Are you throwing away valuable food that can be put to good use? Even the smallest of leftovers, the most overripe of fruit and the remains of a meal can be used deliciously for meal prep. If you make it a habit to use everything you have, you will shave your food budget by at least 25 percent (the amount of food that generally goes to waste in American households). Here are three ideas for cooking what we have, based on my adventures in the kitchen this morning.
I find that weekends are a good time to take stock of any food that is laying around doing nothing. Everyone else is generally sleeping in, and there are no early morning schedules. The one problem with doing this on a weekend is that my husband tends to have a Friday evening fridge fit, in which he decides to clean out the refrigerator for some strange reason. Luckily, he has learned to ask me before tossing anything out.
So, here it is on Saturday morning, and I am taking advantage of food items that others might have thrown out.
First of all, I have some chicken stock simmering on the stove. This consists of the following free or almost free ingredients: Water, chicken bones, carrots past their prime, celery, a bay leaf and some ginger. The stock will cook down on the stove and then be used for soup or as a recipe ingredient.
Next, I have three bananas that have over-ripened and turned black. Normally, bananas are lucky to last two days in our home, but for some reason these three got overlooked. Rather than tossing them out, you guesses it, I’ll turn them into banana bread.
And finally, here is a little item that my husband was about to throw out, since he couldn’t imagine what I would do with it, let alone what it was. The item in question was a bit of home made pie crust dough wrapped in plastic wrap. This was left over from the two turkey pot pies I made earlier in the week. Today, I will roll it out and fill it with a tiny container of leftovers in the fridge, otherwise too small to keep. My folding it over and sealing it, we’ll have a nice lunch-sized “hot pocket” that can make a nice meal.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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