Fitness
9 ways to eat your leftovers and stop wasting food
More leftovers, more problems. Not anymore, guys! Here’s what to do with your leftovers – these 9 tips will help you transform old food into gold. Eat your meal prep … Read more
More leftovers, more problems. Not anymore, guys! Here’s what to do with your leftovers – these 9 tips will help you transform old food into gold. Eat your meal prep food even on the 5th day and be happy about it!
So today we originally thought we'd be doing an update on our 30-Day Morning Workout challenge, but we couldn’t stop thinking about leftovers.
Like, we've got a life.
We don’t know what it is, we couldn’t get this topic off our mind for a few days now, so we wanted to share how we deal with old food and leftovers.
For those of you who don’t know – we hate everything about old food.
via GiphyLeftovers, meal prep, frozen meals, eating the same thing for days in a row…Blah, we cannot stand it.
But we also hate throwing out food.
So we're always looking for ways to transform old food into gold.
And after million years of leftovers we became a master. The master of leftovers.
One time we even managed to make a salad with old French fries. We took it to work and ATE IT. Everyone was kinda “surprised”, but it actually wasn’t bad. AT ALL.
Nobel prize, here we come.
If it keeps in the fridge longer than 5 days, you probably shouldn’t eat
Here’s a little revelation we had a few weeks ago.
In June our dad was bringing us bags, BAGS of raspberries.
Which, we don’t know bout you, but we LOVE raspberries.
If we had to choose top 2 fruits out there: watermelon and raspberries. We'd be good with that. But we couldn’t manage to eat all those raspberries.
So many of them, so so many.
We felt bad putting them into a smoothie, we didn’t want to freeze them all, it was too hot for a cheesecake…
So we found out that within one day, even in the fridge, our raspberries were already bad. Fresh from the garden and then into mold. We could cry.
And then our dad told us something, we never, ever realized.
He said: “Good food is like that. It should spoil fast. It needs to be degraded in your body.“
That last part…See, we knew that, but somehow felt okay eating the store bought apple that survived on our counter after we came back from a month-long vacation.
“The original meal cannot be found”
Now, let’s get into what you can actually do with leftovers.
This will be especially helpful for those of you who try to meal prep and kinda hate it. Those of you who HATE, we repeat HATE leftovers.
These tips have worked for us wonderfully over the years and are probably why we cannot share more recipes on this site – we usually deal with leftovers for most of our week. Ain’t complaining though.
If you meal prep and get sick of eating the same thing every day, these tips will help you make something different and fresh in around 10 minutes!
Let’s reduce food waste and stay healthy at the same time.
Food safety: Our grandma who never had a fridge in her small house always said: “If the meat stinks, add some onion to it. It will take away the smell.” Well. As groundbreaking as this advice was, our grandma, even though a wise woman, wasn’t a food safety expert. Remember to not use food that already smells like it’s bad and rotting. If it has mold – nothing you can do. If your leftovers are 3-5 days old, they’re probably okay to eat.
9 Ways To Eat Your Leftovers
And Stop Wasting Food
1. Make Fried rice
Our Bulgur- Fried RiceHave some old rice and chicken? Quinoa with greens? Some cauliflower that’s DYING in your fridge?
Make fried rice – any version of it. You can rice that cauliflower in your food processor, everything else you use like that.
What you need is: 2-3 eggs, oil of your choice, soy sauce or a gluten-free alternative, onions, garlic and some leftover vegetables – carrots, peas, broccoli…
You want to start with frying the eggs, adding the onions & garlic, then vegetables, then soy sauce and then your grains/ cauliflower – Takes around 10 minutes and everyone loves this one. Unrecognizable.
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2. Anything can be made into “burger patties”
If you’ve got any leftovers, trust us, those can us made into patties.
Here we mixed the rice with fresh herbs and the leftover curry. SUPER DELICIOUS & FRESH. Did not have a problem eating those.All you have to do is put everything in your food processor, add fresh herbs, garlic, onion, spice, maybe oats, eggs or flax eggs to bind and you’re ready to let those fry! It’s simple and we've made this many many times.
3. Make More Spicy Dips
This is solid if you have any vegan lentil, chickpea, or vegetable recipe.
Heat it up, add some spice and blend everything until smooth! Adjust taste with fresh herbs, garlic and add oil if you need to.
We've made different hummus recipes like this and some bean dips. Right now we're seriously thinking about transforming our lentils into a dip.
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4. Make A Soup
Healthy vegan soup with lentils and broccoliEveryone loves soups, right? They’re satiating, they’re healthy, help you lose weight and they’re not salad. Depending on what you’re dealing with this will be different, but in the past we've made soup from ANYTHING – grilled chicken, chickpeas, beans, vegetables, quinoa, rice…
What you need is onion, spices like turmeric, cumin or coriander, maybe some broth, water, some oil, herbs & vegetables. You start by lightly sautéing the onion with oil and spices, then add broth/water and the rest of your ingredients including your leftovers. We like to add mint to soups, but this is a personal preference.
When done you can choose to leave the soup like this or blend.
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5. Transform An Old Soup Into a Satisfying Curry
You know what’s sometimes better than soup? Curry.
Curry has more flavor, is also satisfying and fresh.
What we do is, we take the soup, add curry paste to it, 1-2 tbsp (depends on the one you’re using), some coconut cream, fresh herbs and maybe some fresh veggies and peas and then lime leaves!
Lime leaves are a GAME CHANGER. Or lemon grass, but we like the lime leaves better. We add them at the end and the whole meal gets a fresh feel to it.
This won’t be great with tomato-based soups, but should work for most soups.
Related Article: Simple & Tasty Lentil Curry
6. Everything’s Different When You Add Tomato Sauce
Tomato and Basil Quinoa Risotto – Made with old quinoa and a zucchini in 10 minOkay, so if you have leftover meat, rice, beans, vegetables – anything is better with some fresh tomato sauce and basil. And if you add some cheese to it, you won’t regret it.
The recipe for the sauce is simple: fresh tomato, garlic, and some basil. Blend it and cook for 1-2 minutes. Then add whatever you’ve got.
We don’t think this will work well with Asian-type leftovers or heavily spiced meals.
Related Recipe: Tomato & Basil Quinoa Risotto
7. Make a stir-fry
This again is solid if you have single ingredients.
The recipe is simple: garlic, onions, the leftovers + fresh vegetables and herbs in the end. Satisfying!
8. The Leftover “Lasagna”
Another way to use up old food is making a casserole dish. This is not our favorite type, because then we will have a bigger meal using the old stuff. But sometimes it works.
9. Use Those Leftovers in Breakfast bakes/Muffins/Pancakes
Oatmeal Banana PancakesGot some overnight oats? Add some more fruit, eggs, baking soda and dry oats, coconut oil and bake into satisfying breakfast squares. This would result into something like our simple and tasty healthy banana bread.
Related Recipe: Simple Healthy Banana Bread
We hope these ideas help you make something satisfying out of your leftovers, so you don’t hate them (that’s what we tell myself). And if you have even more ideas – let us know, so we can add them to this list!
