To think everyone uses leftovers

[moogy1a]

Certain smug, lispy, fat tongued chefs make a living at the moment by telling people not to throw perfectly good food away if you've cooked too much.
Surely no one does anyway?
Would anyone really cook say a roast chicken, not eat it all, so bin it rather than keep for sarnies / stir fry/ nibbling at secretly in the kitchen?
Do you bin leftover food or use it later?

Luis totally agree - my leftovers are really "Planned Overs"
Cuts down on waste and we never have to try and think of what to have - its preplanned.

We don't really have leftovers, we just measure out things precisely and cook exactly what we need. The only time there are leftovers if it is something like chicken/ beef.

Vegetables, pasta, rice, fish etc we measure out, portion up and most of it gets eaten. What is left has been pushed around someones plate for half an hour, so nobody would want to eat it anyway.

I wonder if some of this is an age thing? My parents were married in the days of food rationing. Nothing in our house was ever wasted, and as I have never had a lot of money, I have always used everything. A chicken is a wonderous thing and even a smallish one can feed a family of four 3 times, roast (little bit of meat, loads of veg) chicken pie (tastes much better made with leftover roast chicken), soup, sandwich fillings. I am stunned that people throw perfectly good food away. May as well throw your money in the bin.

I throw nothing away really. Even the chicken carcass gets thrown outside for our local fox once I've made stock.

When I used to make curry, there was always a bit too much, but not enough for another meal, so we used to be pigs and just eat it there and then. But now I freeze even a small portion then, when we have 3 or 4 different 'small curries', we have a curry night, with all the different varieties (normally a chicken, a lamb and a couple of different veg/lentil ones).

fairy I've just seen your post about the sunday roast pie. Yum. The best one I ever made was Boxing Day pie, with the remains of Christmas day goose, all the veg etc. Wonderful. I'm salivating at the thought!

I don't think it's an age thing so much as an income thing. DD doesn't throw food away, but she's living on a student income.
So when she is earning, I expect the attitude to food and leftovers and waste will stay much the same.
Got half a stale loaf to use up, so I'm in the middle of making a bread pudding ATM.

I don't think it's an age thing - my gran went through rationing too, and that's her reason for binning leftovers, even big chunks of expensive meat - "I don't have to worry about that anymore" - which quite irritated my dad when it was his leftover roast beef in the bin.

With regards to rice, it's not the reheating that's the problem, it's the way it was stored prior to reheating. If you leave it standing out overnight (or even better, leave it standing overnight in a slightly warm and closed rice cooker) then the bacteria spores are able to grow, and that'll make you sick. Leave it to cool while you eat and then stick it in the fridge, and it'll be fine the next day. Rice from dodgy takeaways is where you can get problems.

I'm still reeling from the poster who said cold pizza is horrible. Are you mad? Cold pizza is the best thing ever. Unless it's cold lasagne, especially the edges that have gone all crispy on the bowl.

I'm really wasteful. I always put leftovers in the fridge and then throw them away as they are never used!

" "everybody can" wasn't just a reference to this thread, it was a complete generalisation, that everybody can do anything, and as I have said it's not really that simple"

I didn't as far as I know, say that everybody can to anything. I said everybody should do what they can. Which strikes me as entirely reasonable, particularly on a thread where people have talked about not using leftovers beause it might make them look poor, and about carving the breast off a roast chicken and binning the rest.
Oh, and not eating, or giving children, anything that was cooked more than 4 hours ago (unless there are mental health issues, obviously)

I love leftovers. I think I lived through the war in a previous life!! I love having rations and making something really nice. We have very little money and I love making new meals out of stuff that's
left over.

I don't think it's an age thing either. My parents are certainly more wasteful than me. But they can afford to be.

A lot of it is also just down the mentality of not wanting the same food two days in a row/wanting to eat something different at that particular time. I'd rather eat the same food for three meals rather than see it go to waste, plenty of others would think that was "boring".

But then I love and appreciate food. I savour it, chew it, think about where it's come from etc. Other people just shove it in their gobs without thinking then complain that food is too expensive. It really isn't.

I tend to buy/make the amount i know we will eat so i hardly have any leftovers. I occasionally put a small portion of span bol or chilli or something in the fridge but it never gets eaten as the next day i make the meal i have planned and bought ingredients for. I have a tiny freezer so can't freeze things and anyway i am rubbish with the whole defrosting meals thing. As i said in a previous post i use left over roast meat for the dog.

My worst offence by far is buying too much fruit and it not getting eaten then having to be thrown out.

I don't use leftovers. Mostly we don't have any. I wouldn't buy a whole chicken for example because nobody likes the legs so if we have roast chicken, we roast breast pieces and eat it all. If some other joint of meat then I would buy the smallest piece feasible and yes, we would probably end up chucking the dregs but mostly that would be the fatty and/or grisly bits.

If by some freak of nature we did have leftovers like bolognese or chilli, I probably freeze them but since I rarely do that, in honesty they would probably get forgotten. I would have good intentions but they would go in the fridge and be forgotten about or, if they were remembered nobody would fancy them. Reheated food is horrible. Cold pizza is just gross.

