#85: Meal Planning Tips for Using Leftovers with Riley

Riley is back for an episode all about leftovers! Whether you love them or love to hate them, we have so many tips and tricks for repurposing leftovers and finding ways to use up what you have. We offer advice on how to meal plan with leftovers in mind and Riley shares an interesting perspective on why some people dislike leftovers more than others. Enjoy!

Read our blog post about maximizing leftovers too.
Listen to our episode about utilizing the freezer!

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Transcript

Roni: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast, where I have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you save time in the kitchen, reduce your grocery bill stress less about food. And delight in dinner time.

Hello, and thank you for joining me on the Plan to eat podcast today. I have Riley on the podcast, and we have a discussion all about leftovers. How to repurpose your leftovers when you have them unexpectedly. How to meal plan with leftovers in mind. Some of the reasons you might want to consider starting to use more leftovers in your meal plan.

As well as some tidbits about why, uh, you might be somebody who doesn't really like leftovers. Riley actually has some really good information related to why some people are adverse to leftovers. So Tons of tips and tricks in this episode. We basically give advice the whole time about. reusing [00:01:00] leftovers, different recipe ideas, lots of really good information this episode.

And I hope you enjoy hi, Riley. I'm happy to see you across the computer screen.

Riley: Oh, it's lovely to be here. I always love to be on the Plan to Eat podcast.

Roni: All right. So we're talking about leftovers today. And I thought that we could start our conversation talking a little bit about why we might want to eat leftovers. Because not everybody likes leftovers. Some people are a little leftover adverse. We, you know, Riley has a little bit of information about why you might be leftover adverse.

But in general, Riley and I are leftover people. And, um, so I thought maybe it's. Good to start off with talking about like why we like leftovers. What are the, what are some of the things that we, the reason why we prioritize leftovers in our meal planning.

Riley: Yeah. So one of the things that I found in my research was that 40 percent of individuals don't like leftovers. I'm obviously in the 60 percent and you're in the 60%. [00:02:00] Um, but 40 percent is a pretty high number of people who don't like leftover food. Right? Like if you were like pulling the entire United States or something.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Um, I think one of the reasons that I really like leftovers is because this idea that you have, you and I have talked about on the podcast over and over, it's the doing work that your future self will be thankful for it's, I've made something already. So the mental load is gone. I already planned it. I already cooked it.

The actual like work burden is gone because it's already made. That's probably my number one reason for why I love leftovers. Because I already did all the work. I just have to heat it and eat it.

Roni: Yeah. Totally. I agree with that. It's like, you still are able to have a home cooked meal, but you don't have to obsess over like planning every single night, cooking every single night, cleaning up every single night. All those things that like add up to the time and the mental stress and all the things.

Riley: Yeah. Mental stress, dude. Like cooking and cleaning, like they're cleaning [00:03:00] up. I do love that. I was just not to clean it up again. I love to cook. I do not like to clean my kitchen.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. I do it also because I think if there's some, you know, money savings as well, when you just are increasing the serving sizes of a recipe to have leftovers rather than buying all new ingredients for a completely different recipe, you know, like if you're having Mexican food one night and Asian food, another night, those are totally different ingredients that you need for those things.

Usually like the sauces, the spices, all of the things totally different. So if you're just increasing the serving sizes of a recipe and able to buy a little bit more in bulk. You're like guaranteed to save money.

Riley: Totally. I mean, meal planning in and of itself, Is amazing because you can set the serving size to what you want. You're automatically going to be saving money, um, and food waste, right? Food waste is going to be less because you set your serving size. If your family's serving, you know, if you're serving four people, you set it to four, you make four and then you're done.

Like you don't have to have leftovers. I tend towards setting my [00:04:00] serving size way higher because I like the leftovers. So, you know, meal planning caters to both camps because you can do either thing and you're not wasting food. If you're setting your serving size appropriately. Again, I just like having leftovers cause I've already done that work.

It just kind of like a, I don't know, two birds with one stone kind of thing.

Roni: Do you like to do leftovers? Like you batch cook recipe and then you're eating the same recipe multiple times, or do you like to do like a meal prep of individual ingredients and then just like create new recipes out of those?

Riley: Well, it's funny, right? Cause leftovers are actually, it's actually just meal prep. Just, we call it something different. Um, which is, which is funny to consider because people are so good with meal prep and so anti leftover, you know, uh, I, I do both. It depends on what my meal planning style is that week. The majority of the time I do.

A recipe and then just reheat it. You know, not everything is good reheated, but I'll be strategic about what it is. And so it is like a whole recipe that I just [00:05:00] have the exact same way the next day or in the days following. I'm kind of like a left, like a dinner becomes leftovers for lunch kind of person.

And then the other way that I meal plan is that I'll have ingredients that I've prepped or ingredients from a recipe. Like if I grill a bunch of chicken or if we have a bunch of hamburgers leftover from grilling hamburgers or a sauce. Or, you know, rice leftover rice, something along those lines, and it just becomes a different meal.

Um, I think that, you know, each one is good. Sometimes each way I'm happy to do, you know, I like either thing. The one where you're using an ingredient in a different way, it's kind of like meal planning, Jenga. Like, okay, I've got this basil aioli that we had with, um, our sandwiches, our chicken sandwiches tonight.

What can I use this with? What can I make this into? And I'll do that in my meal planning process, you know, I'll, I'll look at what I have going for the week and then I'll say, okay, I'm going to have a lot of leftover aioli, what can I use this for? Or I'm going to have a, I could potentially have a lot of leftover [00:06:00] rice with this meal, what can I make this into?

