Last year readers enjoyed sharing what they had in their refrigerators after the holiday, so I thought I would ask again. Remember, you don’t have to be after a major holiday to play.

I’ll start off by sharing what’s on my stove. I put up a pot of soup to preserve some of the leftovers. So far it includes onions, a leek, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, parsley, tomato, and some cooked black-eyed peas along with their cooking water.

My refrigerator still contains:

• 5 ripe avocados.
• a small piece of cooked salmon
• a few yellow bell peppers
• a handful of mushrooms
• parsley
• hard-boiled eggs
• enough Chicken with Black Olives and Tomatoes for dinner tomorrow night
• a few cooked potatoes and sweet potatoes to go with the chicken
• a half-cup of Beets Marinated with Ginger and Garlic
• a whole cabbage
• a few ripe bananas, which I am contemplating freezing.

All in all, not bad. At worst the avocado might develop a few brown spots that we’ll remove, and the rest will keep or get eaten soon.

Tomorrow I’m planning to make and freeze potato kugel (pudding) with some sorry-looking specimens.  The potatoes and ripe avocadoes are the result of buying from a group order.

In case you’re curious how my Rosh Hashanah menu worked out, in the end we made quinoa with mushrooms instead of the stuffed cabbage. It just seemed too complicated at the time. The family was happy with the lighter but less traditional menu.

So be brave, tell us what’s in there!

Jonathan Bloom isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty as he examines American food waste from all angles, literally.  In his new book, American Wasteland, Bloom convinces us that food waste is a huge—but solvable—environmental and economic issue.

I enjoyed Bloom’s trek through American farms, schools, restaurants, highways, groceries, homes, and landfills to see first-hand where 50% of edible American food gets wasted.

People think that because food is biodegradable, it’s okay to toss it onto the ground. But food waste contributes significantly to global warming. It emits methane, which gradually releases carbon dioxide into the air. Organic waste is especially detrimental when it sits in landfills,  where it can emit methane for generations. And as recycling increases, a higher percentage of landfills consist of organic materials.

A big part of the solution involves treating food waste and landfills in an ecologically sound way, by capturing methane from landfills and moving toward anaerobic digestion to dispose of food waste. But aside from working to change public policy, what can the average consumer do to prevent waste?

Retailers don’t make it easy, by doing everything they can to convince you to buy more than necessary. If you live alone,  you can’t always find half a loaf of bread or a pint of milk. In some stores like Costco, you can’t buy less than a package of twenty oranges. Then there are sales that encourage you to buy one, get one free.In Great Britain, where the government is making a serious effort to reduce waste, retailers advertise “Buy one, get one later” and pass out a voucher.

In a book full of memorable anecdotes, two stood out for me. Bloom visited an elementary school in Quitman, Alabama, one of the poorest school districts in the US. Sitting with kids in the lunchroom at 11 am (!), the kids threw out more than they ate. No surprise, since they had already been served a free breakfast at 9 am. Lunch consisted of four corn-dog nuggets, a cookie, a serving of corn niblets and a four-ounce cup of peach slices. School lunch waste is a country-wide problem. Research clearly shows serving lunch  after recess results in 30% less waste. Yet only 5% of elementary schools do so.

At the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, Bloom compiles a list of the refrigerator contents of a childless couple who describe themselves as “foodies.”

And all that was on a single shelf! The complete list takes up four pages of the book.

Bloom made the point that today’s large refrigerators encourages waste. When he went to Great Britain to see their campaign to cut consumer food waste, he visited Barbara Wormsley, the “Green Granny.” She is part of Britain’s campaign to buy less and eat leftovers.  Warmsley doesn’t didn’t think of herself as an environmentalist, but she did grow up in a generation when throwing out food was bad form. He was impressed with her narrow refrigerator.

With a big refrigerator, we “lose” food, and we buy more than we need. Bloom suggested that a larger fridge means we won’t have to remove things to make room for new purchases. I disagree, since one should try to put off grocery shopping until the fridge is fairly empty. As Bloom pointed out repeatedly, we consistently choose the freshest food and neglect older items until they get spoiled.

The preference for perfectly fresh and beautiful food also explains the colossal amounts of food waste long before it gets to the store, because the produce has been judged too small, brown or misshapen for American consumers.

