Left~Overs what do you do with them?

[Rustic Pumpkin]

I invariably end up with something left at the end of a meal. The problem is coming up with recipes to make sure that the left overs get used. One of my favourites is mashed potato and swede refried the next day into a potato cake with a fried egg and baked beans. Simple, comfort food from heaven.

Plain vegetables can often find their way into a simple, quick soup, blitzed with a little milk and stock.

What ways do you have to use up left overs?

[Pippa]

You don't want to know what I can make a sandwich from.

[Crocus]

You can always tell Pippa! ;) xx

[Crocus]

If there's chicken leftovers, I sometimes add it to pasta with some kind of sauce. Or freeze it and use it together with other chicken a next time. Or in a cold chicken salad. Add some fried bacon bits, tomatoes, onions, cheese on lettuce. Do this with beef and lamb as well. Or stir fry the lamb or beef leftovers (cut into strips) with thinly sliced veggies - lovely. We love tomatoes very much in fact we eat it every day, and a make a tomato stew which the kids love. Should there be leftovers I will use the tomatoe juices in soup.

[Katelb]

Any beef left gets sliced and done with new potatos and salad the next day,any lamb gets minced and made into shepherds pie,an any chicken goes into a stir-fry of some kind.

[Oola]

Making leftover veg into a curry is another option - love it!

[Crocus]

Curry - yummy!!!

[souter girl]

I have always enjoyed being creative with left-overs - somehow that sounds like the cakes in Vicar of Dibley, but what is satisfying is the feeling of (almost) making something for nothing!! Used to have a wonderful book by Marika Hanbury -Tenison called "Left-over for tomorrow" which made you want to make double just so that you could have left-overs! Now it's becoming fashionable again, bit of a novelty being trendy - as if!

[sandybay]

That's true isn't it Souter Girl, we're just going back to the ways our parents and grandparents used. Those who lived throught the World Wars treated food as precious, particularly when men risked their lives bringing food in naval convoys at risk of u-boat attack.

Since we've moved so far out from a town, necessity has forced me to be careful. Often my husband will say 'mmm that was delicious' and my reply is that it's one of my 'what's in the fridge and storecupboard meals'.
But in order to be able to do that, mix bits and pieces and make a good meal, you need a basic understanding of cooking and what flavours and textures work together. Hopefully that will be being taught again in schools.