And so oftentimes when I do it like that. You don't even notice that it's a leftover because it morphed into a whole different meal.

Roni: Mm hmm. Yeah,

Riley: have a lot of notes on this topic.

Roni: I find that I get a little more it's a little more stressful for me to do the individual item meal prep and then figuring out what recipe it goes into because Sometimes I just like draw a blank on like, okay, so we made these hamburgers and now what do we do with them other than eat hamburgers?

You know, it's different. Like I have a couple of different recipes that have tortellinis in them and they're, they always make a huge batch and we love having those as leftovers for like the next night or next two nights of dinner. And that feels really easy because the whole recipe is already made.

And all I have to do is reheat it. And then we just get to sit down and eat dinner. Whereas when we have the individual ingredients and I have to repurpose them, sometimes I'm like, uh, we're just going to have tacos again, [00:07:00] because I, my brain can't conjure up another idea for what we're going to.

Riley: Yeah. Which is where, you know, the, the recipe book comes in handy because you can search your recipe book for things. An example of this that I'm pretty sure I've actually shared on the show before is pulled pork. I'll make pulled pork in the crock pot. And the recipe that I follow is a bit on the neutral side.

It doesn't feel particularly Mexican or particularly barbecue flavors. It's just pulled pork done in the crock pot. And then you can kind of sauce it however you want. It's one of my favorites for this particular topic because I can take that and it can become soup. It could become pork tacos. It could become barbecue sandwiches.

It could become, pork quesadillas, like a Mexican theme, something or other. It could become enchiladas. Like the list goes on and on and on. And all I would have to do to come up with a particular recipe for that is to go into my recipe book and search pulled pork. Like, where is that an ingredient or just shredded pork, something along those lines.

If I wanted to follow a real [00:08:00] recipe and I wasn't just making something off on the making something up on the fly, you know, you know, taco night. It's funny you brought that one up because this is another one that I use as leftovers a lot. Taco night can become like a Mexican quiche. Um, like if you've got like the leftover ground beef or like leftover peppers and onions and things like that.

Recently I did it as breakfast burritos and so I had leftover refried beans and leftover taco ground beef with peppers and onions. And I just mixed, I just warmed it, heated it, cooked it with some eggs, added it all to a burrito and it was really delicious breakfast burritos. That can become quesadillas, taco, like when it's a particular flavor.

Profiling like Mexican spices. It's a bit different to like repurpose it, you know, it's not just like a, okay, I've got rice, rice can become anything, you know? So it does kind of need to like follow the flavor profile, you know, if it's got something really strong, but, um, These are like, this is really fun.

That is fun to me to kind of, it's like a creativity point of meal planning where I'm like, okay, I've got all this leftover [00:09:00] fill in the blank. What can this be? Because my husband does not like leftovers. And so I have to kind of, they have to morph into something else for him to enjoy it. Uh, he will tolerate them, but he prefers them to be hidden, hidden into something else.

Roni: Yeah. My husband's a little more flexible. I think with that because often he, you know, leftovers are often repurposed as lunches. And it's usually, you know, if we make something on Monday, it's usually like by the time Thursday rolls around, he's like, yeah, I don't think I want to eat that for lunch again.

Like,

Riley: I never want to eat this

Roni: Yeah, I think I'm ready to switch it up, but he'll go a solid, you know, three, four days of eating something. And before he's like, yeah, I think I'm kind of sick of it. Which rarely do we have a recipe that lasts the entire week anyways. So, Well, I know that you have some interesting tidbits on this 40 percent of people who do not like to eat leftovers.

So let's talk about that.

Riley: Yeah, you know, there, we could divulge into a [00:10:00] whole conversation about bacteria growth, and food being, Icky leftover, you know, because there's a lot of foods. Some of them have a higher risk of growing bacteria than others. I don't have notes on that. If that's a road you want to walk, I encourage you to do that.

Definitely recommend eating your leftovers within four days of making the food. You could probably push it seven, but the majority of health websites that I perused said four days. Um, so it's probably good that you guys are stopping by Thursday,

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: That they're used up by Thursday. Yeah, so, you know, there's, a group of people in the world who have a histamine intolerance.

And let me just preface this by saying I'm not an expert on this. I just know people who deal with this. I have, you know, tried to find out if this was me in like my own food journey. And so they can have a higher sensitivity to food, like different foods have higher histamine levels. And so consider that like, if you have an allergy, uh, like Histamine is hot.

Like you take an allergy med, it's like an [00:11:00] antihistamine supplement or a medicine or whatever. And so some people have a higher sensitivity to foods. If foods can have high histamine and, um, can cause people to have a reaction to what they consume. And so potentially you don't like leftovers because it actually makes you feel bad.

And so your body, like in this like subconscious way is like, we feel terrible it's because we ate leftovers. And it might not be the leftover. It actually might be that it's causing you to have a reaction to something just because the food is giving off more histamine in that like leftover process.

Not everyone experiences this, uh, but some people do. And so if it's you, the recommendation that I, you know, was reading about was just to eat them sooner, or like we talked about earlier, just don't have leftovers, you know, like make your serving sizes smaller, and cook for what you actually are going to consume in the, in the day and meal you can.

Yeah,

Roni: because my mom, I grew up in a household where it was like when we had leftovers, they were eaten immediately. My mom is very sensitive. She's very [00:12:00] sensitive stomach to things. She gets food poisoning like all the time. Um, and I, and you mentioning this makes me wonder if, because she has tons of allergies, like tons of, airborne allergies.

