With talk swirling of a recession and all the emphasis on the economy, it is clear that limiting waste and making the most of what you’ve got is necessary.

For some, cooking is a love; for others, a chore. Whichever it is for you, reinventing your leftovers into a second meal can be fun and tasty. My partner Dan and I make a lot of different foods together, but when we are watching our weight, like now, we avoid the French and Italian foods and gravitate toward Asian cuisine. Rice is a staple of any Asian meal, and when we cook it in the rice cooker, we usually have leftovers.

When we look at the health benefits of rice, white rice always falls short. Brown rice has the bran coating on it so it digests slower and has more nutritional value. For this simple, healthy fried rice recipe, white rice works well. You can add leftover beef, pork, chicken or shrimp to this dish and turn it into a complete meal. We had it for Saturday brunch after Friday’s Thai curry dinner.

(Optional: frozen peas and carrots)

Cook the rice, adding a little olive oil and a bay leaf for flavor. Let sit until ready.

Fire up your wok to the medium setting on your stove and add butter to coat it. When the butter’s popping, add onion and zucchini. Let cook for five minutes or so, then stir, then let sit again so it can steam and get nice and soft.

When the onion is clearly cooked, drop two eggs in a separate pan like you’re making an omelet or scrambled eggs. When they’re done, cut up the egg in small pieces and add to the vegetables, stirring well.

Make a bed of veggies and egg and then add the rice over it. Immediately season with soy sauce – we do five or six passes with the bottle. You want the rice to be dark, looking like proper fried rice.

Stir the rice vigorously; this should take no more than two minutes. If you keep it in there too long, the rice will burn into the wok – this is why the rice goes on top of the veggies.

Season to taste and remove all and place in a bowl. It’s delicious already, but the secret ingredient is still to come!

Add more butter to the wok and drop in the sliced cabbage. Let it sit for a bit, then stir well, watching for it to be cooked and soft. Add two or three passes with the bottle of soy sauce, stirring well.

When it looks done, add the rice and veggies, being sure not to dump all of it in – just the cabbage, not the excess soy sauce and sludge.

Folks, if this isn’t one of the best fried rice recipes this side of the Orient, I don’t know what is.