We are quite practiced in cooking enough food to feed our family of 4 without producing an incredible amount of leftovers. But we typically need at least one container after each dinner to stash away a bit of remaining brown rice, some stir fry, or such. Untouched food is moved into glass containers with BPA-free lids. We eat our leftovers for lunches during the week, or as complements to a weekend dinner. Usually these leftovers get consumed by someone during the week. But if not, the food is put into our compost.
We absolutely do NOT scrape our remaining food into the trash! The bits of any dinner waste go into our kitchen compost bin, to be later incorporated into our outside compost. Occasionally, Molly (our pup,) will luck out and she’ll get passed some leftover scrambled eggs or bits of bread. But more often than not, if it isn’t mixed into the compost, it’s being saved in the fridge.
Having the proper containers has really helped us utilize all of our leftover food. We try not to use plastic in our home for food storage (if we do, it must be BPA free.) We recycle glass peanut butter or jelly jars. Or we purchase Ziplock or Pyrex storage containers, and Bell canning jars, when our budget allows. We have a small number of BPA-free freezer containers also. This way, we aren’t scrambling about after a meal, trying to figure out what to do with the unused marinara or the little bit of remaining pasta. A lack of containers can equate to the tossing out of food and we don’t want that to happen in our home.
Tip: Rather than purchasing storage containers in a plethora of sizes, pick two sizes from the same manufacturer. And then get multiples of those two sizes only. This makes finding lids within your storage drawers a breeze!
Our airtight kitchen compost bin is also an essential part of our leftovers program. If we didn’t have our bin, we’d be tempted to throw out the leftovers. It gets cold in Wisconsin at night! A walk to the garden compost can be a bit intimidating when it is below zero outside. Utilizing an indoor bin affords you the option of waiting until the weather outside is more accommodating.
How do you deal with your leftovers?