Showing posts with label Leftovers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leftovers. Show all posts

Monday, May 18, 2009

Utilizing Your Leftovers

I must admit I am not a huge fan of leftovers. With my family I never know who is gonna eat like there is no tomorrow or who is just not hungry that night. So, sometimes I am stuck with lots of leftovers. Here are a few ideas of what you can do when you need to tackle those leftovers in your fridge.

~Combine leftovers to make soups, wraps or omelets. Have a little bit of chicken left? You can make chicken wraps with lettuce, tortillas and dressing. I had about 2 servings of roast beef left last week. I hated to eat it again so I pulled it all apart, added some BBQ sauce to it and made a pulled BBQ beef sandwich. It was delicious and nothing was wasted.
~Overripe fruit can be made into breads or muffins. You can use overripe apples to make applesauce. I just threw some overripe bananas into the freezer to use later to make bread.
~You can make your own broth and stock from meat and vegetable trimmings. You can go here to read this wonderful post about making homemade broth.
~Freeze leftover or stale bread to use in making bread pudding or homemade croutons. We also save it and feed the birds with it sometimes!

It is important to clean out your fridge about once a week to make sure nothing is close to expiration. If you have lots of leftovers, take a night off from cooking and just eat whats left in the fridge.

How do you utilize leftovers? For other ideas on what to do with meat leftovers you can read this post.

Linked to Tackle it Tuesday at Five Minutes for Mom and Talk about Tuesday at The Lazy Organizer.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Utilizing Leftovers

During Thanksgiving I stocked up on turkeys at .69 a pound. I bought 3 turkeys. From one turkey I can plan at least 3 meals to feed my family of 6. If you have the freezer space you can easily cut down your food cost by stocking up when the price is right. Cooking in large amounts and then planning additional meals around whats left over can be helpful.

Most of the time buying in bulk can save you money. This is especially true when purchasing meat since there usually isn't very many coupons out there for meat. Buying a whole chicken will be cheaper then buying just chicken breast and you will be getting more meat. Here are a few suggestions for planning meals with leftovers.

Chicken
~1st Meal Oven roasted chicken dinner
~2nd Meal Chicken sandwiches, BBQ chicken or chicken noodle soup

Roast Beef
~1st Meal Crockpot Roast Beef dinner
~2nd Meal Cold roast beef sandwiches, BBQ sandwiches or French dips

Turkey
~1st Meal Roasted turkey dinner
~2nd Meal Turkey sandwiches, pot pies or tetrazinni

Ham
~1st Meal Sliced ham dinner
~2nd Meal Ham sandwiches, breakfast casserole, omelet or ham and potato soup

Meatloaf
~1st Meal Meatloaf dinner
~2nd Meal Meatloaf sandwiches or crumble up the loaf and add to spaghetti sauce or use for toppings on a homemade pizza