Those fine folks at the Federal Reserve are telling us that the recession, depression, or whatever you want to call it, is over. But everywhere you go these days people are talking about doing more with less, about economizing, about minimizing waste. Chefs and foodies are waxing lyrical about cheap cuts of meat, organs, stuff that used to go namelessly into hot dogs and fast food burgers. Even high-end grocers are scaling back on the excess to compensate for our straitened circumstances. The luxury of scraping those leftovers - the little dab of this, the miniscule dollop of that - into the trash without a twinge of conscience is a thing of the past.

Go to your fridge right now, and I guarantee that knocking around somewhere at the back of it is a container of leftover rice from some long-forgotten Chinese carryout. Every time you clean the fridge, at least one of these things goes into the trash without even the tiniest regret. But that that box of rice is actually the most valuable thing you've got in there, as it can be the solution to a cheap dinner that uses up most of the other leftovers. With a little patience and a couple simple cooking techniques, that lonely container of rice could become the most important weapon in your culinary arsenal. In a matter of minutes, you can use it to make a dessert that will help you to close the deal in even the most hopeless of romantic situations.

Open the box up and take a look at the contents. Not impressive. By now it's rock hard, a brick of little white bullets from which it seems like nothing good could ever emerge. In less than 20 minutes, it's going to be dinner, or an amazing side-dish, or an astounding dessert.

The most obvious thing to do with plain white rice is to make fried rice out of it: it's not a huge mental leap from the Chinese carry-out container to the ubiquitous frozen-vegetable and red-pork studded starch. It may be everywhere, but it's rarely very good. Indonesians, on the other hand, have their own fried rice, nasi goreng - a spicy dish made with odds and ends of meat, chopped fresh vegetables, and a healthy dose of both fresh herbs and curry - that is a sure cure for hunger and a positive balm to the flattened wallet.

I've never been to Indonesia, but I have been to the Netherlands, home of Indonesia's former colonial rulers, and eaten nasi (and its noodle-based cousin bami) in a string of cheap and sensationally good curry houses. When I was much younger, I also had it with cash-strapped fellow students looking for a cheap way to stretch expensive meat and veggies. The beauty of nasi is that it allows infinite variation, it is scalable based on the quantity of available ingredients, and, as a wise sage once told me, an ounce of curry can cover a multitude of sins.

And it's cheap. While the canonical dish has chopped pork or chicken, almost any protein will do - shrimp, tofu, bacon, any ground meat, that half of a pork chop or chicken breast from another take-out meal. Use any vegetables you have lingering in your crisper drawer, including red or green bell peppers, chili peppers, broccoli or cauliflower, carrots, celery, zucchini, snow peas - anything but those nasty bags of frozen mixed veggies, please.

If you use leftover rice, reconstitute it by drizzling a bit of water over it, covering it, and microwaving it for a minute. Or bring a pan containing about a quarter cup of water up to a boil, add rice, cover tightly and wait for a couple minutes for the steam to bring it back to life. If you don't have enough leftover rice to make a meal and want to incorporate new rice, you can add the old stuff in at the last couple minutes of the new batch's cooking time.

Nasi goreng

2 cups cooked rice

1 cup cooked or uncooked meat, chopped into small pieces

1 large onion, chopped (or the white portions of scallions, shallots, leeks, or some combination of these)

1-2 cups of vegetables, chopped small

2 tsp sweet soy sauce (if you don't have kechap manis, you can fake it by adding a teaspoon of honey, sugar, or even molasses to a teaspoon of soy sauce)

1 tsp soy sauce

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1-1 1/2" section of fresh ginger, minced (or grated, if you prefer)

1 Tbsp curry powder

1 1/2 Tbsp oil (peanut is preferred, olive or canola oil will do)

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1. In a small bowl, combine the protein, chopped into very small pieces, with the curry powder, one half of the ginger (make sure to incorporate the juice, as that's where most of ginger's flavor happens to be - you might be well advised to just grate it over the bowl), half of the sweet soy, all of the regular soy sauce, and the oil. Stir to incorporate and allow to stand for as little as 10 minutes or up to an hour.

2. Place a wok, heavy frying pan, or dutch oven over high heat. Do not, at this point, put anything in the pan. Do not use a nonstick or teflon pan for this.

3. Prioritize your vegetables in terms of cooking time: carrots and cauliflower will take longer than most other veggies to cook, bell peppers and snow peas require almost no time at all. Everything should be cut very small so that it will cook quickly and mix well with the rice.

4. Add onions (shallots, leeks, etc) to the dry wok along with both carrots and celery if you are using them. If the pan is hot they may begin to smoke almost immediately. Do not panic. Because you are using either a home gas or electric range, you cannot achieve the heat of a Chinese restaurant range: by using a dry pan we are "faking" that taste by searing the onions to release a browned flavor.