And so it's making me wonder if she maybe has more of this histamine intolerance and it's just a lot more sensitive to leftovers, the things that happen to leftovers as they sit for a couple of days. Yeah, I find it really fascinating. It's making me feel like I need to do my own research for her sake.

Riley: you know, I had the same thought about my husband too, because he, like, if he gets stung by like a fly, like there's particular things he'll get stung by. He doesn't have allergies outright, you know, like in the pollen and that kind of thing. But if he gets stung by different kinds of flies, he'll swell up like these huge, like swollen spots.

But he also had to. He tends toward food causing him to feel bad, stomach hurting, bloating, that kind of thing. And we haven't really pinpointed like what food is causing it. And so I had the same thought when [00:13:00] I was reading this and because I knew about histamine. But then when I was looking at symptoms and things like that, I was like, Oh, maybe, maybe this is actually what the underlying issue is because it's a more.

It's more hidden than just, I'm allergic to dairy, you know, like that kind of like, I almost said simple explanation, which if you have a dairy allergy, you know, it's not a simple explanation, but, um, like symptoms of high histamine levels are like diarrhea, bloating, nausea, vomiting, headaches, stuffy nose, runny nose, itching, hives are like, you know, you could have one of these and it could be because.

Of the high histamine levels in your food. You don't have to have all of these, obviously, just like any allergy you're going to, you know, some people are going to have one or four instead of all 10.

Roni: Yeah. But also all of those symptoms are things that could be symptoms of something else, which

Riley: totally,

Roni: that you don't realize it was a result of eating those three day old leftovers.

Riley: Yes. Like I just don't think it would be an obvious

Roni: Mm hmm.

Riley: Um, yeah, it's kind of until, you know, you don't really realize until, you know, until somebody is like sparks, like, [00:14:00] uh, tells you something, sometimes you just don't realize that that could even be the case. Cause a lot of times we don't connect problems that we're having to the food we're consuming.

Roni: Yeah, exactly. So part of the reason I wanted to talk about leftovers with you is because, well, as we said, we both are leftover people, but we have been getting a lot of questions recently around plan to eat just related to leftovers. And like, how do I, how do I repurpose my leftovers when I have leftovers unexpectedly?

How do I create a meal that purposefully includes leftovers? So I thought we could also get into some more of these like action items around repurposing leftovers, how to meal plan with leftovers in mind, so that we're, you know, giving everybody some ideas for how they could implement.

Riley: You know, I've already said this, but I think changing your mentality about leftovers could kind of be the first step towards embracing them. And it's the idea that leftovers, you know, if I was to meal prep lunches every day [00:15:00] this week, I essentially cooked it once and ate all week, right? That's what leftovers is.

That's what meal prep is. And I don't feel like we kind of view them the same way, you know, especially in different communities. Like, fitness communities, huge into meal prep, um, people who work in an office every day, they likely meal prep because it gets really expensive to buy your lunch out every day.

You know, your husband, he takes his lunch to work every day. And he probably doesn't look at it like, Oh, I'm eating leftovers. You know, it's like, Oh, I've got lunch prepared. I didn't have to go buy this, you know, et cetera. So it is milk. It is meal prep. Right. And so changing your mentality around it, I think is probably the first step

Roni: Mm hmm.

Riley: First action step in kind of embracing leftovers is something that's a little bit more interesting.

Roni: Yeah. I think it's good. I think that's a good change. There's a good shift to make, particularly when you're thinking about, I think a lot of times when people think of meal prep, they just think about like, I'm washing and chopping all of my vegetables, you know, or I mean, potentially it also involves like roasting those vegetables or [00:16:00] making like a batch of rice or quinoa or something, um, or pulled pork or pulled chicken or something in the crock pot.

And that doesn't I think particularly with the just wash and chop method that doesn't feel much like cooking that feels like food prep, rather than I'm cooking a recipe and I'm using it as leftovers.

Riley: yeah, totally. Boiling eggs. Like that's a little bit more on like, it's a little bit more like I cooked it. But also my meal prepped it, you know, cause you're going to eat them for days, probably. Meal planning can already feel like such an Olympic sport. I think that like, you know, maybe that's putting too much, uh, On this topic.

But planning is a sore spot, right? Planning is something you have to actively do. And if you're not meal planning things you want to eat, you're choosing other options and that's actually also meal planning, right? It's something we were all doing. Um, so I think that my idea around leftovers is it's just another way that I can feel success in my [00:17:00] life.

Like I. I already did this work and so I can feel like a winner at dinnertime tomorrow, or I guess I feel like a winner at dinner, I can feel, you know, like, okay, when lunchtime comes around, I don't have to spend 20 minutes making my kids lunch, like, okay, here, we already have this, or, um, you know, I've talked about this on the show before, my husband works a shift schedule and he's gone for two nights a week.

You know, cooking a whole meal with children running around and screaming and ask any, cause it's always when things blow up is at dinnertime, cause they're hungry and tired and et cetera. I don't want to have to cook. And so there's an element that's, uh, taken out of the, you know, that works taken out when it's already prepped for me.

Um, that's not really an action item. It's just my, I'm trying to flee. I'm reasoning with people on why this would be a good thing for them to start to consider. Yeah, I mean, I already talked about Jenga and how it's kind of a game, but there's an, I think that I play these games with myself because it makes it better, you know, it doesn't make it like such a slog, the idea of, you know, what can I [00:18:00] use this chimichurri for?

Yeah, I'm gonna make chimichurri once. And I'm going to want to let it sit overnight. Okay. Well, then I'm going to make it into a one pot meal with chicken and rice and vegetables. And then I could, maybe I'll have steaks on the grill in two days and we'll have the chimichurri with the steaks. Like that's also leftovers and meal prep.

