Utilizing Your Leftovers

Thanks to Sara at Learning the frugal life for this guest post,

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 leftover meat and vegetable trimmings.
~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.