#128: How to Use What You Already Have (And Waste Less Food)

This week, we're tackling food waste! Leftovers pile up, ingredients get pushed to the back of the fridge, and before long, our precious kitchen inventory goes to waste! Riley and Roni discuss practical strategies for reducing food waste and using up what you already have at home. We will teach you our favorite meal planning strategies to actually use the food you're buying and stop wasting it!

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avoid food waste
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[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner. 

Roni: Hello, welcome back to the podcast. Today we are gonna be talking about how you can use up food that you have in your house to avoid food waste. Riley and I mentioned this in the last episode, that food waste is one of our least favorite things when it comes to the kitchen. So we're spending this entire podcast talking about how you can use up those leftovers, make sure that ingredients don't get forgotten in the fridge, or the pantry, or the freezer, wherever they're forgotten. We know that everybody wants to be able to cook the food that we have, but sometimes remembering to thaw the things and keep track of items that are left open in the refrigerator, it gets messy. It can, it can get messy. So we're gonna talk about how you can meal plan to [00:01:00] avoid this and you know, I think just like other food tips to be able to avoid waste.

Riley: I think the first thing we can jump in here with is. We can never say this enough. Right. Plan less meals. Plan less meals.

Roni: I think we've said this, every podcast for the last four months

Riley: Yeah. I.

Roni: in one, in one shape or form. We've said it every podcast.

Riley: Planning less allows you to have space to use up those ingredients. So it's not that you need to have less meals on your meal plan because you're gonna go eat out it. It's so that you have space to use up the ingredients you have. And you, you might not have a plan for those ingredients, but you have at least a meal to eat them.

That this is a problem that I run into when I have house guests. I plan every single meal. And then I have leftovers. If I do not accommodate the leftovers or the ingredient overflow, then I'm gonna end up with a lot more waste. And so if I can plan less, even when I have house guests and I can, say, okay, like, [00:02:00] here's what we have leftover.

What am I gonna make with it? And just be creative one night, or we have tons of leftovers. It's gonna be leftovers for lunches every day or one evening. Or wow, we have a lot of chicken leftover. What can I turn this into? Chicken salad or, um, chicken sandwiches, or fill in the blank. it just giving, giving yourself space on your meal plan just allows you to use up all these leftover ingredients, even if it's not the most pretty meal or not the most, like well-rounded meal.

At least you're not throwing those ingredients away.

Roni: Right. I think that I've mentioned before, I often will put on my meal planner that Thursdays is often our leftover night because by the time Thursday comes around. We've cooked a meal Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. There's bound to be leftovers from one of those recipes or all of 'em, and they're just like a spattering of leftovers.

And Thursday night I just say, we're eating whatever is in the refrigerator. I am not cooking tonight. And if for whatever reason we don't actually have leftovers, it's [00:03:00] fine. We've got a frozen pizza in the in the freezer, or you know, we can. We can go out to eat or something instead, but it is really helpful to avoid food waste.

If we just make, if we just have it on the meal plan, then we're gonna have leftovers one night.

Riley: Hmm, we had breakfast for dinner on the meal plan, which is made up of ingredients that I'm gonna either eat for actual breakfast or I don't have, they will not go bad today. You know,

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: if I have sausage or some kind of breakfast meat, frozen biscuits, or if I was gonna make biscuits, like none of those ingredients are gonna go bad eggs.

I'm gonna eat those again. Yogurt, we'll eat that for breakfast the next day. But breakfast for dinner, being on my meal plan this week really helped because. I had made raw, I made ramen and it made an exorbitant amount of ramen and I, it, I didn't overdo it. I don't know what happened. I, it just made a lot of ramen and so we had it for dinner the next night and I actually had it for lunch today and so like it made so much extra.

But it allowed me to just like, pause the breakfast for dinner. [00:04:00] We'll have that another night. It's no big deal. Um, no harm, no foul, you know, like nothing's going in the trash can. And I used up all those leftovers, but that meal, kinda like we've talked about with having like a pantry staple meal, breakfast for dinner can work that way because it just gets moved down or gets moved to actual breakfast.

And it like allows you to like have that night on your plan. Kinda like you said, like, we're gonna eat leftovers tonight, but if there's none we'll do something different.

