When you suddenly find yourself going from a family of 7 or more to a family of 1 or 2, cooking gets tricky. There are ALWAYS leftovers. You open a jar of spaghetti sauce and you have to eat Italian for a week! We've all been there, right? Well, that doesn't go over super great at our house. Left overs may get taken for lunch once, but after that? Then what? Well, here's some ideas I have come up with.
Beef Burgundy one night makes great beef stew another night. Just boil and add some potatoes and carrots! Two menu items for the thought of one?! Yes please!
If you make home made chili, you can eat it as soup one night, and then put it on baked potatoes, in cornbread casserole, or on fry breads for Navajo Tacos. They won't even know it's leftovers!
Too much french toast? Make bread pudding!
Use that spaghetti sauce for something else! It works great for pizza or Shepherds pie. Hey, use those leftover mashers too!
Noodles left over? If you use penne or bowtie pasta, you can make awesome casseroles or chicken pasta salad the next day.
Can't use that spinach or other dark greens fast enough? Cram it in the blender with some fruit, juice, and yogurt, and pass it off as a smoothie.
Use heels of bread, old potato chips or dry biscuits in your meatloaf.
Use left over roast to make barbecue. Use left over barbecue to make pulled pork(or beef) grilled cheese.
Send those left over baked potatoes through a ricer or food mill and make gnocchi(it's stuffed pasta made with potato starch!)
Ok, that's all I can think of just now. Do you guys have any ideas?
If you do a roast with potatoes and carrots in the crock pot, I like to turn that into stew the next day too, just cut everything up into smaller pieces, add V8 or other tomato soup base and wala!
ReplyDeleteLots can be frozen too, I've made lasagna or enchiladas in bread pans- it only serves us one meal and the other pan or two I put in the freezer. Most soups can be frozen away too. I really like french bread for pizza crust or french toast besides a great side for Italian dishes. I almost always throw in extra baked potatoes and have them as hashbrowns the next morning, black beans can be used in soups or burritos or chips and dip....
Just a few ideas!
I thought you didn't like gnocchi....
ReplyDeleteThis is what I usually do with leftovers. Put them in the fridge and they stay there till they're moldy. Yeah....I am not good at re-using leftovers.
Thanks for the tips!
I'm a big fan of 'intentional leftovers', I almost always cook a large pot of beans and rice, plain and unseasoned, and keep them in the fridge. Beans can become baked beans, bean soup, refried beans, chili, etc, and you only season as much as you will eat in one meal, so even though you are eating the same beans you aren't eating the same meal. (if that makes sense). Leftover rice goes with everything, and can be made into rice pudding, fried rice, the crust of a quiche, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, I agree, leftovers are great as long as you don't have to eat the same thing over and over!
I couldn't resist commenting again- we are finally getting around to refinishing our kitchen floor which also means we haven't had access to our stove for 2 days (and don't have a microwave) so meals have been cold or done on our electric griddle (and I think tonights dinner will be in a crock pot) but anyway, I was at a loss of what to do for lunch when William showed up. He grabbed every little bit of leftovers (black beans, a baked potato, steamed broccoli and carrots, noodles, a slice of lunch meat and salsa), warmed up over the stove (yeah, he moved it back- if he'd done that before I could've come up with something!) and ate it for lunch. I think I feel guilt tripped into planning better tomorrow just from looking at it, but it actually wasn't that bad! I sure am glad he's not a picky eater!
ReplyDeleteoh yeah, I forgot POT PIE! You can cram anything in a pie crust and call it pot pie
ReplyDeleteone of my favorite Ideas for a whole week is this night 1 plain beans and rice or bread ,night 2, chilli made from the left over beans, night 3, spagettie, night 4, spagettii chilli cassaroll . Its called mummas cassarole (its in the family cook book)All right its only 4 nights . another is harvest soup . Use every vegutable you have left over put in a beaf or chicken broth and wail it boils stir in an egg betten well . It looks so yummy, pot pie is the best with left over soups .
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