Re-creating food leftovers into new meals will not only prevent food waste; it also helps you save money on groceries as well as minimize the time you have to spend cooking in the kitchen.
Eating leftovers as just leftovers can wear out your taste buds even at the first few bites. But since it’s impractical and wasteful to throw good food away, reinventing your leftovers into new meals should save you from guilt as well as help stretch your food budget. Both day-to-day meals and special event meals (like your Christmas ham or roasted chicken for Thanksgiving) can all be turned into tasty new dishes without spending another dime.
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Leftover Vegetables into Omelets
If you already like omelets for breakfast, then you’d love this dish even more. Save your leftover vegetables and incorporate them into your breakfast meal. Cook your omelet in the best quality non stick cookware as usual, chop vegetables into smaller, bite-sized pieces and pour them into the middle of the omelet before folding.
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Leftover Bread for French Toasts and Croutons
If you purchased more bread than you can use, you can salvage the remaining bread from going stale by turning them into French toasts for breakfast and croutons for your salad. There are also a number of recipes where your leftover breads can be useful, such as in puddings and sausage stuffing.
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Leftover Roasted Chicken into Stock and Pot Pie
Save the bones from your roasted chicken and place them into a non stick cookware pot along with some onions, celery and carrots. The liquid you get from this dish can become your own chicken stock which you can use in many other dishes. Shredded meat from the roasted chicken could also be used into pot pies, casseroles and salads. Actually, leftover chicken is very versatile that you can also use it in soups and stir-fry.
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Leftover Ham and Vegetables into Soup
One of the best ways to reuse ham and vegetables from Christmas dinner is to turn them into a pot of soup — perfect for the cold season. Slice or shred the ham and dump into a pot of boiling water or stock. Add in leftover vegetables like carrots, potatoes and celery and you should come up with a bowl of steaming hot and delicious soup.
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Odds and Ends into Stir-Fry
There are no hard and fast rules for making a delicious stir-fry. You can play with basically anything you have at hand like leftover vegetables and meat. Season them with some herbs and spices or ready-made teriyaki sauce and your dinner is served in just a few minutes. To make it into a complete meal, serve stir-fry over a warm rice or pasta.
Even leftover ingredients like onions, peppers, tomatoes and vegetables could still be kept inside the fridge until you need to cook another pot of soup or come up with the next stir-fry. With some creativity and resourcefulness, you can still salvage leftover foods from waste and turn them into wonderful new dishes that even you might forget their actually leftovers.