Using up Leftovers

You may save leftovers from meals, but how often do they end up being thrown away instead of being used.  One way to use them is if you can think of another way to use them instead of the same as the original meal.  Many meats such as chicken and roast can be used in various ways throughout the week.  Some meals that can be frozen could be packaged in individual serving sizes and frozen for upcoming lunches or suppers.

Some families have a smorgasbord night, where all of the leftovers are set out and each person can eat what they want of the items.

Jessica from Lifeasmom.com is hosting a Pantry Challenge throughout the month of January.  In some challenges people try not to do any grocery shopping, in this challenge she is buying things they run out of such as dairy, produce and other items to fill in with the items she already has to make meals.  The concept of the pantry challenge is to try to make meals with ingredients you already have to clean out your fridge, freezer and pantry.

Over the past week, along with other ingredients, three ingredients I have used in several meals in different ways are black olives, portabella mushrooms and mini peppers.  Using these three ingredients in the past week I have made.

Mini pizzas with English muffins as the crust

Lettuce salad on most days
Tostadas
Grilled cheese sandwich with the olives, mushrooms and peppers

I also had a jar of salsa in my fridge to use up.  I used it to make Spanish rice and tortilla soup.

There are websites, such as Allrecipes.com that you can enter ingredients that you have on hand and it will list recipes containing those ingredients.

With a little planning, leftovers may be able to be used for meals instead of being thrown away.