Roni: Right, exactly. Yeah. I think that you brought up a good point with when you have house guests and I think there is a tendency to feel like, well, leftovers isn't good enough

for when we have guests over. But I genuinely think. And I just think this probably from my own perspective as being a house guest in somebody else's house, that I'm just happy that somebody is feeding me and I didn't have to go through the work of thinking about or preparing a meal.

And I'm like, I don't personally care that much about going to somebody's house. And they're saying, oh, well [00:05:00] we had a casserole last night and there's leftover casserole, so we're gonna eat the casserole again. I don't personally care about that. That would actually still make me very happy.

Riley: Yeah, it doesn't bother me when I'm, especially with family, you know, it doesn't bother me. I, I mean, I like that we're not wasting food.

Roni: Yeah, no, I'm just thinking like, I think there's an element of being a host or hostess where you think like, it's not good enough. I need to make something new and unique for every meal that these people are at my house.

Riley: Totally. That I think it does feel that way as a hostess. Like it is not good enough. I try to not do it too many times when I have house guests. You know, like if I, if somebody was at my house for a week, I'd try to do it once, or like lunches being left over dinner or, you know, something along the lines of like, oh, we grilled a ton of extra veg, or we grilled a ton of extra chicken, and like, we're gonna repurpose that I'm, I did it on purpose so that we can repurpose it for something else.

Roni: yeah. I like that. So we did a budgeting podcast episode several years ago. I think it might have been in our [00:06:00] very first year of podcasting. And I remember one of the main things that we did that both of us did in that episode. Was we purposefully meal planned in a way where, where our recipes coordinated with each other.

And of course that was to save money so that, you know, it's like we were only buying chicken and we were able to kind of like buy it in bulk and use it for multiple recipes. But that also helped us. I remember that really helped me reduce the food waste that I had that week because I was trying to make sure that all of the food that we were using got used up.

Like I think a lot of the times when we talk about food waste, the main. The two main benefits are, number one, you're not throwing that food in the trash. But then the result of that is it's also not wasted money. You know, you spent money on this food and then it didn't end up in the trash. You actually ended up consuming it.

So like if you're buying chicken, have multiple recipes that you chicken, if you're buying a cabbage, have multiple recipes that you're gonna use it for, or at least know what the, what the potential end goal for that is. [00:07:00] Like I bought a cabbage. Last week for stir fry. I personally love buying cabbage because you can use part of a cabbage and it can still hang out in your fridge for like five days and it's not gonna get like limp and weird.

It, you know, it's very hardy, so it takes a while for it to go bad. So it's like I bought a cabbage last week for stir fry. I used. Probably not even a quarter of it. You know, stir fry is one of those meals where there's so many vegetables in there that like, I'm not gonna use a whole half of a head of cabbage.

Like, like I said, maybe like a quarter of it. And then this week I ate basically the rest of the head of the cabbage all by myself.

Riley: Whoa.

Roni: I turned it into slaw and then I just ate it with, I ate it as like a side with basically every meal with, with lunch and with dinner. Um, because I personally love just like a really simple slaw with like cabbage and some shredded carrots, [00:08:00] salt, pepper, some garlic, and like lime juice and a little bit of olive oil.

I love that so much. It like, so crunchy when I first make it. I literally can't stop eating it out of the bowl because it's just so good.

Riley: And that saves so well.

Roni: it saves so well it's been, I mean, I just finished it for lunch today. But like it was in my fridge for like four days. It's like, it's still crunchy and delicious even on day four. So anyways,

Riley: my kids also really like cabbage slaw, but my hack on this is that I had my daughter make it one day.

Roni: Ooh,

Riley: And like I made her taste it and see if it needed salt. I made her taste it to see if it needed something else, and ever since the day she made it, she's been obsessed with slaw. She's like, oh, can we have slaw?

Oh, I love slaw. Let's have slaw with that. And I'm like, you got it?

Roni: But anyways, all that to say, that was like a long tangent about the cabbage. Um, that's just to say like when you, when you are creating your meal plan, if [00:09:00] part of your point. Of making a meal plan is to waste less food. Do your best to coordinate the ingredients that you're buying. That could be like keeping things in the similar cuisine vein, right?

