To not understand people that dont eat leftovers?

[Eliza9917]

I've seen a lot of people say this, and wondered why? What could eating leftovers possibly do to you? Is it a fear of poverty in some way?

My sister knew a girl that would roast a chicken for Sunday dinner and only eat the breasts and throw the rest away. To me, that's madness, I'd get at least 2-3 dinners and a soup out of a large chicken.

Sunday's fowl has provided sandwiches for two days, and soup stock with vegetables plus the remaining shreds of meat thrown in. The last of the Xmas gammon will be cooked tonight as a pasta sauce with some roasted red peppers that were looking tired and broad beans.

Vegetable trimmings go on the compost heap. Dog (Labrador) eats anything we can't face again for breakfast.

May I recommend a book written about seasonal abundance, inexpensive ingredients and left overs? Food from Plenty by Diana Henry; it's one of the most frequently used cook books I own.

If you're in a situation where your LL won't provide you with basic necessities like a freezer wrenika, then that obviously limits your ability to make use of leftovers. That's not to say you aren't making some objectively dickheaded choices too, you are, but you don't have the same level of culpability as someone who could freeze those uneaten yorkshires but just chooses not to.

How can you eat Xmas leftovers for a week! How yuck and how boring!

I think you imagine 'leftovers' as being 'the same food served in the same form over and over again'.

Of course that would be boring. The same food re-incarnated as pies, curries, risottos, stews, sandwich fillings, omelette toppings, pasta sauces, chillis, lasagnes, rissoles, fritters, fajita / taco / wrap fillings...delicious and not at all boring. If anything DOES start to get boring, just freeze it for a week or two and then cook with it then. Your 3 meats, each frozen separately, could each have provided a little bi extra for a whole series of meals over a 3-4 week period without any issue or boredom.

@GunpowderGelatine what's a food waste digester?

What we do in the privacy of our own home is fine MrsDannyRicc

You want to reheat lasagne? I's rather eat it cold but if you don't that's your preference. All good as long as you eat it up along with the pizza, meat or roast potatoes cold or hot.

I am having a snack of the last of the brie and stilton with some chopped tomatoes and spring onions on toasted bread. Later we'll have a Waitrose chicken katsu curry with sticky rice (reduced) and a tomato and onion salad made by my own fair hands.

We shall eat like kings

Sorry but I can't stand left overs. I also panic about storing it correctly. I don't understand how people can have a roast chicken and can have the left overs from it for the next 3 days. But I will admit I worry about all food, if I open a pack of ham and it hasn't gone by the 2nd day it goes in the bin...

And before anyone asks, no I don't eat ready meals and I don't eat airplane food either, I'd rather go hungry...

I am at your post wrenika. I couldn't imagine living like that. I'm sorry but it sounds awful 😥

wrenika you sound like a worryingly thoughtless person.

I think Turkey is ok for 3 days.After that i wouldnt risk it.i got 3 dinners out of my Turkey then it went weird,so in the bin it went

I got a week out of my (unexpectedly huge) turkey this year. Because it was so big, I brined it - this is a bit of a pain, but it extends the life of your turkey.

It was absolutely lovely, I can't recommend brining enough.

I happily use leftover poultry for up to five days (as long as it wasn’t too close to use by date on first cookingj. If I can see that we’re not going to get through it all, I freeze some to avoid binning it.

We had goose for Christmas dinner this year, which fed four people twice, plus extra for one round of sandwiches. We ate that within four days.

If we had had a turkey we would have had a couple of leftover meals and then frozen a generous portion of the meat and had at least two very generous turkey meals from that at a later date, plus there would have been much more meat for sandwiches over the five days (but we all love turkey sandwiches so it’s never a hardship to eat lots of those).

I guess it’s horses for courses, but the Christmas to NY week is never boring for me!

We had two heads of tired cabbage sitting in the fridge (because we had changed our minds on one of the meals before Christmas, and we had accidentally bought an extra one when we had one already) - we used that to make a really nice cabbage, potato, bacon and ham soup, using the end of the ham we had cooked on Christmas Eve. We ate that meal for dinner twice in a row because the ham was a week old by the last day and we didn’t want to throw it out (usually we would wait a day before eating leftovers so it’s not so repetitive).

We had some leftover dressed crabs and salmon mousse from our canapés, so I froze them both and my daughters had them for lunch the other day using the rest of the blinis and voul a vents as I wouldn’t have wanted to bin those.

Leftover cheeses from the cheeseboard have been, and will continue to be, enjoyed with wine, plus we will do a cheese and naice bread dinner one night this week, and then the last few bits will be used for a macaroni cheese. It always turns out absolutely delicious with great depth of flavour.

I don’t find this difficult or boring at all. But we do work quite hard to make our food tasty and interesting, so I guess we don’t really notice that we’re having leftovers.

I eat my own left overs but not takeaways

wrenika,

What is it that you DO care about?

I mean, at the moment my beloved mother is developing dementia. Having been a frugal user-upper all her life, she now buys two of something or forgets to deal with what's in the fridge until too late. My father has, quite rightly, decided that at this precise moment, caring for her is more important than worrying about the impact of this on the environment, so for the first time in her very long life, they are throwing away more food waste.

