Creative Use of Leftovers

Rosemary McKinley

In today’s recession we hear lots of advice on how to save money at the grocery store. Most experts talk about using coupons as a savings tool, which is good.  I have another secret ingredient: use leftovers to supplement your weekly menu.  Our Depression era grandparents knew all of these tips and somehow, we modern cooks have forgotten how to be frugal.

We Americans tend to throw out so much food in a week that we don’t even realize how much these small amounts of food could save us money by providing an extra meal as well as additional nutritional value. Planning your weekly meals around the sale items of the supermarket circular and using extra food for other meals is a great way to stretch your grocery dollars.

For example, when a cup full of vegetables is left after a meal, save it in container and add it to the next day’s salad. It adds to your vegetable servings and is good for you. Another way to use a small amount of leftover food is to plan to make soup the next day. I save the drippings from a cooked chicken and freeze it in a container. After I remove the fat from the top, I add it to soup as stock, along with other ingredients such as chicken parts that are on sale that week.  Throw in your cooked vegetables from the previous night. It enhances the flavor and is a good way of using a leftover, as well as adding to your daily vegetable intake. Homemade hearty soups provide a better alternative to cold cuts, and have more nutritional value and less sodium and preservatives.

When I cook fresh vegetables, like broccoli or asparagus, I save the soft discarded pieces, chop them and add them to soups. I cut off the woody parts and throw them out. Again, this adds nutrition and is not wasteful.

Another great way to stretch your weekly food budget is to cook roasts and whole chickens when they are on sale. Then you can divide the leftover meat into cup-sized portions. I usually make a stir- fry dish with fresh or frozen vegetables that are on sale that week. Or, I cook a southwestern meal with a cup of meat. Sometimes I freeze and label a one- cup portion size and cook a casserole another week, when I don’t have leftovers. Using less meat is a cost saver as well as sound nutrition practice.

My family used to shy away from my leftover meals but now that I present them in a variety of combinations, they look forward to eating them. The other trick is not to plan the meals using all of the same ingredients as the night before. It is better to supplement different vegetables as the previous night. A bag of frozen vegetables and a different set of spice go a long way to change the taste of the meal.

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