying up and picked up a tissue that their son had barely used. Adler stopped her husband from throwing it out.

“I was like, ‘No, no, that tissue still has use in it!’ And he was like, ‘I think that is actually the way we would identify a zombie you versus the real you: Just try to throw something out — anything — and if you don’t pounce on it, we know it’s not you,’” she recalled.

Adler gets to show off that strong repurposing ethic in her new cookbook, “The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z,” a comprehensive guide from Scribner for reusing leftovers, from potato cooking water to day-old sauerkraut.

Adler turns old Pad Thai into an omelette, makes broccoli stems and wilted leaves into pesto, transforms old meatloaf into pizza, converts stale bread into bread pudding, adds old bacon fat to make cornbread, and even uses peanut shells as kitty litter.

Many things, she insists, taste better the next day, like beans, rice, slowcooked meat and soups. Other dishes take invention, like when she turns coleslaw into soup and cheesecake into a milkshake.

That tendency followed her as she became a James Beard Award-winning author and food writer with experience cooking in such restaurants as Chez Panisse and Prune. Her books include “An Everlasting Meal” and “Something Old, Something New.”

Adler began work on her new cookbook alphabetically, listing foods from A to Z and then attacking them in order, rather than starting with dishes she had already mastered. “That might have been a really bad idea, but it might have kept me out of ruts,” she said.

“The Everlasting Meal Cookbook” comes at a time when food prices are biting, environmentalism urges us not to throw away reusable things, and the pandemic forced us to become better cooks. Adler emphasizes saving time and boosting taste as well.