If you, similarly, are in a position where other things are currently vitally important - ill children, poor health, failing elderly relatives, housing worries, job insecurities, support for family and friends - then I can understand that care for the 'normal everyday things of life', such as the amount of waste you generate, can fall into the background temporarily.

If that is the case, I'm really sorry for whatever is causing it.

Wrenika whether you ‘need’ to do or not it is immaterial.
I have had to put food back on the shelf of supermarkets in the past because I just couldn’t afford the items. I am no longer in that position fortunately. However it seems you have absolutely no memory, idea or, and more likely, no wish to feel as you did when you had to be careful in the past, rather you wish to luxuriate in the fact that you don’t have to do that now. Yes it does matter when you throw away good food.

I don’t have a problem with eating leftovers but I often forget I have them and then have to bin them I try not to cook more than we will eat now!

What do people that don't eat leftovers think of yellow sticker bargains?

I always check that shelf for luncheon meat or pork tongue etc for my dog and now that packet ham seems to need a remortgage of your house to buy stuff that looks decent I always check for counter ham there first. Naice chicken sausages seem to end up in there quite a bit too so I always buy them for the freezer if I spot them. Same with fresh pizzas. Occasionally I'll buy cheese. There is always fish there too which I'll be taking more advantage of now we're overhauling our diets.

I don’t believe in guilt around food, and I don’t believe in guilt around having more than other people, and I don’t believe in guilt around throwing some food out once in a while - if I lose track and have to throw out a bag of salad that wasn’t used I’m not going to torture myself about it because my angst will do absolutely nothing to cure the ills of the world. Guilt is a useless emotion. So it’s not about eco or worthiness or anything like that for me. It’s simply what feels right for me.

I buy expensive handbags. Do I need them? No I don’t. Do they make me happy? Yes, they do. I’m well aware that others might judge me or find it distasteful and wring their hands over it, but it’s none of their business. By the same token, I waste absolutely no time wringing my hands over the choices of others.

(As an aside, to the poster who doesn’t like the chicken legs, does your OH like them and can he cook? Because he could probably approximate a nice tandoori style meal with the leftover legs (I love the legs, it’s my favourite part, and lucky for me my OH prefers the breast so it works out ok for each of us!)

I always use leftovers to make mini roast lunches to take to work during the week. I pop them in the freezer in takeaway tubs and just grab one in the morning. I've still got 3 Christmas dinner leftover lunches to look forward to . My DH is a pain with wasting food. If something starts to look a little wrinkly he'll bin it rather than use it up.

Wrenica, I presume by GF Yorkshire puddings you mean “goady fucker”

Maybe gloaty one, anyway.

I don’t really do leftovers because I never have them. I’m a vegetarian so things like chicken don’t exist. I tend to portion out things like lasagne, curry, paella etc appropriately. I don’t have a microwave so it’s very limited. Definitely not a snobby thing.

LOVE a yellow sticker OP 😉

I am poor and never have left overs as I cook exactly what we need for the meal we are having. We rarely have a whole chicken but if we do we make sandwiches with the left overs and our pet rat likes the bones.

I love leftovers! I usually make a large amount of whatever we’re having on Sunday specifically to have enough left over for dinner on Tuesday.

Also, I never make stock either. Can’t be bothered, and I like well flavoured stock. I don’t waste any time worrying about it, and by the time I’m done with the carcass there is no meat on it all.

We had two heads of tired cabbage sitting in the fridge (because we had changed our minds on one of the meals before Christmas, and we had accidentally bought an extra one when we had one already) - we used that to make a really nice cabbage, potato, bacon and ham soup, using the end of the ham we had cooked on Christmas Eve.

That sounds great HolgerLowCarbingLoser. I've just eaten the last of the cheese toasted on some bread with chopped tomatoes, onions and olive oil.

I have a Waitrose Chicken Katsu Curry ready meal for later - reduced and combination of Sainsbury's Taste The Difference yoghurts for later . It's a smorgasbord - I think

I would love to shop yellow sticker and will pick up something if it's there, however, in our local Tesco it's an actual stampede to get them, I got really hurt, just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was in a world of my own down an aisle browsing something or other, I was aware of quite a few people loitering at the end but didn't think much of it.
I heard the tannoy announce that final reductions were out and saw the young lad with his trolley full of them come around the corner, all of a sudden these people ran towards him, straight through and over me and started grabbing armfuls of stuff and throwing it in their trolley without even looking, I got stamped on, kicked in the head and when a manger finally helped me up, the woman who had lead the crowd and originally pushed me to the floor was so uncaring about bloody, battered me she shrugged and said "it's always like this."

It may sounds like I'm over exaggerating but I'm really not, I was taken to a back room, given tea and a biscuit, they offered an ambulance (which I declined) offered the police (which I declined) and sent me home in a taxi that they paid for. It was so frightening the barbarity that people will go to for some 10p bread!

I don't buy yellow sticker items....