Like instead of having like Mexican one night Asian the next night, Italian, the third night, Greek the fourth night, like those can involve lots of things that don't necessarily a lot of different flavors where you're not buying the same. Herbs or you know, additional vegetables or something to go in them.

So trying to like keep things coordinated I think is really important for wasting less food.

Riley: Yeah. That's great. This is, I mean, it can be a tricky game to play the, like coordinating your recipes. Um.

Roni: it definitely takes more effort.

Riley: It does. It does. Um, and I think, I think we've talked about this before. I remember saying this on the episode, it's just like, it's almost like playing like Jenga. Like you've got to figure out how these things go together.

Particularly with things you're not using up, you know, we're not [00:10:00] talking about like, oh, well buy extra, you know, like we're saying, you know, with, you've got a leftover head of cabbage, or if you're, you are using half a container of chicken broth. That's one of my least favorite things is when a recipe.

Not a soup. A recipe calls for chicken broth and it's like one cup. Or a half, like a, you know, one of those like 32 ounce, like square rectangle containers, like half of that. I'm like, what am I gonna do with this just sitting in my fridge? Like it needs to have a plan. And so, um, this is one of the beautiful things about plan to eat because you are looking at a recipe, you see how much it calls for.

You can either buy a smaller container of something like the chicken broth example, vegetable stock, whatever you're working with, um, you could buy less like a, you know, a can of it. Or if you know you're gonna have leftovers, you could say, okay, what can I do with that next? So, if you use that in some kind of like stir fry, Asian, Asian sauce, you know, like a lot of Asian deal dishes come with, uh, chicken stock, you know, for the liquid part.

The next day you could use it in a pasta. 

Roni: Yeah. 

Riley: And so just like making [00:11:00] sure you're looking at what your recipe's calling for either buying appropriate amounts or if you're trying to save money, oftentimes you're buying more items. You know, 'cause like you can buy a bigger thing of chicken stock because it costs less than the can, et cetera.

Or if you know you want the purple cabbage, and this is what we, this is our option, you are gonna, you are gonna coordinate it and put that into the next recipe. It just takes a little practice and just some intentionality.

Roni: Right. Yeah. And I think in general, the coordination, because people might be listening and being like, yeah, that makes the meal planning take so much longer.

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: I don't think it's absolutely necessary. However, I do think it's more important for foods that don't freeze well,

Riley: Yeah, absolutely.

Roni: you know? I don't, I don't personally think that I would freeze cabbage.

I'm, I know you can freeze cabbage, but I'm not really sure that I would something in things like fresh tomatoes, unless you're okay with freezing 'em and making tomato sauce or something later. I'm not normally freezing tomatoes. I'm definitely not freezing lettuce. I personally don't [00:12:00] freeze dairy products very often because they have a very specific use then when they come out of the freezer.

But if

Riley: for butter. Butter works great

Roni: yeah. Butter. Yeah. Butter's a different story, but I'm thinking like yogurt.

Or milk or

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: Um,

Riley: and half heavy cream. Any of those would be strange. Yeah.

Roni: exactly. Yeah. Unless you're like, oh, I definitely know I'm gonna use that in like a soup or something. But, you know, if you just end up with extra chicken, the chicken can really easily go into the freezer, whether it's cooked or

Riley: Even cooked. Yeah, exactly.

Roni: Yeah. So I just think it's a, it's something that if you are like, wow, this sounds stressful to make my meal plan in a way that my recipes are coordinated, I think that. The thing that you could just prioritize are these like super fresh things that don't freeze as well.

Riley: Yeah. One of my recent things that I've been doing quite a bit is buying a rotisserie chicken and freezing half of it and using half of it, and it has worked incredibly well. Also, if you're buying them from [00:13:00] Costco, the price point. Is pretty great. So it does cut down on food cost, which is really helpful.

And I've been using it in things like pot pie or, um, like a chicken and like that copycat chicken and gnocchi soup from Olive Garden. I love that soup. It works awesome in there. It works awesome in a white chicken chili like. I've been repurposing that frozen chicken for that. And I know that wasn't your exact example, but I just wanted to like mention this.

It has been, it has been saving me a lot of money on meat at the store. But it's also just like going so much further because I'm pre, I'm taking it off the bone, I'm cleaning it, the chicken, and I'm immediately chopping it and freezing it. And so it's just going way further. I'm not having to come up with something in my like, oh, it's in the fridge, we've gotta eat that.

