What's new

Leftovers?

lmccandless

lmccandless

The Force is strong with this one.
Joined
Mar 9, 2009
Messages
20,894
I usually plan for one night of eating leftovers during the week. My DH is much more cooperative about it than my kids, mostly because I think he feels guilty/wasteful about throwing food away. I probably need to do a better job of making the leftovers into a "recycled" meal rather than just reheating everything....but it's so nice to have the night off from meal prep. Does your family eat leftovers? Do you just reheat or make into a "new" meal?
 
i usually make enough for leftovers. DH always takes his lunch to work, so they can be used for that... or when the time crunch happens on those days when i'm running like a chicken with my head cut off and it gets to be dinnertime before i know it and have nothing planned... i try to also do recycled meals with leftovers - i've been pretty good about that lately. like turning leftover chicken w/ rice into fajitas etc.
 
I always make enough to have leftovers. If there isn't enough to have a complete meal the next day we split if for our lunches. And if there is waaaaayyyy to much (like enough for 2 meals) I'll use the leftovers and freeze the rest for another when I'm working evening and my hubby has to feed my munchkins. Makes things easier because when I work evenings he can't pick up the boys until 5:30pm and then by the time he gets home it's almost 6pm...
 
We always have leftovers and I do both....re-heat & create a new meal.

Saturday, I made this:


with some potatoes and fried cornbread patties. Mine didn't have as much juice so it was more like shredded chicken with sauce.

Then on Tuesday night, I added some Chicken Broth and made some biscuits with a pot of rice and it was DE-Li-chass! DH thought I slaved all afternoon to make such a meal on a cold, rainy night. (Little did he realized it was Left-O-vahs!)
 
I wrap them up and put them in the fridge and throw them away a week later.
 
I say it as I'm wrapping it, too. "Instead of throwing this out right now, I'm going to save it for a week and THEN throw it out." :rofl
 
We eat leftovers, but more for lunches...not to have another evening. If I'm making something, I'll make enough for leftovers for just this reason (like meatloaf....yum!).

If I need a break, we might do pizza night or Trader Joes Tomato and Red Pepper soup with grilled cheese sandwiches (Tuscan Pane bread from TJ's and gourmet cheese!).
 
We always plan for leftovers. My boys swim competitively, so they are at swim practice 5 nights a week. OY! I don't get home from work until about 4:45 and we have to eat dinner and be out the door by 5:45. So, we usually make up two big meals on the weekend and save them for leftovers during the week. Sometimes we just reheat with veggies (frozen veggies are our friend!), sometimes we repurpose into a new meal or sometimes it becomes my lunch the next day. On the days The Hubster does not have school, we are likely to have either something new/fresh or something repurposed, since he is home all day. Believe me, there are times when I just can't face leftovers. But it sure beats eating out all the time.
 
I have a friend that throws NOTHING out. Even one slice of a tomato gets wrapped up, and it always gets used...even if it's looking a little too slimy. I just can't do that. If it's not eaten in a few days, it gets tossed.
 
I'm to the point where I'll ask my family if they'll eat it later because what ends up happening is the food sits in the fridge taking up so much space and ends up going bad. If I know they'll eat it, or my husband will eat it, then of course I save it. I truly do not like to cook. I'd rather do the dishes and have Michael do the cooking :whistle
 
If I make enough for leftovers we just end up eating too much when I make it so I've stopped making leftovers. However I will double a recipe and freeze part of it immediately to use later on. That works pretty well for us.
 
I eat lots of leftovers. It's hard to cook for one and not have them! But I usually like what I make so it's all good. I don't get very creative when mixing things up. If I have leftover taco meat, maybe I'll eat that with rice instead of a shell LOL!

My SIL won't eat leftovers at all but she cooks like she's feeding an Army. My brother will eats some of it, but I end up taking a lot home when I'm over there for dinner. I hate seeing so much food thrown away.
 
We always make enough for leftovers, and the dh is the garbage deposal for them! Seriously! LOL! :-)
 
I sometimes make extra, sometimes not. I don't particularly try to most of the time though. I do some crockpot meals and those are normally the perfect amount for us to eat up without saving any - we are a family of 7 though. When we do have leftovers, sometimes we will just reheat for lunch and sometimes I'll change it up a bit. My kids like anything in quesadilla form, so if we have any type of casserole or meat or veggie leftover, all I have to do is put a scoop on a tort with some cheese and put it on the foreman grill for a couple of minutes and voila! I do this for almost everything - homemade mac n cheese, a brocolli side dish, crockpot pot roast, lasagna, anything at all.

THere are definitely times when things get left in the fridge and tossed, but I try to not do that often. Usually if does get tossed, it was a new recipe that we really didn't like that much. I'm lucky that we homeschool, so I can use up a lot of odds and ends in lunches because we try to make those super quick and easy, and the kids many times cook those.
 
We are trying to be better. DH is the worst offender on refusing to eat leftovers. The only time he might possibly, is if I go out to dinner with a friend and I point out that there are leftovers. Even then, he might just make himself a burger. I know that there are certain foods my DD and I will eat as leftovers for breakfast (I know... it is weird) or lunch, so if it isn't one of those meals, I try to cook less because I know we'll just toss it.
 
Most recipes make 4 servings and there's only two of us. So we cook dinner and then we both have lunches to take to work. It works out perfectly. I love leftovers. Way better and healthier than eating junk at lunch from work.
 
Ugh. This is a huge bone of contention with DH and me.

He would rather gnaw off his own foot than have to prepare himself a meal. *eyeroll* He works second shift, so he is not home at dinnertime, and I'm sure not going to prepare an actual dinner for just DD (who barely eats, anyway) and me. Getting a full-blown lunch on the table can be difficult when he's scrambling to get his homework done before class and work, so unless I wait until midnight to make dinner for when he gets home (which is right up there on my list of things I love to do along with plucking my eyebrows out one hair at a time), he will get home from work and just snack, snack, snack until he goes to bed. For some reason, he gets this idea that the leftovers have already gone bad even if it's just the next day, so I end up throwing out leftovers at least once or twice a week. It drives me absolutely insane, but I can't eat all the leftovers by myself, either. I've tried making just enough for two people, but that doesn't work so well, either.

I just told DH yesterday afternoon that the potatoes I made Tuesday night were sitting in the fridge for him to eat and that if I ended up throwing them out without him eating any that I would be FURIOUS. When he got home from work last night, he promised that he'd eat them today. Guess what he ate today before work?! NOT POTATOES. He won't want to eat them tonight, either, when he gets home, and then tomorrow he will think they've been in there too long and gone 'bad.' AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

I will have to start borrowing kids from the neighborhood to come over and eat dinner with DD and me so that we don't have leftovers anymore.
 
Back
Top