Frugal Food #4: Loving Leftovers

Hand-in-hand with cooking and eating at home comes learning to use and love leftovers.  Allow me a few examples from my own kitchen:

Original Meal: 3.5 pound chicken, roasted in oven.  Mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, corn.
Leftovers: chicken carcass, approx 3 cups of meat picked off bones, 1/2 cup mashed potatoes with a few tablespoons of gravy, 1/4 to 1/3 cup of corn.
How to use: 2 cups meat becomes all the meat needed for a chicken pot pie.  Or chicken and dumplings.  Or chicken tetrazzini.  Or chicken fettuccine Alfredo.  1 cup meat and the chicken carcass are the base for chicken noodle soup. The gravy can be tossed into the soup for added flavor. The mashed potatoes can be formed into two patties and fried up to eat with a breakfast of eggs and toast.  Or mixed with the gravy (if not used for soup) and corn and heated up for a quick snack.  Or put into a lunch box as part of a school or work lunch.  The corn (if not eaten with the potatoes) can be put into cornbread batter for added appeal.

Original Meal: Easter ham (or any 4-5 pound ham for dinner).
Leftovers: ham bone, about 4 cups of meat, 1/2-1 cup pan drippings not made into gravy.
How to use: 2-3 cups meat for scalloped potatoes and ham.  Or slice thinly for sandwiches for lunches.  Or dice and add to omelets for breakfast, or for pizza toppings.  Note that you can freeze the cooked meat and use at a future date.  Use ham bone in split pea or bean soups.  Use the pan drippings and some meat as a base for a ham soup with assorted veggies.

Original Meal: Beef pot roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed carrots.
Leftovers: 2 cups meat, 1/2 cup carrots
How to use: meat can be used for sandwiches as is, or shred and add barbecue sauce for sandwiches (or over rice or boiled potatoes).  Or, use the meat in a beef barley soup.  Carrots can be part of a lunch, or added to a noodle dish for added color and flavor.

Original Meal: tacos with seasoned meat, refried beans, shredded cheese, lettuce, diced tomatoes, sour cream, salsa, etc.
Leftovers: 1 cup meat, 1/2 cup refried beans, 1/2 cup shredded cheese, some lettuce, salsa, sour cream.
How to use: if you have tortilla chips, you can make nachos with all of the above leftovers.  If no chips, the meat, beans, and cheese can be stirred together heated, and eaten like that for lunch.  The lettuce can become a small salad with the tomatoes and the addition of other veggies like carrots, celery, cucumbers, whatever you like.

Original Meal: Open house fare!  1 pig--approximately 200 pounds on the hoof--roasted, 20 pounds of potato salad, 16 pounds dried beans made into baked beans, salad, veggie tray, cake.
Leftovers: 1 large bowl potato salad, 1 large bowl salad, 1 large bowl baked beans, about 7 gallon bags worth of pork.
How to use: repeat of original meal!  Of course, you can only have that until the potato salad, salad, and beans are gone.  Then you still have all that pork!  I freeze it in gallon bags, then take out 1 bag at a time, usually 2-3 meals in each bag.  Here's some things we do with a bag of pork:  add BBQ sauce and make BBQ pork sandwiches.  Don't add BBQ sauce, and have regular pork sandwiches, LOL.  Dice and add to rice and veggies for a stir fry/fried rice type of dish.  Add BBQ sauce and serve over rice or boiled potatoes.  Use it in any recipe that calls for 'cooked, diced pork'.  Throw it in a soup made with tomato juice and whatever combination of veggies you have on hand. But, mostly we smother it in BBQ sauce and use it that way.

Any large quantity, say 1 cup or more, of pan drippings (aka 'meat juice' at this little place here), can be a soup starter.  I've made some awesome soups with 1.5 cups of 'juice' from a pork shoulder roast (which became shredded BBQ pork sandwiches), a few cups of added water and 1/4 to 2/3 cup each of assorted veggies on hand: corn, beans, peas, carrots, onion, potatoes, celery, etc.

Leftovers are great snacks, and lunch fare.  Most smaller quantities of leftovers at this little place here get used up in lunchboxes. DH has brown bagged it (actually, a small 6-pack sized cooler) to work for 18 years now, since getting out of college. My kids don't eat hot lunch at school, they eat whatever they pulled from the fridge or pantry at home (also toted in small coolers).

Larger quantities of things such as goulash, spaghetti, lasagna, soup and stew, pizza, casseroles, pot pies, etc are often put out on Sundays for an after church lunch buffet.  I line the dishes up on the counter, each member of my family puts dibs on something, we all get our preferred lunch, and the leftovers get eaten.