Where do you stand on leftovers?

[beckyliz]

Love them and do my best to eat them up before going bad. I also freeze stuff like leftover soup.

[frugal-one]

i try to make meals I can either freeze or morph into an entirely different meal. Rarely does it feel like leftovers that way. I sometimes make more just for this purpose.

[mschrisgo2]

After years of cooking for myself only, I shop with an eye to what might be leftover for the next day’s lunch, and I tend not to buy or cook things that can’t be shared with the dogs. No lie, when I got called on the carpet for not putting the green bin out with food scraps in it every week, I explained that I make my lunch, or dogs get what’s left, and outer leaves of lettuces etc and vegetable scraps go out for the wild geese and ducks. All I really have is chicken bones sometimes- but more and more I buy precooked chicken, and there is literally No Waste.

[Rogar]

I thrive on leftovers. I enjoy cooking, but most common recipes are quantities for two or more people. Probably two thirds of my hot meals are/or include either leftovers from a previous day, or from the freezer from a previous time. There are some things that save or freeze quite well and others that are best fresh. Garden items are best fresh, which is part of the reason for having a garden anyway. The harvest gets frozen for a few last meals of pasta with sauce or roasted eggplant on pizza. I have a freezer full of various varieties of burritos made from left overs of some sort and can be microwaved for a quick dinner when it's not cook night and soups for lunches. The NYT just had an article about the health benefits of left over pasta and rice.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/w...leftovers.html

[jp1]

I absolutely eat leftovers. SO is not a super huge fan of most leftovers so when we cook I try to plan that we only have leftovers that I will eat. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, but life is too short for me to freak out if I have to put something in the compost bin.

[Tybee]

i try to make meals I can either freeze or morph into an entirely different meal. Rarely does it feel like leftovers that way. I sometimes make more just for this purpose.

Me too! I just made soup yesterday and made enough for 8 containers for the freezer, in addition to what we had yesterday, so eight weeks of vegetable soup. I figure I can add fish or turkey meatballs when I thaw it out from the freezer, if I want variety.

[Tybee]

So true!!! I have found that to be true with all my homegrown fruits and veggies. They're almost like my children.

That's a problem for me too--I actually hate to harvest them at all as I like how they look on the vine! I rarely use my own cut flowers because I don't want to take away from a bed.

[rosarugosa]

We have so much room for improvement with food waste and meal planning, but we do try to strategically make the most out of leftovers. Chicken thighs with potatoes and veggies one night, chicken salad sandwiches the next and a veggie frittata the next has become a regular lineup at our house.

[iris lilies]

Today is a typical Friday where I use up leftovers for DH’s lunch.

I have a hard time envisioning a food world where leftovers are not consumed. Especially if one doesn’t have dogs.

[early morning]

I have a hard time envisioning a food world where leftovers are not consumed. Especially if one doesn’t have dogs

Agree that animals of some sort are key to managing food waste and scraps, lol. Even if the animals are wild birds/racoons/feral cats/neighbor's goats - which we can't keep out of our field so quit trying. They are cute little beasties and eat nearly anything.