It's, it's already got a job and going into the freezer is a job at my house.

Roni: Right, right.

Riley: it's going to be used. Yeah.

Roni: Yeah. Well, this is another one of our tips, and you know, it's a nice segue here is that as we learned from reading Carol Ann's book, you can freeze anything. [00:14:00] And so I think that that's something important to remember when you were thinking about food waste is if, if you're gonna throw it in the trash.

Is it possible you could freeze it instead? There are certainly some times where things have gone too far and they got lost in the back of the refrigerator or something, and they do just need to be tossed. Particularly if you have a, a stuffed refrigerator. Some people's refrigerators are stuffed. Riley is raising her hand, but if you happen to be.

To catch it beforehand. Just think about, could I pop this in the freezer instead and we will think about it for a recipe in the future. Does it need to be blanched really quick before I put it in the freezer? You know, can, should it be prepared in some sort of way before putting it in the freezer?

I'm thinking if you have parsley or something that's getting wilted, you can chop that up and you can freeze it in like butter or olive oil cubes, you know, and then use that for future recipes. So. Clearly that takes a little bit of time, [00:15:00] but I think if the goal overall is to avoid food waste, typically things can be frozen.

Riley: Sometimes with herbs, you can even put them on your counter in some water and they perk back up. Mm-hmm. Another helpful tip here for avoiding food waste is avoiding obscure ingredients unless you've got a very specific plan for them.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: So obscure ob in obscure, I can't talk. Obscure ingredients that I'm thinking about are like, like I have miso paste and it's kind of a big container of miso paste.

It's the only thing our grocery store had. I wanted it for a very specific purpose. A little goes a long way.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: And now I've just got it. And so like I unfortunately have this obscure ingredient that I did want and I had for a specific recipe for specific recipes, plural. But now I need to plan around it because I do not want it to go bad in my fridge.

And that is the kind of thing that would get pushed to the very back and not something like pepper ine peppers, which are still gonna be [00:16:00] great in a month, you know?

Roni: Yeah. I'm thinking. I feel like it was maybe one of our early dinner dilemmas. A person said that they had like a daikon radish or something that they were, they didn't know how to use up the rest of it. They had used it for a specific Asian recipe and then they were like, this is a huge radish. I don't know how to use the rest of it.

So that is an instance where if it's an obscure ingredient like that, think of maybe two different recipes that that call for that specific ingredient.

Riley: Or? Or, yeah. I mean, this is a situation where like you could buy the smallest one possible at the store, double your recipe. So you're using it all or plan two recipes for it?

Roni: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Potentially if it's a recipe that freezes, well, the whole recipe freezes. Well, you could batch cook it and then have a frozen recipe in your freezer to pull out later. But yeah, I think this is a, a good thing to think of in general is if you are constantly finding that things are getting pushed to the back of the fridge, it's something that you only used in a single [00:17:00] recipe, either, how can we plan multiple recipes to use this thing up or.

Can we maybe use, can we maybe go without this random, obscure ingredient, or can we work around it? Is there like a, a substitution that's more common in other recipes?

Riley: Yeah. Yeah, I specifically for your daikon example, I don't even know why I just pulled this out of my brain. I hope I gave this person the example in our dinner dilemma, but there's a recipe author, um, I think her name is Ali. Ali Ucci. Uh, but anyway, she had a blog for a long time called InSpiralized, and she would use vegetables as.

Pasta as rice. Uh, she and literally obscure vegetable central. And she has tons of daikon radish recipes,

Roni: Oh,

Riley: tons dai, ginger daikon, radish rice with gochujang and fried eggs, chicken bani. , Lots of options. So like if you are ending up with this rest, with this ingredient, you really wanted to make [00:18:00] something with it.

Be very exciting. Like go Google, like Google recipes. Like best Way to Eat a Dicon is a Google search result that just came up for me when I was checking, um, for this blog. Um, so just, you know, like that's another option is if you're like, well, I don't have any recipes. I have no idea what else I would eat this in.

Uh, this wouldn't get to get exciting. Go Google, find a new recipe, add a two meal plan, use up all those ingredients, and don't buy more obscure ingredients in the process,

Roni: So true.

