Leftovers For The Food Waste Win

Defense wins championships. One of the biggest reasons I’m able to go long stretches without buying food is because of the way I eat.  In food waste like in sports, you need a good offense and a good defense. The offense is finding your food. The defense is how you eat and save your food. I’ve mentioned before the importance of attitude and keeping track of how much food you have. Another key strategy to any food waste defensive game plan should be leftovers. Let’s take a look at four simple tactics for how you can use leftovers to maximize your food supply.

Eat Your Leftovers

This seems painfully obvious, you’re probably asking why I am putting it in here. Heartbreakingly, most Americans don’t eat their leftovers anymore, according to the Washington Post. I’ve seen and lived with people that don’t. They order a meal from a restaurant or make a big dish, don’t finish it, and then forget about the leftovers or lose interest. They say they are tired of eating it or it doesn’t taste good anymore. Maybe it doesn’t taste as good as the first time, but I’m sure it’s good. Trust me, I know from experience!

You Can Eat Leftovers Two or Even Days Later

Most of the time, it’s okay to eat food a few days after it’s been prepared. Maybe you got or made food on Friday and life came up over the weekend. Come Monday, you haven’t gotten the chance to eat your leftovers. As long as it doesn’t look, smell, or taste weird, the food is good to eat. You aren’t too good for that food anymore.

Leftover food from restaurants probably has a longer lifespan than the food you make at home since restaurants have stricter food safety regulations they have to uphold.

A Little Bit Goes a Long Way

Say you’re working your way through a meal and three-quarters of the way through, you start feeling full. It seems silly to save a quarter of your meal, but you also don’t want to feel bloated, or even worse, distended. Ask yourself this question – will you appreciate this delicious food right now when you are full or tomorrow when you are hungry? Odds are you’ll want it tomorrow.

Think of it like this, if you have that quarter of a meal leftover, the next day you only need to make a smaller meal to go with it. This will save your food supply. Or, if during a week you had three quarter meals left over, on day 4 you’ll be able to make an extra fourth meal from the three previous meals at no extra effort. Sure, you might have a meal of a few small dishes that don’t go together, but it will cost you no time or money besides two minutes in the microwave. Voilà! You’ve saved yourself a trip to the store/dumpster.

Bring Tupperware with you

If you’re going out to eat, bring a small tupperware with you. When you want to bring home leftovers, you can avoid plastic or paper waste. Knowing you have tupperware will also incentivize you to stop when you’re full and bring home even a small amount of leftovers. While you’re at it, it doesn’t hurt to have a set of lightweight portable utensils.

Leftovers are the extra credit effort you put into a meal. You spend precious time and hard-earned money to make or buy delicious food. Leftovers are sacred. Treat them as such!