5. When the onions have started to take on a singed (brown edged) look, add the protein to the wok. Things might well get smoky at this point. Stir fry the meat and onions until the meat is at least half cooked (less than five minutes, if your pan is hot enough).

6. Add the rest of the vegetables along with the reserved ginger and garlic. Continue cooking until the vegetables are tender and the meat cooked through.

7. Assess the dish. If it looks very dry, add a bit more sweet soy. It should be very vividly colored at this point, with just a bit of liquid pooling at the bottom of the wok.

8. Add the rice and stir to incorporate, allowing it to sizzle in the pan a bit. The liquid in the wok will go a long way toward bringing leftover rice back to life. The final appearance of the dish should be very brown.

9. Garnish with cilantro, drizzle with the remaining sweet soy, and serve immediately. Leftovers will keep for up to three days in the refrigerator and will make you the envy of your coworkers at lunchtime.

Perhaps you don't have much more in the house than milk for coffee, butter, cheese, and a bit of flour you bought when you moved in. With a little patience, you too can make a nutritious dinner with that leftover rice - and for a fraction of the cost of a blue box of that dreadful instant macaroni and cheese that has been your standby for so long.

Serve cheesy rice with a green salad and a dry white wine and you might just be able to convince the love of your life that you can do something in the kitchen other than reheat coffee. And if you can make this, you can, in fact, cook. Once you've mastered this recipe, you've also mastered the making of bechamel sauce - and once you can make bechamel you can rule the world.

Cheesy Rice

2 cups cooked rice (equivalent to one side order of rice from Juan and Maria's Empanada Stop, which takes this dish from good to great)

2 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp all purpose flour

1 1/2 cup whole milk

1 shallot, peeled and chopped in half (or one small onion, halved)

1-1 1/2 cup shredded cheese (cheddar works well, but so does almost anything but processed American cheese, which isn't really cheese to begin with)

Salt and pepper, to taste.

1. In a sauce pan, combine milk, shallot or onion, over medium-low heat. When the milk begins to steam, strain it to remove  and discard the solids. Set the hot milk aside.

2. While the milk is heating, in a heavy sauce pan over low heat, melt butter and stir in flour, combining them thoroughly into a smooth paste. This paste will melt and begin to bubble and eventually darken, releasing a nutty smell. When the mixture - called a roux - is golden and smooth, reduce the heat as low as possible and whisk in the milk.

3. Increase the heat under the saucepan slightly and whisk constantly until the roux is fully incorporated. When the sauce is just shy of the boiling point, it will begin to thicken, when it boils, it is as thick as it is ever going to get. Ideally, it should coat the back of a spoon without clumping. If it is too thick, add a bit of cold milk and whip it up again. Do not worry if the sauce is a bit thin: adding the rice is going to give it all the starch it needs to thicken up nicely.

4. Add the rice to the hot sauce (you've just made your first bechamel sauce) and stir to combine. Immediately stir in the cheese, and continue stirring until it melts and the dish has a loose but not soupy consistency. Add milk a bit at a time until the desired consistency is reached. Serve immediately.

Although I'm very fond of nasi, and cheesy rice is a good fall back when there's not much else in the house, for my money the best thing you can do with leftover rice is make rice pudding. It's one of the handful of dishes I can think of that is as comforting and warming to cook as it is to eat - the fragrance of warm milk and vanilla wafting through the house is enough to make anyone dozy and inclined to snuggle.

Traditional rice pudding is pretty much a four-ingredient high: rice, milk, sugar, and vanilla. It's a recipe that can't really be improved on, but it can be altered to fit strange exigencies. The alternate recipe here can be assembled from leftover rice, two Starbucks frappuccinos, and a handful of sugar packets nicked from your local coffee shop. It's good as a nightcap or midnight snack, and the leftovers are even better as a bit of a shared pick-me-up the next morning.

Frappuccino Rice Pudding

2 cups cooked rice

2 9.5 oz bottled Starbucks frappuccinos (vanilla or mocha preferred)

1/3 cup of sugar

1 egg (optional)

Additional vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg to taste.

1. In a heavy sauce pan, heat the contents of two frappuccinos over medium heat, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking or boiling over until it comes to a simmer.

2. (Optional step) In a medium sized, heat-proof bowl beat the egg. Remove the sauce pan from the heat and add the liquid to the egg, whisking (or beating madly with a fork) until the egg and liquid are well mixed. Transfer the mixture back to the sauce pan, and bring the heat up to medium.

3. Add rice and additional sugar,vanilla and spices to taste, and simmer over medium heat, stirring to prevent sticking until mixture thickens and comes to a boil.

3. Add additional milk to thin if necessary. Serve immediately with whipped cream for a comforting, warm treat, or portion into pudding cups and chill completely.