Riley: which could happen. I could see it

Roni: It could for sure. Okay. Riley I'm curious what things end up getting thrown away often in your house?

Riley: well that half ahead of cabbage. I think the thing about like making this slaw is amazing, but you are intentional to do it.

Roni: Right.

Riley: And so if I have over planned, if my meal plan is booked, if I'm not at home for lunch, things along those lines, like those ingredients like just get pushed aside and pushed [00:19:00] aside and pushed aside.

Roni: Or if you've planned something that like slaw doesn't necessarily go well with, you know, I'm thinking like you planned a breakfast casserole for dinner and you're like, I don't really think cabbage slaw goes well with that.

Riley: yeah, exactly. The last cup of spinach, like in the like container

Roni: I think I've got one of those in my fridge right now.

Riley: And I, I mean, I am pretty good about using up, but like, it's like the last, like handful just goes bad. Um, which spinach freeze is great. And that can go in a smoothie. So easy, um, leftover casserole, especially if we've eaten it two or more times.

And casserole is yes. And casserole is one of those things where it's like, dude, how did I make enough food for an army? I didn't mean to, this literally happened to me two weeks ago. I made a buffalo chicken casserole, which was very delightful. The first two times we ate it and then by the third time I was eating it, I was like, I need to be done.

And so thankfully the only thing that was leftover was about three fourths of a cup of it. And [00:20:00] I was just like, it's just gotta go. We gotta be done here. Those are common things that go bad. Cilantro.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Cilantro, unfortunately goes bad really quickly, and I need to be much better about putting it in the jar of water on my countertop, because it does so well in that situation.

But like in my fridge, it, it is a one and done use, and I hate that. I actually hate buying cilantro. I love cilantro in food, hate buying it because I'm afraid of that. It's gonna go bad.

Roni: Yeah. Well see. And this is part of the reason why I make something like a slaw, 'cause my cilantro also gets used with the cabbage. 

Riley: Yes. We make this like delicious, like cilantro, lime, like ranch kind of sauce to go on tacos, and that is our best, like use it or lose it with the cilantro.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: Also, like if we have like a rogue jalapeno that's perfect in there too, like taking those things in, turning them to a sauce is just ideal.

Roni: Yeah. I guess you could, like when after you froze cilantro, you could use it in a sauce. That would be like the best purpose for it after the [00:21:00] fact is like blending it up into like chimichuri or a 

Riley: Yeah. Or a freeze dryer. If you had a freeze dryer at your house, then make like the flakes that you can buy.

Roni: yeah.

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, I, the things that I think that I most often throw away are if I happen to buy spring mix, not like just plain cabbage or plain spinach, although, like I said, I do think I have spinach right now in my fridge.

I should probably just put it in the freezer. But like the bag of spring mix, that's like a bunch of stuff. That because I feel like it gets slimy sometimes that gets slimy faster than other lettuce products, and so I just end up throwing that one away Often. I have stopped buying spring mix basically because I don't like the slimy.

Riley: Yeah, because they go, I think because they go bad at different rates,

Roni: probably.

Riley: and it's like, I would rather just buy the one pure,

Roni: Yeah. Just

Riley: ingredient. Like,

Roni: pure lettuce.

Riley: just romaine or like just baby lettuce or [00:22:00] whatever. Because like when you mix them, they go bad at different rates. And then you get like that like blob that you, ugh, don't even get me started.

Roni: Yeah, that's gonna make me start gagging. Okay.

Riley: listening is like, riley stop. I'm sorry.

Roni: Tomato paste in a jar. Similar to what you were saying earlier with the, with the chicken broth. Is if, if a recipe calls for just like a tablespoon of tomato paste and I don't have, 'cause I, sometimes I'll buy the like, squeezy, squeezy version. But if I, sometimes our grocery store is out of those and so you have And so I 

Riley: right now. 

Roni: Yeah. And so I have to buy cans of tomato paste, and then I'm like. One tablespoon is like an eighth of this. Like, what am I, I know you can freeze the rest of it. I should be better about just like immediately putting it into a different container and freezing it. But I often am like, it's fine. I'll think of a way to use it later this week.