To learn more about food waste see my comments on Bloom’s book at the Middle Eastern environmental blog, Green Prophet.com.

Jonathan Bloom also writes a blog called Wasted Food. Last year he published my guest post on Thanksgiving cooking,  Be Thankful, Not Wasteful.

Related posts:
Do You Need a Second Freezer?

Ten Tips for Cutting the Cost of Running Your Refrigerator

Ten Kid-Friendly Foods that Use Leftovers

On the Cooking Manager Facebook page (have you joined yet?), reader Deena asks:

I made lots of gazpacho and it didn’t go at all. Any ideas of what I could do with it so it doesn’t go to waste?

Gazpacho is a tomato-juice based cold soup that includes chopped raw vegetables, herbs and spices. After I gave Deena some suggestions for using it, she responded, OK so let me just say I still don’t know what to do with it! I mean, all interesting ideas but I imagine changing its form and it still just being blah.

Deena hit on a problem many of us have with leftovers. We’re dealing with feelings as well as food. How upsetting to spend time making a special dish for guests, to find they don’t appreciate it.

Deena might also be concerned about making something new out of the gazpacho, and ending up throwing it away. Sometimes home cooks do have to cut their losses and throw things out. Also, gazpacho is commonly recommended as a way to use up leftover salad. Leftovers from leftovers are no fun.

But as long as the gazpacho isn’t spoiled, we can jazz it up for another dish. All that tomato and green vegetable goodness is still there. The question is how to draw it out. The trick is to think of leftover food as a gift toward future meals, and a challenge.

A search of internet forums found some creative answers to the leftover gazpacho question. They say that freezing or cooking the cucumber and lettuce don’t affect the quality, but you can puree the gazpacho if you like before using it.

How to Use Up Leftover Gazpacho

1. Salsa. Add Mexican spices and serve with chips.
2. Pasta Sauce. If you like, add spices, meat, cheese or beans. Or saute onions and mushrooms, then add the gazpacho.
3. Grains. Use instead of all or part of the cooking water for rice, quinoa or bulgur.
4. Soups and stews. Think of the gazpacho as a textured vegetable stock, to use as a base for rich soups and stews.
5. Sauce for fish or chicken. Add lemon juice or spices.
6. Save in small portions. If you have a lot of gazpacho, freeze in small portions for adding to any of the above. That way, it won’t overwhelm any one recipe.

It may be too late for Deena’s gazpacho, but I hope these ideas will help readers. Readers, please feel free to share your own leftover challenges.

You may also enjoy:

When Using Up Leftovers Is a Waste of Resources

13 Smart Ways to Manage Your Leftovers

Three Reasons We Throw Away Food

Photo credit: rusvaplauke

Reader Ariela sent me this message:

I had a “Cooking Manager Moment” yesterday and I “owe” dinner to you. All we had leftover was the sauce from a goulash. My husband had made a delicious goulash with meat and veggies, only 2-3 cups of the sauce were left. I remembered something you wrote about your mom making soup from things like that and your recommendations for using drippings. I put the sauce in the pressure cooker with 4 cut-up carrots, a sweet potato, water, a cup of split peas, a cup of whole grain rice and some salt. It took all of 7 minutes. I cooked it for about 40 minutes and had a delicious soup – my family licked the pot clean!

Thank you!

Meat drippings or gravy already has plenty of protein. That’s what makes it congeal. The split peas, added by Ariela, contain even more. So there’s no need to add additional meat. I did something similar with my leftover gravy, except I added a butternut squash, carrots, split peas, and some cooked bulgur with onions.

To calculate cooking times, start with the ingredient that takes the longest time to cook. In both Ariela’s recipe and mine, the split peas take the longest, about 40 minutes. When cooking in the pressure cooker, divide by three. So as soon as the cooker signals that the pressure is right, 15 minutes should be enough cooking time.

The amount of water to add can be tricky. A good estimate would be about double the amount of raw grains and legumes. So if you put in half a cup of raw brown rice and half a cup of dried peas, add an extra 2 cups of water. If you are starting off with thin sauce, you’ll need less additional water. If most of the liquid is absorbed by the grains, call it risotto instead of soup.

