As a parent, I was horrified at how wasteful our kids’ friends were – taking portions, eating a bite, leaving the rest. Then I noticed that their parents didn’t seem to care, since they did the same thing at their own homes. I think it’s partly anxiety about kids being overweight and not wanting to forcefeed them.
We were always really really strict about small portions, finish, then seconds. My children quickly got over the eyes bigger than their stomach routine.

Other good dishes for leftovers include macaroni and cheese (my favorite) and other casserole-type things (for leftover dairy products, meat and vegetables), soup (meat, vegetables, pasta), saucy things like spaghetti sauce and chili (meat and vegetables), and milkshakes or smoothies (fruit, yogurt).

Some families have leftover night, where they pull out all the different leftovers. In my family, we called it “whatever you want” (which always made us groan!).

Our maid always eats the leftovers… nothing is left over

I’ll gave to agree with Jacob that people in the US are very wasteful
I recently came home from spending six years overseas and have found the culture rather untasteful. My family (mom and four brothers have gotten wasteful. I’m very frugal and watch how I spend my money and I never throw away left overs. Being that mom and I are the only cooks. Mom cooks something different every day even with left overs in the fridge. After sitting them down and showing them how much money they were throwing away on food a month, they came around. Now no one opens anything new without checking the fridge for leftovers.
As far as the RV goes, congrats!!! Way to stick it to the man.
I would love to do the same but there’s top many of us in my family and I can’t picture my newborn in an RV. My family is financially dependent on me so instead of downsizing I had to upgrade to a seven bedroom house ouch

I can’t recall the last time I threw out leftovers. If there are lost of left overs we have the same meal the next night (maybe with different side dishes). If there are small amounts it becomes lunch. After supper we all grab out lunch containers and pack up what we want to take the next day. If someone is short on veggies they add in some frozen corn or peas. Lots of times intentionally over cook or double/triple recipes and freeze excess.
Tonight 2 of us will finish the ribs from last night, 1 will get spaghetti from the night before, and I will get a single serving of chili from the freezer from last month.

I find one key to dealing with leftovers is to have a plan in mind before it’s even cooked. When we roast a chicken, we know the leftovers will become enchiladas, and the bones will be the base for a soup. On pasta nights we cook extra noodles, so that the next night they become a casserole or pasta salad. For our family of 4, a big ham makes 2 regular ham dinners, 2 quiches, a casserole, 4 omlettes, 4 sandwiches and finally the bone and scraps make wonderful pea soup. We normally freeze one of the quiches and most of the soup, but added together a single ham can provide the meat for a week of meals.

Our intentional leftovers serve several purposes. We reduce the electricity by running the stove/oven once but cooking the meat/rice/pasta for multiple meals. Having precooked items ready from the previous night saves time on a busy evening (reducing the temptation to eat out). Lunches made of leftovers are generally healthier than either prepackaged lunch items or restaurant meals. And of course all these lead to lower food bills!

I’m hopping in way late on this post but here’s a few novel left-over ideas that we use in our house”
1) Some leftover green vegetables can be fed to my 5 year old’s two pet guinea pigs each day.
2) Left over vegetables and fruits (i.e., spoiled) are allowed in our “green” bin (the city picks it up and makes compost)
3) Left over food can be used on “bento” night where I put little bits of each thing on everyone’s plate in a nice pattern to mimic a Japanese bento box type of meal.

This morning, the lady that sits next to me at work, took one bite out of her apricot and then decided that “wasn’t what she wanted” and threw it in the trash. Honestly, I looked down and really wanted to pick it out of the trash and clean it off to eat it myself. Something dies inside of me a little bit every time I see that kind of behavior. Either that, or it’s the festering hatred I have towards the human race growing ever slightly stronger…hmmm…

Soups and stews are also a good way to use leftovers.

I like to do something of a “bottomless skillet” most weekends. So for example this past Friday night I cooked up a package of Spanish rice(1) with a tomato, an onion, a bell pepper, and a can of tuna. I ate about half, put the rest in the fridge.

Saturday night, cook up a potato, a carrot, a stalk of celery, and a cup of pinto beans(2), add in the Friday leftovers. Eat about half, put the rest in the fridge.

Sunday lunch, stir fry a zucchini, an onion, a couple of mushrooms, and a bell pepper, add in the Saturday leftover. Eat about 2/3, put the rest in the fridge.

After about three goes, the mix starts to get a little strange. So I try to decrease the result quantity a little each time, so that 2/3 on Sunday is actually about the same amount as the 1/2 on Friday. So the remaining 1/3 of concoction will be a side dish to a sandwhich tonight.

Of course it probably helps that I’m single and no one else has to eat my concoctions. Sometimes they turn out less than ideal, but I can eat most anything with enough pepper and Sriracha hot sauce (which I find much cheaper at a local international grocery than at the supermarket).