And it took out a piece of the cooking. You know, because like if you're having steaks and a vegetable and a side and a sauce, like it's a lot of things to cook. And so just even taking one thing off your plate and pre cooking it and then consuming it as leftovers can be really helpful.

Roni: Yeah, I think it's particularly things like sauces, I all okay, no matter what the recipe is, I feel like if it calls for a sauce, unless it's the first part of the directions of the recipe, I always forget to make the sauce and then we're like ready to eat and I'm like, Oh, man, we're supposed to have this lemon, you know, vinaigrette something or other with this thing and now I have to make it if everything's already hot and done.

So particularly [00:19:00] sauces, I think that's a, that's an important one to have done ahead of time. And we've talked about this on the podcast quite a few times before, like having a sauce really elevates your recipe overall. but like you're saying, it's technically a leftover, but a lot of people view it as meal prep.

I'm going to meal prep this sauce and then we're going to use it for the rest of the week. Which is just, it's just a little shift of, of how you're like using, you know, the phrase that you use with it, technically.

Riley: Yeah, you know, I think what you just hit on a topic that I wanted to talk about, which was sauces. Um, you know, if you're new to leftovers, if you're trying to, uh, enjoy them more because you're finding you have a lot of leftovers or you're finding that you need to have something made for yourself because you've got a busy week, et cetera, foods with a sauce.

Reheat better because they don't get dried out. You know, I think there's like stigmas around leftovers. And one of them is it's gross reheated. It's because it's not, it's dry. It gets dried out. I mean, I'm recooking it in the oven at 350 for 20 [00:20:00] minutes and then it's like double cooked. It's not, you know, enjoyable to consume.

And so, you know, something with a sauce is going to help it not get dried out, which is. Automatically going to make it more enjoyable because you know, it's not dry.

Roni: Yeah. That's one thing that I learned, uh, working in a restaurant for a really long time is just like when you're reheating oatmeal or rice or like literally any sort of a grain, just like putting a little bit of water in with it before you put it in the microwave is just going to help everything. Like it's going to reabsorb that new moisture that you put in there.

It's going to help everything be a little more fluffy rather than like, Dry or gooey or weird, you know,

Riley: Yeah. On the, on that topic and on the topic of action items, reheating rice, I recently started doing it a different way. Uh, I started, I have a tea kettle in my house and so I will boil water on the stove and take my rice into a mesh strainer, like my cold rice. And then I'll pour the boiling water over it to [00:21:00] reheat it.

And it is like fresh rice. It's not, not a weird consistency, not a weird texture. It's fluffy. It's warm. It's steamy and like soft. It has been like the game changer in reheated rice. And also like, I'm trying to do what I can to avoid my microwave and reheating processes. And that's one way that is.

That has really been helpful because it, it tastes so good that way. Highly recommend that as a way to reheat rice. I saw it as a tip on Instagram and I wish I could tell you who told me to do it. And I can't. Yep.

Roni: because of the, like, I think for rice in particular, like the longer it sits, the more starch, the more the starches like kind of like seep out of it. I think the starches are the things that make it that like weird kind of like gummy weird texture. And so then you're just like rinsing, you know, rinsing off the starch as well as reheating it at the same time.

I like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Riley: will say that if your rice is flavored, if you have added butter, if you've added coconut milk, coconut rice, if you've, [00:22:00] done. any kind of seasonings that that process can kind of wash the seasonings off. Um, so it's a bit better for just like plain rice made with salt. Other method, other flavors can wash them off.

And I've learned that from experience. It's not the greatest. I didn't even think that went through when I did that. So

Roni: Well, I have some, some of my initial ideas around thinking about leftovers, particularly when you think about meal planning for leftovers is to really think about the ingredients that are the most versatile. So particularly if you're thinking about like the protein or the main for your, I'm thinking about this in the more like, prep method of leftovers rather than cooking a recipe and having leftovers.

And what, you know, what are the types of ingredients that have the most versatility and most versatility for your particular cooking skills? You know, everybody is a little bit [00:23:00] different. Everybody has a little bit different, like. base knowledge of how you can use different ingredients or what is appealing to you and your family.

Uh, I always think of ground meat, whether it's ground beef, chicken, turkey, pork, whatever, very versatile. You can use that in so many things, you know, Meatballs, stir fry, tacos, burritos, all of the things. But I, you know, and I tend to think that chicken is also very versatile, whether it's chicken thighs or breasts, or even like a whole rotisserie chicken.

You can do so many things with those. you know, you can even just like grill the chicken and have it with vegetables on the side and then repurpose it the next day into like a curry or something that there's so many different things that you can do. But if you're having, like, if you're like, Ooh, pork chops sound really good.

I don't really view pork chops as a very versatile item, right? Like when I make pork chops, I use them. I make tonkatsu, which is like a breaded pork cutlet. So Japanese breaded [00:24:00] pork cutlet. And The only thing that I can think to reuse that in is like making a ramen bowl the next day and having that be the meat in the ramen bowl.

But otherwise I don't have a whole lot of ideas for how to repurpose a pork chop. Um, even steaks can be similar, you know, like a steak particularly. I think that's because steaks are just the best when it's like a stick, a steak off of the grill and like using it in leftovers is just not quite as delicious, but.

Steak is a little more versatile because you could put it into a stir fry or burritos or something. But just in general, I think that if this is something that you're trying, if you're trying to move your meal planning more towards utilizing leftovers, and you want to do this sort of meal prep method, think about the versatility of the things that you're preparing.