You may also enjoy:

A Week of Weekday (Vegetarian) Meals)

Foods for Putting Quick Meals Together

Spanish Rice with Variations

Coupon Coup or Frugal Folly?

Photo credit: Jessica Mullen

If you cooked a lot of Rosh Hashanah food, you probably have a lot of leftovers in the fridge. Let’s see if we can keep them from being thrown out.

I’ll be brave and admit share what I have left. You don’t have to be Jewish to play–just open the fridge and tell us what’s inside.

Are you ready?

• a cup of mango salsa
• a cup of carrot-apple salad
• half a chicken breast in lots of sauce
• 3 cups of cholent with little meat
• a few meatballs
• half a dozen cooked potatoes
• a cooked sweet potato
• rice with eggplant, but I’m afraid that is already on its way out.
• marinated beet salad
• a cup of chard cooked with onion and garlic
• half a cup of techina (sesame dressing)
• several cups of lettuce salad

That doesn’t include some chicken soup, which I’ve put in the freezer, and part of a challah. On the plus side, I don’t have many raw vegetables that will be going bad soon. I ran out of carrots for the first time in ages.

There were quite a few dishes that did get finished up, but I can’t think of them right now.

I have five kids at home this week, including three teens. The thing I’m most concerned about is the potatoes. Some of the food was cooked on Friday so it’s safer. I’ll probably make one meal from the leftovers tonight, and put the chicken sauce, leftover stew and potatoes into a soup.

What about you?

You’re a good cook when you can make a delicious dish from fresh ingredients. But creating something new based on  leftovers is especially satisfying. Those of us who value frugality and conservation are proudest when our unique leftover-inspired creation are enjoyed by everyone in the family.

Every home cook has to manage leftovers one way or another. Serving leftovers as they are is the easiest and often the tastiest. But when they aren’t enough for a whole meal, or you suspect there won’t be takers, leftovers can  enhance your next cooking project.

Never try to recycle food that is starting to spoil.  Spoiled food cannot be salvaged. You will ruin the entire dish and risk getting everyone sick. Always examine food carefully, and heat leftovers thoroughly before serving.

Need help with organizing your leftovers? See Thirteen Smart Ways to Manage Your Leftovers

Follow the links for more detailed recipes.

1. Soups. Good for vegetables or fruits (but not usually together), meat, fish, bones from fresh or cooked meat or fish, drippings, wine, sauces, cooked or raw grains and legumes. Soups made from cooked leftovers will need more flavor so include meat or vegetable stock, fresh vegetables or herbs. You can also add the new soup to the end. When making soup, add meat bones, then add fresh vegetables, cooked meats or vegetables, and fresh herbs.
2. Patties. You can use cooked grains, meat, raw and cooked vegetables. Grated raw onions will jazz up any patties, and a couple of eggs will hold it all together. Read my universal recipe, How to Make Patties from Anything and Everything.
3. Quiche. Good for small amounts of milk or cheese and cooked vegetables, fish or meat. You can make a fine quiche with eggs, vegetables and herbs but no cheese. The crust can be made with leftovers, or skipped altogether.
4. Wraps, tortillas, calzones, pizza, pita. Any kind of freshly baked dough will revive interest in leftovers, especially stews, meats, legumes and vegetables.
5. Chili, stews, and casseroles. Add vegetables, beans, meats, and small amounts of soups or sauces. Small-grained cereals like cooked or raw oats, bulgur, or farina add texture and won’t be noticeable in stews. Or base your casserole on rice or pasta, add vegetables, eggs and some seasoning.
6. Baked goods: Fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains can be added to bread dough, muffins and pancakes. Pie, anyone?
7. Sauces for pasta or rice can be made from leftover vegetables. White sauce can take any vegetable and then made into a cream soup.
8. Puddings or kugels. Leftover bread and cooked fruit make a great pudding. A kugel is a vegetable pudding and freshens up tired fresh or cooked vegetables. Grate or mash the vegetables, add eggs, salt and pepper, and bake in an oil-lined pan until brown on top.
9. Potato cakes. These are good for recycling leftover cooked potatoes, which usually don’t freeze well.
10. Salads. Chicken, beans, and cooked vegetables all add interest to a fresh vegetable salad.

