It seems like eating up all or even most of our leftovers is such a battle for me. I know that’s truly a 1st world problem if I ever saw one! I’m grateful I’ve never lacked the food and nutrition my body needs! Anyways…back to leftovers, when I do successfully come up with ways to use those about-to-be-too-bad-to-eat-foods, it really excites me!
- We cooked our turkey late, and have been chowing down on turkey sandwiches and tomorrow some of the turkey will become turkey quesadillas. I also made some broth with the turkey bones and some veggie scraps.
- Some wrinkling bell peppers didn’t look appetizing to eat raw, but tasted fine as stuffed bell peppers and in pizza sauce.
Wrinkling bell peppers can still be used for stuffed peppers!
- We had defrosted some black beans to use for chili, but didn’t use them all, so I threw them into burritos (which reminds me I still have some kidney beans I need to hurry and use up).
- Some wilting spinach tasted just fine steamed, drained well and then baked in a quiche.
- I made some banana bread to use up out-dated yogurt, some buttermilk and browning bananas.
Banana bread can help you use up bananas, yogurt and even buttermilk!
- I also made some buttermilk ranch dressing at the suggestion of a facebook follower.
- Cameron used our blender to turn pretzels into crumbs and I then used them to coat chicken for chicken fingers.
- And lastly I used a little bit of leftover chocolate milk in some coffee to make a mocha!
Have you used up some leftovers in a creative way?
Well I dont know how creative it is, but Every time there’s some bread left thats not going to get eaten, I just throw it in the freezer, so that when I have enough of it, I can make breadcrumbs of it.
I slice/dice up leftover meats such as chorizo, lamb, sausage, chicken, ham, bacon and cabanossi and put them in separate ziplock bags in the freezer. I use those and frozen diced capsicum and onion to jazz up cheap pizza’s like the Aldi ones for $3 which make a super quick and easy meal. My husband now can make his own pizza’s because its easy. The other night I also used some of the frozen leftover meat in a quick frittata as well.
Wow, you are an expert at using up food that is getting old. Most of mine ends up in the compost bin. I work full time and can’t (haven’t?) made the effort to figure out a recipe to use them up. However, we do have a family of three. My biggest suggestion is to freeze half of what you make immediately. It seems like most recipes are for 6 portions. I immediately freeze half and we have food ready to eat for next week. If I put the left over food in the refrigerator, we nibble at it but don’t eat it all and then it goes bad…
love this post! i do this type of thing as much as possible. this evening, leftover pulled pork was used in bowl meals like the kind you find a chipotle restaurants.
Yum! We love Chipotle!