Can I Get A Shout Out for Leftovers?

Does anyone else love leftovers? I love them! The possiblities are endless.

It wasn't always this way. When we had food leftover, they would get thrown out if they weren't eaten as is as a leftover meal.  Usually those would be eaten my myself on the days I am home, or packed for my lunch on a day I worked.

But in my quest not to waste things and be more frugal with our money, I have changed the way I look at leftovers. Now I rethink everything. Dinner is a poop shoot, we either have no leftovers at all or lots, depending on how many helpings my oldest child eats. Sometimes it is one helping, other times it is 3-4, depending on how much the dinner is liked and how hungry she is!

We have some form of veggies every night with our meal, sometimes even two. I grew up with a complete meal consisting of a meat, vegetable and a starch. So that is what we have most nights, it is  rare that we do not. But I never thought of keeping them and reusing them as a completely different meal.

Now when we have veggies and there are some left, they go in a freezer bag that is labeled. Corn in the corn bag, grean beans in the bean bag, you get the picture. Left over mashed potatoes go in a bag labeled as such. Leftover blueberries get frozen, so do strawberries, bananas, I freeze almost anything. Even left over spaghettis sauce and rice!

What do I make with them you ask? Well I'll tell you, all different kinds of yummy things.  With the veggies I will make homemade soup, shephards pie or a pot of hash.  The mashed potatoes are also used for shephards pie. The leftover rice I will keep for chicken stir fry. The spaghetti sauce gets kept to make homemade pizza with.

As for the fruit, the strawberries will get made into a slushy. Blueberries into muffins, bananas turn into chocolate banana muffins.

Not only that but I plan on a night where we will eat leftovers for dinner, add a salad or some applesauce and dinner is complete.

This is a great way to save money and reduce the amount of food that is thrown away. I just hate being so wasteful when there are many people that do not eat as well as we do. So what do you use leftovers for?

This post links to Frugal Friday and Finer Things Friday.