Related:  Foods for Putting Quick Meals Together

What creative ways have you cooked with leftovers? You can share your failures, too!

On the Cooking Manager Facebook page (have you “liked” it yet?) I asked readers to share ideas for leftover chicken in response to Aviva Hadas’  comment on 13 Smart Ways to Manage Your Leftovers.

Leftover chicken, especially white meat (the kind that is usually left behind in my house), requires special care. Because white meat has less fat than dark, it dries out quickly and loses flavor. The trick is to replace the moisture along with a little bit of fat. Add the chicken at the end if you can, so it will get hot but not cook any more than necessary.

Here are some ideas shared by readers, and I’ll add another of my own.

1. Fajitas and chicken salad–(Frayda)
2. Chicken pasta primavera, chicken risotto, empanadas (turnovers), stir-fry, chicken pot pie (Viviana)
3. I make a skillet dish. Saute onions, then add garlic, oregano, 2 cans diced tomatoes, 2 cans low sodium chicken broth and leftover chicken – once you have simmering, I break up uncooked spaghetti noodles into thirds and cover – cook until noodles done – stirring occasionally. Serve with garlic bread. (Barbara)

You could also make shepherd’s pie, which is a layer of finely chopped sauteed vegetables mixed with chicken, and topped by a layer of mashed potatoes. Bake in the oven as a casserole.

Add some of the drippings from the chicken to add flavor to the meat (here’s how to save and store the leftover drippings).

I had a crowd over the weekend and have some chicken breasts left over. I roasted the chickens whole, and they are tenderer than when I roast them in pieces. I plan to cut up the leftovers for chicken salad, and cook the carcasses in the crock-pot with vegetables.

More posts on leftover chicken:

Adventures in Holiday Leftovers

Three Reasons We Throw Away Food

Spanish Rice

Please share more ideas in the comments. And Viviana and Frayda, I am sure that readers would enjoy more detailed recipes. I’ll eventually post the shepherd’s pie recipe.

Every home cook has to deal with leftovers.  In a small household, fewer people are around to eat them, and one person’s change in schedule throws everything off. In a larger household, bigger quantities are the challenge.

As always, advance planning is the key to saving time and money. Over the years I’ve used these techniques to get a handle on  leftover food.

1. Change your attitude. If the idea of leftovers depresses you, call it cooking in advance. Cooked food in the fridge is a blessing, not a trial.
2. Plan menus with leftovers in mind. Salads can’t be frozen, nor can mashed potatoes. You have more leftover options with meal components than with a complete dish, but there’s nothing wrong with serving the same thing twice in a row. Start thinking about how you can adjust recipes to incorporate leftover foods you have on hand.
3. Pay attention to quantities. It’s easy to overcook, especially when you have company.
4. Be flexible. Having a set menu and shopping list makes it hard to use up leftovers. A flexible plan with daily adjustments works best.
5. Store leftovers in small portions. Smaller amounts won’t overwhelm another dish.
6. Or use larger portions as the basis for your next meal. Use it in something else, or serve as is. If it’s not enough for a complete meal, complement with a rich soup or side dish, or frozen leftovers from an earlier meal.
7. Keep leftovers in the refrigerator, if you can use them in the next few days. You’ll see it and it will be accessible without defrosting.
8. Keep a container in the freezer for scraps of meat, broth, and vegetables. When you have a good amount, you can use it as a base for soup. When adding more than a small amount to a container, refrigerate first so the frozen items won’t get defrosted.
9. Set a spot in your refrigerator for foods you need to use up quickly. A turntable works well. Train yourself to inspect the refrigerator when planning a menu or shopping list.
10. Prepare leftovers for the next meal right away. For example, discard skin and bones from chicken you’ll be adding to a soup.
11. Seal food tightly and cool quickly. Reboil soups and sauces if they have been out for a while. Follow these guidelines for storing foods and helping them last longer.
12. Keep a variety of containers handy. You can reuse food containers with covers, like from cottage cheese, coffee, or jam. Zippered bags work well, and can be washed and reused.
13. Learn to cook with recipes that incorporate leftovers. I’ll give ideas in a future post.

What techniques do you use to avoid throwing away leftovers?

