The Leftovers
Tales from the Table
When you plan your meals right, you won’t have too much of it leftover. This is the smart way of cooking food and reducing waste. However, in some families, leftover night gives the cook in the family a much-needed break. Leftover food is also ideal for elderly people or those living alone who prefer not to cook every day. So here are some tips, ideas, and easy ways to use leftover food.
Leftover foods can be a benefit to both…… your budget and your time. They’re also a great way to reduce food waste.
A shocking amount of food goes to waste. Much of this food gets thrown away before it ever reaches consumers, but a lot of food waste comes from our kitchens. Some of this waste results from leftovers from meals that aren’t eaten, and some is created during preparation, such as vegetable peels. Either way, food waste is expensive.
Hence if you find yourself constantly discarding leftovers and food portions, it’s time to be productive and start utilizing them.
Many people just don’t know what to do with leftovers. After finishing a dinner ,some might look at what’s left on the table and can’t understand any way of serving it again. So rather than put it in the fridge, they decide to throw it away and be done with it.
But that food is still perfectly good, and there are plenty of ways to put it to good use. By thinking outside the box, you can plate it for the servants or give it to the people who are sitting outside hungry, or use them as ingredients in a different meal that can feed the whole family next day.
The simplest way to use up leftovers is to eat them for lunch. If it’s a weekend it’s easy enough to reheat that leftover. If you don’t want to eat the same thing two days in a row, simply save it for the next day.
If you have to go to work, these leftovers can still be the source of lunch, instead of throwing it away. Leftovers are a chance to get creative
If you want a change, you can combine your leftovers with fresh ingredients to make a new dish, such as a salad or sandwich.
Practically, if you don’t want to eat the same thing so many times in a row, you can just put the whole meal in the freezer and reheat it later in the week for a quick dinner.
If you think you’re not going to have a chance to finish your leftovers within a few days of preparation, you can transfer them to a freezer-safe container and store it in the freezer. Good containers for freezing leftovers include:
- Pyrex Bowls
- Mason Jars
- Plastic Containers
- Zip-Top Bags
- Freezer Wrap.
It’s a good idea to label containers of leftovers with the contents
Normally, it’s best to restore leftovers whenever you can instead of letting them go to waste. However, this only applies to food that’s still safe to eat. If leftovers have already gone bad, they’re not food anymore they’re a case of food poisoning. To keep yourself safe, it’s best to discard any food that looks or smells at all suspicious. However, you can’t always identify bad food by smell, so you should also keep track of how long your leftovers have been in the fridge. This is particularly important with cooked meat and any type of salad containing mayonnaise since this food goes bad quickly.
However, even if your leftovers and food scraps are no longer fit to eat, there’s still one way left to get some use out of them By putting rotten fruit and veggie scraps in a compost bin, you can turn them into fertilizer for your garden. So even if your leftovers can’t feed you, they can still feed your plants.