Things like rice and vegetables, I think are always pretty much always very versatile. Uh, but particularly for your like main Source of protein or whatever your main is thinking about [00:25:00] what's going to be flexible for the most recipes is really important.

Riley: Yeah. That's great advice. I'm in agreement, uh, with you that thinking, I think that the, uh, I wrote this down. Planning with leftovers in mind helps make leftovers better. Which is, I feel like in line with everything you're just saying, right? You know, some things are more versatile than others. So if you're having pork chops, plan for the exact amount that you need.

If you don't have an idea around what to do with them, something like steaks. If you're going to grill all of them and because you have them and they need to be cooked, you know, everybody gets to that point. Sometimes the food they have in their fridge, it's got to, it's got to be cooked today. Cooking it more rare will help you with the reheating process.

So even if you don't like rare meat, cook it fairly rare. So then the next day you can slice it and heat it in a skillet. And then it's not going to get overcooked and tough and chewy. But the idea just around like, You made that with it as a leftover, you know, like I'm going to have this as a leftover.

What can I do now to make it better [00:26:00] tomorrow? But you're right. Grains are super easy to repurpose because it's something, if you pair it with a vegetable, if you pair with a protein, you can put it in a pita pocket with a sauce. You can, you know, I make a lot of things into sandwiches of leftovers.

I've got an aioli and I've got sliced steak. Okay. That's a great little sandwich or, uh, you know, kind of a makeshift Euro kind of thing. I actually don't know how to say that word, but that's okay. Um,

Roni: I'm not going to correct you because I don't know either.

Riley: Yeah, I'm in total agreement. I think it just is the, the, and maybe that's what you're looking at when you're looking at your meal planner is okay.

I don't want to have leftovers of this, so let's make sure that we are making. The amount that we need, but you know, if you're making food for other people and you're like, I'm not exactly sure how much they're going to eat. Um, maybe you make a larger amount of vegetables and grains. So no, one's going hungry, but that's a safer thing to have left over because you know, you can repurpose it in a safe and delicious way.

Roni: Yeah, this reminds me of the conversation we had. I don't know, a year, a year ago, two years ago around how we create meal plans to save money [00:27:00] and just finding recipes that coordinate with each other. I know in that episode we gave a ton of ideas, but it's things like, what can you, how can you take this thing and repurpose it into a new meal?

So like you have a rotisserie chicken, you can turn it into chicken salad. You have rice and veggies. Well, the next day you could turn that into fried rice with some eggs. Um, you can turn, technically you can turn a soup into a casserole. I have found recipes for that where it's just like you kind of like straight, you know, you might strain out some of the liquid if your soup is really liquidy.

Some of the broth and then turn the things that were inside of your soup into a casserole. You can make a pizza with lots of different things, particularly vegetables, different types of meat, frittatas or quiches, make like a breakfast hash with things that you have. quiches, make like I think just what exactly what you're saying here is, you know, thinking about leftovers as you're making your meal plan allows you to do this process a lot easier of like coordinating your recipes, [00:28:00] rather than thinking like, Oh, we're going to have leftovers of this stuff and we'll just figure it out when the time comes, when you do the figure it out when the time comes is it that's actually the trap that I fall into is like, that's why the individual ingredient items for meal prepping.

Mm hmm. Leftovers kind of stress me out is because maybe I'll only plan like one or two meals with those things and not plan the rest of the week. And then the rest of the week comes around and I'm like, Oh no, we already had hamburgers. And then we put the burger on the salad. And now what do we do with the burgers?

Riley: Yeah. I think that when I started looking at my meal plan and, and making these choices in the moment of planning and not in the dinnertime chaos moment of, okay, we've got leftovers. What in the world are we going to eat with these? I started like the benefits of planning rew, you know, like I'm not throwing things away.

I hate throwing food away, especially food that I made. I would actually rather throw away food I didn't make because [00:29:00] I. feel less connected to it, which sounds really silly. But if I went to the effort of making something like a chimichurri, like a sauce or like a homemade noodle or whatever it is, I went to the effort of doing that.

I would really like to consume it. If I have leftover sourdough bread, I hate when it gets to that last point. And you're like, no, I worked so hard on this. I don't want that to get thrown away. Um, and so I think that the benefits really grew for me. So less stress, I'm throwing away less food. Um, my, my energy around food is, has decreased.

And that is such a big deal, you know, and the saving money thing is a huge because we all know how expensive groceries are right now. You can't even go into the store without spending. Three figures.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Um, anyway, uh, and so just like being able to look at the food we have and say, okay, I don't want to throw this away.

So what can I utilize this for? Just those, those benefits just grew tremendously. And I think that it also helps me because in the moment, like you're talking about, I'm not having to figure it out and I'm [00:30:00] doing that pre work. So I'm kind of, I'm strategizing my meal plan. And that's just super helpful because then I don't have to think about it later.

I don't have to come up with something another time, you know, another, another point in this like action item thing that I was contemplating before we recorded was what if you did not like it the first time,

Roni: Mm hmm.

Riley: if your kids did not eat it the first time and now you're stuck with all these leftovers, um, man, the internet is a creative place and it is a great time to go to Google and say, okay, what do I do with leftover broccoli?

What do I do with leftover? What's something else that your kid may or may not consume? Pick a thing because kids are kind of finicky sometimes, you know, and like you're saying, you're taking a soup and you're making it a casserole. This is that, like, don't forget that you can reach out for help, not just from friends and family, but from the internet, which is an endless well of what you can do with leftovers to make them more interesting and kind of take foods you didn't even like the first time and turn them into something totally different.