Photo credit: MoToMo

Banana Flower

Tesyaa left this comment on Why You Should Eat Everything on Your Plate:

Another thing about waste – quite often I’ve tried to avoid waste by making, say, a banana bread with overripe bananas, or using up rice in some other type of dish. Those items use energy to cook, and use other ingredients. If there is no real need for banana bread, making it to use up old bananas just wastes oil, eggs, sugar, & flour.

To me, avoiding foood “waste” is only helpful if it frees up other food items. If not, it’s not doing anyone any good.

I’m not sure what you mean when you write “there is no real need for banana bread.” If your family will eat the banana bread instead of something else you were planning to cook, bake or buy, I don’t see the problem. If it means they will eat the banana bread in addition to what you usually serve, i.e. unneeded calories, I see your point.

I think it all comes down to an ability to regulate our appetite and not overeat. If finishing the last bite on your plate, means you will eat less at the next meal, that’s fine. But if it means adding calories you don’t need over the course of the day, cut down serving portions until you find the smallest amount that satisfies you.

If you don’t need or want banana bread, put the soft bananas in the freezer for when you do, or make smoothies. If you know you won’t use them, I give you permission to throw them out!

It’s the same with the rice. Rice is easy to add to soup or a main course, which becomes part of the next meal. You’ve already paid for the rice so why not use it up? I’m not sure I understand why you would use rice in something you are not going to eat. Are you saying it’s more efficient to serve it on the side at the next meal? If so, I agree. But it doesn’t take much extra energy to add the rice to a casserole instead.

Avoiding food waste is an art and each family will have its own approach. If you have no use for soft bananas, only buy as many as you’ll eat in a short time (hint: they keep longer in the refrigerator). When cooking, be realistic about leftovers and plan accordingly. Sometimes the dish we make with leftovers is successful and sometimes not. With time and practice we can all make improvements.

Here are some recipes you shouldn’t make with leftovers. (Hat tip: Yonit)

If you enjoyed this post you may also like:

Adventures in Holiday Leftovers

My Mother’s Re-Recycled Meat Soup

Nine Tips to Help Food Last Longer

“Finish everything on your plate!” That mantra from Mom has gone out with the leftover corn flakes. Over the years we’ve learned that forcing children to eat can lead to eating disorders.

But Mom had a good reason. By the time it gets to your plate food that has been grown, watered, picked, transported, processed, packaged, stored and cooked. Whenever we throw out food, we also waste a portion of the resources that went into getting it onto our plates.

And I don’t need to remind anyone that wasting food costs your family money. If only one person in the family leaves just half a teaspoon of oatmeal each day, you’ll throw out more than 11 cups over the course of a year.

But there is yet another reason to scrape that last bit of food off your plate. Think about where that rice, barley or potato will go next. I’m not even talking about the landfill, just within your own kitchen.

Let’s say you rinse off the bowl in the sink. Forget about the extra water, because maybe you saved it from an earlier dish-washing session. Those grains of oatmeal go into your sink and you will have to scoop them out. I bet that’s not your favorite job. Or they might end up in the dishwasher filter. A better option is to scrape it right into the garbage. But it will start to smell and require attention eventually. If it doesn’t have dairy or meat I guess you can add it into the compost pile, I guess, but putting in edible food kind of defeats the purpose.

So however you look at it, you have to deal with these scraps once or even twice before they’re gone for good. Teach your kids to scrape their plates at the end of their meal. That extra half teaspoon won’t make them fat. Then you can wipe the plate with a sponge and the smaller particles will go right into the drain,  never to be seen again.

If your family members regularly leave large amounts of food, start serving smaller portions. Train them to be aware of how much they actually eat.

The same principle applies to cooking and serving utensils. If you leave that oatmeal in the bowl or pot, it will dry into a rock. Then it will need soaking and scrubbing, and you will again end up fishing remnants out of the sink or dishwasher. But if those scraps gets eaten, or put away with the leftovers, the pot or bowl can go right into the dishwasher. You might not even want to bother, as it’ll be so little trouble to wash.

To make scraping pleasant, keep an inexpensive plastic spatula on hand.

If you enjoyed this post you might also like:

Eleven Tips for Painless Kitchen Cleanup

Extremely Frugality: Twenty Memories of My Mother

Avoid the Emergency Run to the Store