I never do. And then it's moldy. And also mushrooms. [00:23:00] Mushrooms often go bad in my fridge because basically like the only thing I'll use mushrooms for is, unless it's something like. Stroganoff where the main vegetable is a mushroom. The only other time I buy mushrooms are for something like a stir fry.

I know you mentioned you really like mushrooms in ramen and I need to like log that away. For the next, because I think I mentioned I use ramen as like a kitchen clean out sort of a meal. Uh, so I need to remember that. But mushrooms often go bad and also 'cause I'm, mushrooms can kind of get slimy quick too, I think.

And so I'm all, I'm very particular about that happening.

Riley: Mm-hmm. I think any canned good that you use half of is really hard to deal with.

Roni: Except for canned corn. 'cause I just eat it out of the can. 'cause I think it's delicious.

Riley: That's not most people. Yeah, I struggle. I was the one that came to mind when you were talking about tomato paste, which is another one that I struggle with is Chipotle peppers, like the can of them if we use [00:24:00] half. And because I have kids, like you can't, you can't use the whole container

Roni: Yeah. You can't just be like, it's fine. We'll just dump the whole thing in.

Riley: That is not an it's fine ingredient. Um, 'cause they're so spicy and so, but I have found that freezing those works incredibly well and I am pretty good about doing it because I know I'll, we use Chipotle so rarely that I am pretty good about it. 'cause I know I'm not gonna like just find the use for that tomorrow.

Roni: Yeah. Well, and typically the use for those like Chipotle peppers and adobo sauce, that's what you're talking about, right? Yeah, is it's like in a sauce or like, like the saucy part of a entree and so freezing it. It doesn't get weird when you then take it out and put it in something. 

Riley: All right, Roni, how do you plan with what you already have on hand?

Roni: I guess I am fortunate enough that I have a pretty good memory for the things that are in my refrigerator or the things that are in the freezer. [00:25:00] Granted, we often have a freezer that is already pretty stocked with meat, and so when I'm making my meal plan. I can basically just assume anything that I put on the meal plan that calls for like a beef product.

We have some sort, some alternative for it. Usually it's like a, you know, venison or elk. It's not necessarily beef, but I just use those interchangeably for the most part. So. When I'm meal planning, I often think like, okay, whatever it is, I can just use like a beef something and we'll just use something that's in the freezer.

I'm not gonna need to buy that. So that's just always in the back of my mind. But because I meal plan weekly, I think it's easier for me to kind of keep track of what are the things that are in the fridge that are, that are maybe lingering from the last meal plan. However, I also will manually go in and check.

And make sure that we have things. I think that's just the, that's, it's like the way to make sure that it happens [00:26:00] is I go in and manually check, look in my fridge, look in the pantry and you know, just look at the things that we have because inevitably I'll think we have a bag of rice or something and we actually don't.

We've used the last or the rice the last time I made rice or something like that. But, I think that's the most important thing. Is just kind of keeping track. Even if it's a, a loose mental list or a loose written down list of, of what you, what you have on hand. That's like the, for me, that's the best place to start.

But often the recipes that I plan when I'm trying to plan from what I have on hand, they're kind of like my tried and true recipes because. They often involve a lot of similar flavors, similar sauces, similar condiments, and so it's just stuff that we, I know we already have.

Riley: Mm-hmm. And you're very used to making it and probably winging it too.

Roni: Yeah, exactly.

Or there are things like, like how I mentioned ramen, where I'm just like, I can put [00:27:00] ramen on the meal plan. Whatever is left over, that's just gonna go in the

ramen. It's not a big deal.

Riley: Yeah, those are great options. I love that you have such a good memory for what's in your fridge. I don't.

Roni: Well, you have a few more things going on in your life than I do.

Riley: no, I don't think that's the reason. I just think that it, it's a little bit of an abyss sometimes. So, so things that I've done recently this week, I actually, and I might have mentioned this last podcast, like I was not meal planning this week. If we didn't have it, we weren't eating. And so. I try to be really intentional with what we, with what we did end up eating this week because, well, one, because I had to, because I wasn't meal planning or grocery shopping, I just needed a break, to be very honest.

