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.

Leftover chicken breast is gorgeous in a sandwich or a salad with plenty of mayonnaise. Caesar salad dressing best of all. I don't reheat roast meat unless it's in a pie with plenty of sauce. If I used it in a stirfry or curry I'd cube it and add it at the end just long enough to heat through.

Soup for lunch today using the turkey stock I made after Christmas and froze - looking forward to it!

That's a good idea Barbara we should do that more. There are some nice lemony/herb-y tray bake recipes I used to cook, will revisit them.

We're trying to eat less-but-higher-welfare meat at the moment, but seem to have got stuck in the rut of buying meat from supermarkets, their legs/drumsticks are tiny. We used to get chicken legs from Abel & Cole and their legs were huge. Really tasty too. Must look them up again.

Sarf, if you live where your username suggests, there's a good butcher in Ewhurst Road and another one on Ladywell Road. They probably have good chicken.

Thanks guys I’ll definitely try some of these.... I just always feel so bad with the amount we throw.... did try a chicken noodle soup once but it was lacking flavour so not a good recipe

Poor dogs! Isn't that what leftover veggies and bits of chicken, and indeed doggy bags, are for?

I'm adding 'gorgeous' to my list of hated words that seen to go along with words like 'leftovers'. I'm starting to think my main issue is with the vocabulary.

Potato cakes are great, but those are not leftovers - those are planned. It's more like batch cooking. For me, leftovers = what is left on your plate, not half a pan of Bolognese that you deliberately made double of.

Scraps on a plate are not leftovers, because you aren't going to keep them, they will go in the dog/cat/compost etc.

Well, if we have leftovers from chilli, curry, stews etc DH takes them to work the next day for lunch. (Unless DS gets there first). I don't understand the mythical mumsnet chicken though. I just buy a smaller chicken and use it all on day 1. Leftover beef and mustard sandwiches mind you...

I have a family of foxes that come for supper each night so no waste here either

I do hope Sparklingbrook lives in a city if she wants to encourage vermin.

“I'm adding 'gorgeous' to my list of hated words that seen to go along with words like 'leftovers'. I'm starting to think my main issue is with the vocabulary.”

Can we add ‘yummy’ to your list ISDad?

Slightly bemused about gorgeous being an annoying word to use about food! My dad uses it a lot and he's in his mid 80s.

I'll eat leftovers but DH isn't keen. I usually take them for my lunch the next day and heat it up at work, i don't mind DH having a sandwich instead though as it means more leftovers for me.

On the other hand when i lived at home my dad would drive me crazy with leftovers, purposely cooking loads of extra veg and mash (we didn't have mash with the roast!) on a sunday just so we could have bubble and squeak for the next three nights!

I think your freezer is your leftovers best friend. I always cook too much but freeze tubs of bolognese, chilli, shepherds pie, lasagne, chicken casserole, fish pie etc and then my son raids them to take back to his flat to keep him going on decent meals rather than takeaways when he’s working late.
I couldn’t contemplate throwing away leftover joint meat - it’s so easy to make into pies or similar. Chicken usually goes into a coronation chicken sandwich filler.

My take on it is this ...

The worlds resources have been used. AT LEAST use what you can.

We PLAN our meals to provide us with lunches the next day, or freeze some for a few days...

HOME ECONOMICS... They used to teach it at school....

We try to buy/cook what we want for a single meal, so leftovers are rare. But when we do have some, usually a single portion of something like shepherds pie or spag bol, we just freeze it and reheat some odd portions for a meal the next week.

It's a long time since we cooked anything big like a whole chicken - we usually buy pieces of meat just enough for the single meal. Butchers and even some supermarkets are happy enough to cut pieces of meat down to the size you want. Same with veg, we barely ever buy bags, we buy individually just the amount we need.

On the other hand when i lived at home my dad would drive me crazy with leftovers, purposely cooking loads of extra veg and mash (we didn't have mash with the roast!) on a sunday just so we could have bubble and squeak for the next three nights!

My mother did similar - she had a huge casserole dish which she filled
and cooked on a Sunday, and then kept re-heating it for the next few days after adding a few extra veg each day to top it up. Sometimes, she'd throw in a tin of baked beans or some tinned steak if it was getting too concentrated with veg! The layer of fat on the top once cooled was quite repulsive!

Funnily enough iirc from the reading I did about food in pregnancy it is bagged salads and unwashed veg that are the biggest culprits for food poisoning outbreaks. I’m not sure a salad is necessarily the safest option in a restaurant

Yeah surprise stew that's constantly on the go where something new, whatever it is, is added each day is not for me.

I've heard some pretty rank things about this.

I have no problem with eating or freezing leftovers if we've got any (I don't tend to cook extra intentionally), nor would I have any problem with being seen as poor (I probably am, relatively).

What I do find puzzling is when people (usually American) use leftovers as if it was the name of a specific dish. "What did you have for dinner?" "Leftovers!" That doesn't give me the faintest idea what they had.

‘Surprise stew’ as outlined above is a great example of the kind of awful cooking that is probably to blame for the fear and loathing of leftovers many people have. Ugh.

For the poster who doesn’t like chicken breast you can just buy the multi packs of chicken legs - so many lovely variations of tray bakes and stews, curries, etc that you can make. We made Delia’s basque chicken the other day - I’ve been meaning to make it for a few years - and it was delicious!

But, I really don’t particularly like the chicken bread either but I’ve found that it’s just fine and quite tasty in a salad the next day. i slice it up and make a chicken Caesar salad or something similar.

My DB always cooks a bacon joint and we have that for breakfast on Xmas day and boxing day. Roast turkey for Xmas dinner. Boxing day lunch is cold turkey, cold bacon and bubble and squeak with pickles.

Growing up Monday was always cold meat (what ever we had had on Sunday) and bubble and squeak. Those who don't eat leftovers are missing out 😁. Only thing I don't save is rice.

And i am very rarely ill. 😁

My DH was always quite sniffy about eating the same thing twice in a row.

His ex wife did all the cooking etc and isn't an especially imaginative cook.

When we got together he had to start doing more of the cooking/buying/thinking about what we were going to eat.

Now he's as keen on using up stuff in the fridge as I always was!

Small example of my approach to using up food:

Today I used the last of the milk for my morning coffee. The due date was the 31st but it’s still absolutely fine so I wasn’t going to throw it out. I’ve got a fresh milk in the fridge so I could have opened that, but why should I when the old one was fine? And the sooner I open the new one, the sooner it will start to spoil.

It made me happy to use that last bit of milk. Only a small thing, but it felt right to me.

Who'd throw out milk just because its reached it's due date? You know when milk is off...

I roasted 2 trays of veg last night - ate some with dinner and have bought some in for lunch for work. That's leftovers. I'm looking forward to it.

Lots of people do, apparently...

I think a lot of waste occurs because people just have never been taught or told anything about food!