Maybe your kid doesn't like taco night. I don't know a lot of kids who don't like [00:31:00] tacos, but maybe they don't like them. And then you turn it into a breakfast casserole because they love breakfast. And then boom, like you've got to eat the leftovers. Um, you got to get all those onions and peppers and mushrooms all mixed into the casserole.

They'd never even knew they were there. Um, they're consuming things that are good for them. And then you're kind of hiding them in other things. And then you're using props. You're not throwing food away. I don't know. These are just huge benefits to me. And huge benefits just to me in like the food waste world and you know, I, I just can't, I just, it's hard for me to understand why people don't like leftovers.

Roni: Well, one thing that I want to mention related to this too, I'm actually in this position a little bit right now. I made a stir fry earlier in the week, and it was just not my best effort. I don't know what was off about it, but something was just not, we, we ate it, but we weren't like, Ooh, this is so delicious.

It happens, you know, it happens. More, more often than I like to admit, uh, but I also think the leftovers give me an opportunity to improve the recipe from the first time that I made it. You know, [00:32:00] and part of that might be just. Playing around with different things, adding different, you know, adding more soy sauce or adding a different seasoning or something as I reheat the food.

Or it's an opportunity to go to the internet and be like, why does my stir fry suck? You know,

Riley: Yeah. Yeah.

Roni: the internet for help. If, you know, if I wasn't really sure what the recipe was missing or what it was needing in order to make it like a better recipe, then the internet would definitely be a place that I would go to.

So. I think that that's an important, a really important tip. You may not like the thing that you made the first time and then you feel like, Oh my gosh, now we have to eat this for leftovers the next day. But I view it as an opportunity to just improve upon what you already have. The only time this doesn't work is if like, You know, maybe you burned it the first time or, you know, something happened.

I don't know. Weird things can happen with, with certain ingredients, different recipes. You made something and it was just like totally soggy and gross. I don't know if there's coming back from certain [00:33:00] things. Sometimes you might just have to call an audible and order pizza instead. But, uh, in general, I think most recipes can be improved upon.

When the, when you're eating the leftovers.

Riley: And yeah, sometimes it's just salt, you know, sometimes it's just this needed more salt. Uh, and especially, you know, if you reheated it, sometimes the like flavors can get better overnight. And like when you first ate it, the, the day you made it and it was mediocre. And then the next day the flavors had time to really like blend and meld and like, Then it's better the next day, which, I mean, I know people out there who were anti leftover going to be like, there's no way it got better, but there's foods that I make intentionally the day before, because they're better the next

Roni: Yeah, absolutely.

Riley: time to do that thing, but you're totally right. Adding a sauce, recreating it. Maybe you served it with rice the first time and you wanted to serve it with noodles the next time. And that can dramatically change, like the vehicle in which you're consuming something, uh, can really change how you enjoy it.

Roni: Yeah, absolutely.

Riley: Are noodles a food [00:34:00] vehicle?

Roni: yes. Well, we were talking about this. Actually, this is a tangent. We're talking about this over the weekend with my family, because my oldest brother is not a vegetable eater. Really healing never has been. And so we were joking about that. And my brother's like, well, I'll eat broccoli.

And my mom was like, yeah, only with ranch dressing on it. And he was like, well, yeah, because the broccoli is a vehicle for the ranch dress.

Riley: That's funny.

Roni: Okay. I wanted to say this in relation to what we were talking about earlier with the intentionally planning for leftovers in your meal plan. And if for whatever reason you have not planned adequately, if you're new to the leftover process of meal planning, and maybe you just made too much, Of like all of the things I think it's really fun to do at the end of the week.

You just kind of set up like a buffet or like a smorgasbord and just be like, these are all the foods that need to get eaten up. It's kind of like the idea of making a kitchen sink meal, except for the fact that you're just like, you lay it all out and you're like, [00:35:00] family. You be creative with what we have and you make this into whatever you want.

My husband is really good at this because he. imagines things that I would never imagine. He puts macaroni in a burrito. So, so you might be surprised at what your family actually comes up with, with something like that. But I just wanted to throw that out there as another thing to potentially plan ahead for in, like in your planning process, even you could just say, I don't want to cook on Friday night.

So Friday night, we're having our smorgasbord meal. Everybody's going to make it up with what we have as our leftovers. And that's just what it's going to be. So you could, you know, you could also. Potentially make an extra side dish or something to accompany those things. You could do something really easy just to make sure you have like a well rounded meal.

But, a lot of the times, you know, we have leftovers and if you have like one serving left of your soup, or you have one serving left of, that roasted chicken or something. And so it's hard to make a full recipe to maybe feed everyone with that. But if [00:36:00] you just put everything out there, people can kind of.

Make up whatever feels good to them.

Riley: I love that. And that's exactly what we do here. Um, we, I have, I'll put leftovers. On the meal plan and that night I'm not cooking. It is whatever it is that is in the fridge that we have not consumed yet, but that doesn't just mean the leftovers that our house to, to kind of like piggyback on what you're saying.

It means like, it doesn't mean that I had to cook it. It means that we've got leftover cucumber that needs to be consumed. We've got leftover blueberries. Like I'm going to go to the store again, but we got 25 blueberries that are almost out. You know, we got to eat those right now or strawberries. Fruit, you know, you know, whatever it is.

And that kind of can add to the meal. It also helps you with the, the, Oh, Carly didn't like it the first time we ate it. Well, that's fine. She can have this and then kind of everybody gets to choose what they want to eat or make it into something different. Like your husband does with macaroni and a burrito. Another thing that I just want to throw out here with leftovers. [00:37:00] is freezer meals. I meant to mention this earlier when we were discussing action items. Leftovers, you know, frozen can be reheated and eaten the exact same way that you ate them. I do this a lot with soups. I would do it with that pulled pork I mentioned earlier.

