Given the current perils of grocery shopping, every leftover becomes all the more precious. Indeed, never have I been more aware of what is, and what is not, in the fridge and the pantry.

This has led me to considerable kitchen innovation.

For example, this morning I found that I had some leftover garbanzo beans, and the dregs of a jar of tahini, so I thought I’d make some hummus. But I lacked lemon juice. So I improvised, and used pineapple juice. And made pineapple hummus. We had some for both breakfast and lunch, and there’s some more left over for tomorrow.

My greatest innovation, however, is dessert waffles.

I make waffles every Sunday morning for breakfast, and, especially now that there’s just the two of us, three or four are generally left over and get put into the fridge for consumption later on in the week.

With Oliver home for lunch every day, and expecting an occasional dessert at least, I have taken to making Improv Dessert Waffles, as follows:

1. Toast one or two waffles in the toaster.
2. Take some random chocolate, from some dark corner of the cupboard—we have a lot of leftover Christmas chocolate here—and melt it in a small pot on the stove. Add a splash of milk if it’s helpful.
3. If there’s a spare apple, orange, or strawberry hanging about, chop it into bite-sized chunks and add it to the melted chocolate.
4. Pour the resulting fruit-chocolate mix over the toasted waffles.
5. Enjoy.

I’ve done this enough over the last three weeks that it will emerge, I am sure, as the seminal dessert of the social distancing era.