I just needed a break. And so thankfully, I did end up buying a few ingredients, like I did end up having to, mostly because we had nothing fresh. But how I planned with what I had on hand, I, I had leftover tiki from some Greek bowls, and so I knew I wanted to do that again. Still had [00:28:00] cucumber, still had olives, still had tomatoes.

So I knew that'd be a really quick and easy thing to put together. Just make some rice with, with a protein or without a protein. I actually am taking a, uh, a card outta your playbook. What? I don't know how to say that. A, uh, play outta your playbook. What?

Roni: Yeah, sure. Let's go with

Riley: Yeah. And I'm making homemade hamburger helper this week, and the only thing I bought was tomato paste.

I had everything else. Yeah, so that was awesome. We ended up having ramen and, kinda like you, it was a bit of a kitchen sink ramen. It was like, well, we've got some veg, we've got, I've got some chicken thighs I could thaw out of the freezer. Like, this is how, oh guys, some boiled eggs. This is how we're gonna make this, throw it together.

I used the miso, 

Roni: Yep. 

Riley: my obscure ingredient. And then I found this recipe for. Like a sticky beef and peanut noodle situation. So I'm gonna use the, I haven't made this yet, but I'm going to use the rest of my ramen noodles, the rice noodles that I had for this dish. I've already got the beef, I've already got the broccoli in the freezer.

I've already got p I've, I make a [00:29:00] homemade peanut sauce. It's really easy. I forgot everything for that. So. That's gonna come together and didn't have to buy anything for it. Breakfast for dinner is still on our radar because we didn't have it the other night. So that is what we're up to. And it is, those are all things I had on hand just like looking at my pantry and saying, okay, I've got these, uh, rice noodles.

What am I gonna do with them? I've got macaroni. What am I gonna do with that? I've got macaroni and I've got beef. And I just kinda like trying to like play those things together, you know, like, what am I gonna do with these things?

Roni: Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, I mean, I think that a tip for Plan to Eat customers, uh, I guess it can be for anybody if you, you don't use Plan to Eat for your shopping list, but I'm just thinking, the thing that saves me the most is going through my Plan to Eat shopping list and making sure that I take off the things that we already have at home.

And again, this is where like my memory can fail me sometimes. You know, where, like I said, I think that we have rice and then we maybe don't end up having it. I thought that maybe I bought [00:30:00] two bags of rice last time and I only bought one. Something like that. So it just is really important if you are trying to cut down on food waste to go through.

Your fridge and your pantry and your freezer and cross things off. Sometimes I'll be in the grocery store and have not done that process, and then be second guessing myself, like looking at my phone and being like, wait, but do, how many cans of beans do we have at home? I don't remember. Do I have only one or do I have two?

This recipe calls for two, so. It's a do your future yourself a favor situation, and don't just rely on your memory. While I said I have a good memory for these things, I, the memory part is more when I'm actually meal planning, but then I don't rely on my memory when it comes to crossing things off.

Riley: Mm-hmm. Just to piggyback off of that, one of my favorite things about the shopping list is the ingredient amounts, because this is when, this is when repurposing leftovers in your shopping list are. They work together [00:31:00] seamlessly. You're making, let's see, like a Tuscan chicken pasta, and you're gonna add heavy cream to it.

'cause a lot of those call for that. And it calls for half a cup of heavy cream or a fourth of a cup of cream. Like, do you have that already? Like, are you gonna throw it away? If not, you know, like, and if you don't, obviously you need to buy it, but if you do have it, like use that last little smidge up and then you're good.

This is, it's just a really, really, really helpful, just like beautiful feature of the shopping list.

Roni: Yeah, I mean, let me just say anytime that I have a recipe that's like a soup or a pasta or something that calls for either half and half or heavy cream. 'cause we don't really use half and half in our coffee much. Um, and then we like never have a use for heavy cream other than a recipe. Just make dessert with the rest of the thing.

Like I will often make homemade pudding. With the rest of whatever, either half and half or heavy cream that we have. And then you could have a delicious homemade dessert.

Riley: I love it. My [00:32:00] husband always likes to make a homemade rice pudding with leftover

Roni: Oh, yeah,

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: yeah. Which you can also UI mean, uh, you know, usually I think I would use milk in that, but you can use half and half if you have, and half leftover. Half and half. You totally can. And you're also using up your leftover rice. 'cause leftover rice can get a little Mm. You know, it's not,

It can. And honestly, while I do promote taking your leftover rice and putting it in the freezer, I'm pretty sure I have some leftover rice in the freezer that I continually forget about, and I just keep making new batches of rice.