All the veggies come from ALDI, most of which are staples (bell pepper, celery, etc) that I can use in a number of dishes. More unusual additions come from working around other dishes, for example I bought the mushrooms and zucchini for a soup I’m going to make later in the week, but the ALDI packages are more than I need, so I look for ways to use the rest up.

(1) I’m working towards getting to be a decent enough cook to always start from plain bulk rice and not use processed mixes, but I’m not quite there yet. I can do straight white rice of course, and I made a decent Mexican rice dish last week from scratch, but haven’t tried my own Spanish yet. But at least the mix was from ALDI

(2) About once every one to two weeks I cook up a pound of beans from dry and try to plan meals around it

We have definitely been guilty of wasting food by letting leftovers sit and go bad. We now pay attention to it a lot more, and I’m sure we are saving money on our grocery bills!

For all the complaining about not having enough money and a bad economy, it is amazing how absolutely wasteful people are (cars, electricity, food, plastic stuff).

It annoys me when people throw away food for which they pay money for. I always try to have a zero leftover throw away policy and my grocery bills are low every month. Great post Jacob, thanks for sharing.

My MIL always saved leftovers, even if there were only a half dozen peas. Those leftovers came out every meal after the original until they were gone. Sometimes hubby had the family pass every dish of leftovers to him where he finished everything just so he wouldn’t see them again during our visit. I really try to cook only what hubby and I will eat in one meal.

I never have left overs. I cook fresh vegetables. I guess that I am good at it.
I do have a food steamer. It is so awesome. It cuts calories. I am not fat.
Buy one of everything. No waste.

Fascinating reading it is!
First, from what I’ve learned in business school, it takes a similar effort to reduce any expense by certain amount regardless of how big is the expense. And my life experience tend to confirm it. So, if housing, taxes and children together are over 60% of my family expenses, I might as well relax on the topic of the food. Especially it being kinda noticeable. Like, if I pay my property taxes at the last possible hour, as long as I avoid the penalty, no possibility of any harm (around 10K, payable quarterly). On the other hand, that stew, that probably costed me around $6 (I already did the part on the frugal shopping/scratch cooking), and there is still one good portion left in the pot (so, $1.30)… It was cooked only 2 days ago, was out of the fridge only 3 times on short intervals for serving… UUps, two days of diarrhea… How do you price the lost productivity and, frankly, feeling like, you know, that stuff that came out of your rear end…
(blame it on NJ summers, not on you being too stingy).
BTW, the usual numbers for the food wasted are applicable for the whole chain Farm-to-Table. I do not know about the extreme cases, but I do not believe even average people waste a lot of food in their homes. That’s it, the ones that make an effort to cook their food kinda value it more IMHO.
Jacob, arguably you represent some of the more if not brightest, probably of the more enlightened people of your generation. So are the readers of this blog (I at least I think so, me being one of them…) Advice on the topic of leftovers… it may belong to some place like “good housewife from Nebraska”?

Wow, now you sound like a guru! you know, the one leading a group of people outside world refers to as a Cult!
Those of us who already figured it out surely do not need an advice from you (the topic being what could be referred to as “common, or horse sence”)!?? First, with all due respect, what makes you think you are qualified on the topic of food? And, second (and really serious), somebody who has enough brains to get the food to the #1, surely is intelligent enough not to need your advice! BTW, that part about 60%+ is a pure speculation (I do not disagree, I just comprehend the complexity of the problem). Again, Pls, keep in mind that even though few of us here are astrophysicists, most likely we are at least on the average level of both education and intelligence.
You are preaching here to the converted. Converted as we are, it will not stop us from being critical.

A lot depends on your proximity to stores. For our group of 3, we try to hit the 3 big stores equally often and the ethnic store once a month. So the produce store might be every two weeks because the other stores are in the other direction. Its easier to spend $2 on cheap produce than to make another trip, and the variance on my vegetable consumption is high. If I realize I’m eating less, I can freeze things or eat the fragile ones first, but I’m usually convinced I’ll eat it for my next meal. Honestly most food waste happens further upstream, and in restaurants, than the mealy apricot someone didn’t want to choke down.

I agree that we store too much food, and every power outage makes me vow to lower it. But a full frig actually survive a brief outage better. I generally shop to freezer space, I.e. its full of food from our garden, premade meals, and meat on deep discount. I used to get the fancy hams (sliced) at $1/# or less and would put two in the freezer and eat one. ditto turkey after new years. Finally I realized that I will go shopping anyway so I may as well buy whatever clearance meat I find this week rather than stocking more than a month. Now I try to use the freezer as a way to minimize food prep – I’m making chili, I make enough for 8 meals, 4 this week and 4 someday when I don’t have time to cook. I can’t remember a day when I thought “I have to stop cooking and eat all the meals in the freezer.”