"Reheated food is horrible"

But you mention specifically bolognaise and chilli. Both of which are always, and "proper chefs" say this too- better if left overnight and reheated.

reelingintheyears - there are only 3 of us, so yes, it can spread further than a large family (although one of the days we often have a guest and he has a very large appetite! ). But we love lamb and still manage to have generous portions of the roast lamb (both hot and cold). The remaining dishes all manage to stretch what's left very well.

I've calculated that I can get 17 or 18 portions from a decent sized leg - which means the cost per portion is very reasonable (especially when you get it when Tesco's or Sainsbury's is doing a 1/3 or 1/2 off the regular price per kg ).

200g of minced cold lamb, stretched with food processor blitzed onion, garlic, leek/celery/carrot, a can of tomatoes or a carton of passata, a couple of cubes of chopped spinach and a generous squoosh of Worcestershire sauce will make the base for a shepherd's pie for 3 peopleand the ragu for a "lamb bolognaise" for 3. And it gets ds to eat more veg

I do think that everyone ought to think about this matter and do what they can - that will be different depending on circumstances - if you do not need to worry about the cost of your weekly shop, it may be tempting to overbuy, not plan properly, and want lots of variety not the same thing in another meal. If you are on a tight budget you are bound to be more careful about planning what you buy and using it up before it goes off! If you are very short of time due to work/family activities, then you may plan to do 2 meals in one and use the planned leftovers so you can have an easy/no cooking day. If you have no freezer or OCD means you can't entertain the thought of reheating food, then make sure you only buy and cook what you need. Or divide and freeze portions from a large pack before cooking.

"everybody can" wasn't just a reference to this thread, it was a complete generalisation, that everybody can do anything, and as I have said it's not really that simple.
No, I think she was just referring to this thread, not all aspects of life ingeneral.
eg. I wouldn't have the view that everybody can do anything if the brain surgeon was not in so the dinner lady had a go.
or that we are all capable of driving a huge truck down the motorway etc.

DH does not waste food. At all. Ever. I posted earlier this week about his disgust at the tradition of pumpkin carving on the basis that it's a waste of perfectly good food. He eventually relented after I demonstrated that pumpkin flesh isn't very nice to eat.

Anyway, a roast chicken/turkey/ham goes so much further than one meal! We always cook massive meals that we know will feed us for more than one day because we hate the schlep of cooking every night. A chicken in particular gets used, right down to the bones (stock) and each niblet of meat (soup!).

There really is nothing quite so magnificent as a leftover Christmas sandwich of cold turkey, stuffing, bacon and bread sauce.

There really is nothing quite so magnificent as a leftover Christmas sandwich of cold turkey, stuffing, bacon and bread sauce.

For breakfast on Boxing Day.

I prefer bubble and squeak to Christmas dinner. I like to have my mum over to stay because hers is better than mine. But sometimes she has to spread herself around and go to my brother

DH likes my mum and her bubble and squeak so there are never any arguments.

I haven't read all 8 pages of this thread, but I too hate cold pizza. It's all congealed and hard and tasteless. What's to like?
I would happily heat it back up in the oven, so the cheese re-melts, and the base crisps up again, but cold out of the fridge is rank.
And on to the subject of leftovers, we are probably average on waste.
We buy a big chicken to feed the 5 of us (3 DC 9,8,2) for about £12. It does us one roast pretty much. Carcass goes in bin. DP is good at stripping a chicken right down, I can't do it at all. He may sometimes be able to get enough to do him some sarnies the next day, but rarely.
We often buy a leg/shoulder of lamb for a roast with the intention of doing a shepherd's pie the next day so they are planned leftovers.
But for things like a little bit left in the pan after a pasta dish, that goes in the bin. It will never be saved as it won't ever feed the whole family again and I really can't be arsed filling little pots/containers (for which I NEVER am able to find lids) with scraggy bits of leftovers which will go into the freezer never to be seen again.
We also throw quite a lot out despite me meal planning as we decide at the last minute to go out for dinner, or have people over and buy new food.

Everybody who cooks extra meat can manage to eat it cold as part of their lunch the next day. Or to cook bolanaise and if there's too much put some in the freezer for when they next fancy bolonaise a week or two later or when DH is away and I cba to cook properly.

More advanced stuff of different meals isn't necessary to eliminate the majority of waste. I do it nowadays though, things like bubble and squeak, soup, pie, using a sauce differently as pizza topping etc.

Tonight's dinner is brought to us by the fact that the hairy bikers portion sizes are enormous so I froze a meal's-worth of mince and gravy last week when I realised I'd made pie filling enough to feed us 3 times over (DH took slices of pie to work for packed lunch for the next two days as well). I will make giant yorkshire puddings, heat the mince and gravy up and add a bit of veg and basically have a free meal (cost per-portion about 30p if you assume the mince would have been binned when I saw there was too much).

This isn't complicated if you are used to cooking, didn't disrupt the meal plan last week as I could freeze it all in a container to slot it into this week's plan and should be yummy.

I hate to waste food.

DH works from a studio in our garden and he loves to have leftovers from dinner for lunch the next day. And both DDs like to have leftover pasta made into pasta salad for packed lunch.

And there is no greater thing than the 'greasy' pickings of a roast chicken carcass.

But I never reheat rice and I don't re-use food that has been on plates already; so I tend to leave what might be extra in the serving dish on the table for 'seconds' if wanted.

I have to confess though that there is no place in my fridge or in my heart for cold cooked broccoli.