I would do it with leftover rice sometimes, especially if there's a large quantity. Uh, okay, I've got all this rice. I'm just gonna freeze it. We're not gonna eat it. I've got meals planned the rest of the week. And so there's not a night for leftovers or, you know, whatever it looks like, you know, you're not going to consume them in the next five days.

You're going on vacation, et cetera. Just using the freezer as a storage place, because that bacteria is not going to grow. It's not going to get icky. Um, it's going to just kind of preserve it, put a date on it. We, we talk about the freezer all the time. I feel like I'm a broken record with the freezer, but this is a way to utilize You know, leftovers and the freezer and you're again, you're still not wasting food, it's already cooked for you.

And you're good to go.

Roni: Yeah. I was going to bring up the freezer too. As a side note, if you, as a listener, want more [00:38:00] freezer tips, Riley and I did an episode last summer, all about the beginning of last summer, all about utilizing the freezer for summertime meals. But one thing that I wanted to mention about the freezer is. Two years ago, I think we had, we asked customers to give us their meal planning tips and just, um, advice on how they meal plan. And one of our customers, Laura, uh, she just meal plans for herself. She's a single woman and she mentioned that she will do her like meal prep at the beginning of the week.

She's like a busy person to like a corporate job. And so she would take her lunches with her every day. I'm going to like pre portion the meal so that she could quickly grab it and take it for with her. And what she did is like, right when she would make that batch, she knew that she basically only had, um, I don't know the, I don't know what the word is, like the capacity, the, the palate to eat that one recipe for like three days, but she would make four or five servings of the recipe and just automatically put the [00:39:00] extra servings in the freezer when she was doing her prep for her leftover lunches.

And I really loved that idea of just realizing like. Even if you make leftovers and you're planning on eating the leftovers one or two more times, if you know that there are way more servings than just one or two more meals, automatically put those things in the freezer. It's way better to put those leftovers in the freezer on the night that you make the meal rather than five days later when it's already Should we throw this meal away?

Should we put it in the freezer? Way better to just like put 'em in the freezer right off the bat. And even if you then eat them five days later, well they were in the freezer and it's like totally fine. Way better than them sitting in the refrigerator at a questionable, you know, questionable amount of days.

Riley: Yeah. It's a great, it's a fantastic strategy to eliminate food waste. Uh, and also she knows herself, you know, she knows she's going to consume them in her busy life. It's just a matter of doing a little bit [00:40:00] of extra work on the front end to save them, get them in the freezer so that that leftover can be consumed and not wasted.

Roni: Yeah. I will often put leftovers in the freezer, like I said, even if I know I'm going to eat them, make the meal on Monday. Maybe we're going to not eat this leftovers on Friday. I'll still usually put them in the freezer on Monday night because then I don't feel like I have to worry about things getting sketchy in the refrigerator.

Riley: Yeah. , it just occurred to me that, I just want to mention, I'm not a crazy person. Like we're not eating every single scrap of food as a leftover. There are things that I think are not salvageable. One of them that I cannot do as a leftover is a salad with salad dressing on it

Roni: Oh yeah. No,

Riley: does. That does not keep man. Like that is something that's got to go. It's got to get eaten or it's got to go.

Roni: yep. No, that is definitely something that's good to be aware of when you're making things, even if you're making something like a pasta salad, pasta [00:41:00] salad can be. Okay. If you already put your dressing on it, cause the noodles might like absorb some of that, but even still it's, it's iffy, you know, I actually think pasta salad is one of those things that's better to make today and eat tomorrow.

Because of that, cause everything gets the chance to like marinate and absorb, but very many days after that, it's not really as good. Everything starts to get a little gooey and strange. So I think that is something to consider, particularly when you have things with a sauce or a dressing or something, consider, leaving some of it unsauced or undressed so that you can enjoy those later.

And it doesn't make anything like gooey gummy weird.

Riley: Cabot or a slaw can kind of get a little slimy to, trying to think anything where fruit is mixed in. Um, I get a little weird with that. Uh, avocados leftover, usually not, not good. Um, that's actually a high histamine food, like, especially when they've been overnight, like, they get a little brown,

Roni: Right. [00:42:00] Yeah. 

Riley: not a good one.

But

Roni: So I wanted to mention a few more specific meal planning tips for leftovers. Just if, if you're new to the leftover game, when you're trying to plan with leftovers, my first tip is plan less.

Riley: yeah,

Roni: plan fewer recipes and just increase the serving size. You don't want to plan five nights of dinner and increase the serving sizes on even half of those recipes because you will end up with way too much food.

At the end of the week, your smorgasbord will be ginormous and you'll probably have a lot of food that is wasted. Or, you know, food that goes into the freezer for the future, which can also be great. But if you're just trying to maximize your leftovers and reduce the amount of cooking that you're doing during the week, plan, fewer recipes, increase the serving sizes and start there.

Literally like plan two recipes for your week and see how that feels for, you know, the number of people that you're feeding and what your family likes to eat. You might. Adjust that, as you get more comfortable with [00:43:00] it. But when, when we're planning leftover heavy weeks, I literally plan two recipes for the week because It's okay if we have one night where we're like, oops, we don't really have enough leftovers.

Granted, you know, we're flexible. It's just me and my husband, but it's okay if we say, oops, we don't have enough leftovers. Let's, you know, go out to eat tonight or maybe we're just going to have breakfast for dinner instead. And it's not that big of a deal. But I really dislike having so much extra food that then gets wasted because I planned too much.