And then every time I open the freezer, I'm like, ah, we have rice in the freezer. It's just not something I normally freeze. So that's why it keeps getting left in the freezer.

Riley: I understand you gotta do a freezer inventory every once in a

while and see what You got. You really do.

Yeah. 

Roni: I think on this note, we, we sort of talked about this a little bit earlier, repurposing leftovers in certain ways. Uh, we were kind of talking about it when we were having, having guests over at your house trying to figure out different ways you could [00:33:00] repurpose leftovers. Obviously we like to have leftovers for lunch, but Riley has mentioned multiple times that like your husband is not really like a leftovers.

So you do kind of have to figure out for certain people, you do have to figure out ways of repurposing leftovers that aren't just, we're eating the same meal 2, 3, 4 times during this week. And one thing that since it's, you know, wintery right now that I really like to do is if you have leftover vegetables from whatever.

From however you made them. But just like vegetables that are by themselves, not vegetables that are already mixed with something. You roasted some vegetables on a sheet pan or you grilled some vegetables. Something like that is that you can put 'em in the blender with some cream or some broth and you can turn 'em into a soup, you know, and just like put it on the stove to heat it up.

So good and like really can have like a really good depth of flavor depending on the variety of vegetables that you

Riley: That's really true. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that being amazing, like a [00:34:00] roasted vegetable, like at the end of the summer.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. If it has like a roasted vegetable soup, you could have it with like a grilled cheese

Riley: Yeah. Yeah.

Roni: Super easy

Riley: Super

Roni: soup.

Riley: I'm trying to think if I have any unique men things to mention about repurposing leftovers, because I know I've mentioned a lot of ways that I do this. And I guess I can mention those. If you're a new listener, I would love to share them. I just, you know, I just don't wanna be a broken record, you know?

Um, and you and I tend to be broken records, so

Roni: Okay. Well I have a question for you 'cause I've been wondering this. If you were somebody who doesn't like smoothies,

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: How, how would you repurpose like fruit that's starting to go bad or say we have this like spinach where you're like, well, I could just put it into a smoothie or something.

But if you're not a smoothie person, I know there's a lot of people out there who are not smoothie people, and so a lot of times they're like, if they buy like a thing of strawberries and they don't get to all the [00:35:00] strawberries, they might put 'em in the freezer, but they never do anything. They, they might not ever do anything with it.

'cause they're like, I don't really know how to use these straw strawberries unless they're fresh. Like what would you do with fruit if you were not. A smoothie person.

Riley: I would, I, well, with the spinach, I would make curry and add the spinach to a curry. Um, with the fruit, I would say like a pie

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: a, like a galette, like a, you know, like a pretty open faced like pie, kinda rough crust pie. You could also make bread like a strawberry bread, raspberry bread, banana bread, pick a bread, add a fruit to it. That's what I would do if you're not a smoothie person. I actually used to not be a smoothie person at all. But I also used to not be a fruit person. And so like, as I've grown in my love for fruit, I've grown in my love for smoothies. But that's what I would do. I would probably use it in some kind of like a muffin, like something that becomes like a really helpful quick grab and go breakfast.

Roni: That's a good tip. Yeah.

Riley: Yeah, I did hear about this new tool that's like an [00:36:00] on counter composter, that's like silent and it like literally kind of turns everything into coffee grounds for you. Um. I'm sure I heard about it on a podcast, a little bit of a podcast junkie. But there is that, you know, like if you have a garden and you collect compost, like that is a useful way to repurpose your things that are going bad.

And then it doesn't feel like waste because it is going to be repurposed in your garden or it's gonna be repurposed as feed for your chickens or, whatever animals you might have. I mean, you know, within reason what animals would eat those kinds of things. But, it can just be, I mean, like you don't, it doesn't have to go in the trash,

Roni: Right. Yeah. I like

Riley: so I mean, even if you don't use compost, you might know someone who does

Roni: Yeah, that's so true.

All right, well it probably wraps us up for today, and thank you as always for listening. We will talk to you again in two weeks. [00:37:00]