Riley: a way to practice this might be on a week where you are going out of town and the next week. So, you know, it's Monday, you're going out of town following Monday or whatever. Okay, I'm not going to plan very much. We need to eat up what we have here because we're going to be gone for a week. Everything that's in our fridge would be wasted anyway.

Let's just consume what we have and kind of practice it. That way you're a little bit flexible. You do need to, you know, like you said, have breakfast for dinner, which is a go to over here. Or if you need to, you know, supplement with something else, like, okay, let's, we need to make something to go with this.

Or, you know, you've got [00:44:00] something in your freezer, that's a go to or a box of something that you can throw together. But just like kind of having a practice week, um, where you see how it goes and that's a good week to do it because it's a good week to use up what you've already got.

Roni: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And one of my other, it's not necessarily a tip, but I would challenge you as a listener to, um, If you're really invested in the idea of leftovers, I would challenge you to try to use up the things that you have before you go grocery shopping again. You know, try to get really creative with how are you going to use those leftover blueberries?

How are you going to use that zucchini? Without going to the grocery store to just buy one or two things, you know, figuring out what you have. Like I think most American households, we have More food than we realize in our cupboards and in our pantries. And so it's a really good opportunity to get creative and be like, Oh, we have this can of garbanzo beans.

And I hadn't even thought to use that with the zucchini or something like that. Uh, I think it's excellent for saving [00:45:00] money. And I think it's just a really, it can be kind of a fun challenge to yourself, to, you know, increase your cooking skills, just like be creative and learn new recipes.

Riley: Really whatever your motivation is lean into that and then use it as your kind of your catalyst, you know, because everything you just said, like this could be a budgeting podcast, an episode about budgeting. Um, cause you aren't going to use up everything you've got. You're going to be a little bit more thrifty with your own pantry.

Cause the thing you just said, like, Oh, you've got, you've got a chickpeas, make hummus, eat them with cucumber or zucchini chips, you know, it might be a little different, but you know, it's nutrient dense. So

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. I think just being able to, I have a feeling that that's where leftovers trip. A lot of people up is not thinking outside of the box of what you could use an ingredient for. We all, we have talked about this so much. We all get into our ruts. We all, you know, get into a little box of what we know to be.

Delicious and comfortable and easy to make. [00:46:00] And I think sometimes we need a little bit of a challenge to look outside of what our norm is. This can also be a great time to text your friend and ask what they would use a zucchini for or something like that. and just like, see what other ideas are out there from.

Maybe your family doesn't normally eat zucchini and it came in a CSA box that you had, or it was at the farmer's market and it looked really good or whatever The thing is, trying to find creative ways to use things I think is really fun.

Riley: yeah, that's great advice.

Roni: If you're somebody who likes to cook, I know that maybe it is not great advice for every single person out there, but if you're somebody who likes to cook and be, have the creative side of cooking, like I think, just think that's fun to do. And then one more thing that I wanted to mention, that. We have mentioned I think multiple times because it's like the most genius idea ever. Which is From that same podcast that we did, where we asked our customers for their, meal planning ideas, we had Kylie who wrote into us, who talked about how [00:47:00] she repurposes her leftovers into hot pockets.

Essentially. She takes a, like a recipe for some type of a dough, like whether it's a bun recipe or a pizza crust recipe, a croissant recipe, whatever. And she fills those buns with whatever her leftovers are. Um, and then she freezes them and then, you know, she's able to take them out of the freezer and reheat them in the toaster oven or wherever.

And it's just a really creative way to utilize Your leftovers in the future and have it not feel like, Oh, we're eating the exact same thing all over again, because now you have, you know, if you are doing this week after week and, you know, maybe some of your hot pockets are like calzones and it's kind of like a mini pizza, but maybe some of them have a breakfast hash inside of them.

So it's like a breakfast thing. Hot pocket. Uh, I'm trying to find a different word for hot pocket, but that's the only thing I'm coming up with. There's just so many different things that you could [00:48:00] put inside of your dough recipe. And so to me, this is such a creative, amazing way to reuse your leftovers.

And then it's also a super easy meal when you take those out of the freezer. Easy on the go, easy just for a night when you have no motivation to cook. It's, it's like my favorite idea of all time.

Riley: It's genius. It's genius. And you can buy really high quality does pre made at your local grocery store. So you don't even have to, you know, take that extra step. You could, if you wanted make the homemade does whatever your family's preferences are, but truly that it becomes a pretty simple little thing to do.

If you just get a great dough from your local store, and just make them into little pockets. I think it's, it's brilliant.

Roni: Yeah, it's, it's such a good idea. And because too, maybe you're feeling like, okay, well, so we like a hot pocket for dinner tonight. That's not really like a whole meal. But then you could just have a really quick and easy side dish that you have with those things, whether it's a grain or [00:49:00] vegetables or whatever.

It doesn't have to be a super complicated meal. As we always say, like your meal plan, it doesn't have to be complicated. Um, it just has to get food on the table for everybody. So, you know, I think that there's a, there's just a level of ease that this idea has that I just love it. It's like I said, it's one of my favorites. Well, did we go through all the things? Do we have any more tips and tricks and ideas related to leftovers?

Riley: I think that's everything I've got.

Roni: Yeah. I I've crossed off everything on my notes so far. So I

Riley: Awesome.

Roni: I've gone through all of the things that I thought of. It's been wonderful. Thank you for joining me for this. Thanks for coming with all of your great ideas. I love having you on the podcast.

Riley: I love being here. Thanks for having me.

Roni: as always. Thank you so much for tuning in.

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