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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to cook to make leftovers.
There are very few scenarios in life where it is possible to save both time and money.
But by making a little extra and cooking things that keep well, it is possible to do both and perhaps even eat better than you otherwise would.
Because I work from home, I am responsible for procuring my lunch each day.
Going out to buy something would take a fair amount of time.
Ordering in would be quite expensive.
I can cook, of course, but I am usually trying to cram in as much as possible before my kids get home from school.
This is why I love eating leftovers.
I can just heat something up quickly and I will eat something tastier than if I were eating a bowl of cereal or a peanut butter sandwich.
It is also sometimes nice for dinners to cook once and then get to eat a second dinner with minimal effort.
So in my house, Wednesdays in particular tend to be a night where we cook to generate a lot of leftovers.
Ideally, this is something hearty, like chili, that can then be reheated multiple times.
My lunches for Thursday, Friday, and sometimes Saturday are then set.
I also love when we manage to do something like grill a bunch of steaks on Saturday.
This then can turn into dinner on Sunday with some repurposing.
Cook once and eat twice or more is a great philosophy for life.
This seems straightforward enough, and indeed, cook enough for leftovers is pretty common advice.
However, I know many people have trouble making this work in real life.
That's because cooking for leftovers does require an added level of meal and schedule planning.
That isn't always straightforward.
Schedules can be chaotic or shift from week to week.
Not all foods keep well or seem appetizing after a day or two.
And judging quantities can be an uncertain business.
If you make a lot of leftovers and wind up throwing them away, then you have wasted both time and money.
But fortunately, this planning isn't too hard.
You just need to take a realistic look at your schedule and choose what you cook carefully to make sure the leftovers are palatable and can be enjoyed in various ways.
First, there is schedule awareness, and not just at the day-to-day level.
I generally look at my week and figure out which nights are going to involve lots of people eating and which are not.
If my husband and I were going out for a Sunday night dinner, for instance, then it might not be worthwhile to cook extra on Saturday, because the kids would be happy on Sunday with mac and cheese.
If I am traveling, no one will be eating the leftovers designated for lunch, as my husband works in an office and my kids are at school.
In your family too.
It might be helpful to identify for which meals eating leftovers would be a good option and when this just doesn't make sense.
You can then choose which nights you will cook and how much, based on there being a spot for leftovers afterwards.
As in, you see that Monday and Tuesday are both nights when people are home, so you plan to cook enough on Monday to mostly cover Tuesday.
Or you see that you are working from home on certain days like Wednesday and Thursday.
And you see that you will be home on Tuesday night.
And so you will cook enough on Tuesday to cover your lunches the next two days.
As for what you cook, this requires some strategy.
But I think there are generally two approaches here.
One is to cook something that you can eat mostly as is a second or third time.
This works for things like chili or a slow cooker chicken dish that you eat with rice, or something like that.
These foods don't go immediately mushy as leftovers.
If desired, you can eat something different for a side dish the second time, if you particularly value variety.
The other approach is to cook a lot of a base ingredient and then incorporate that into meals in different forms over the next few days.
If you're going to try to get two dinners out of leftovers, this might be the best approach, as your crowd won't complain about getting the same dinner twice if it isn't actually the same dinner.
So the other night, we grilled steaks on Saturday, which we ate with veggies and baked potatoes.
Then Sunday night was steak fajita night.
Wrapped in tortillas with some veggies and guacamole and salsa, the steak got its celebrated encore.
This would work with any sort of protein, chicken, pork, what have you.
All of these could get a second life, as fajitas are with sauce, and pasta are mixed with eggs and veggies, or stir-fried with veggies and topped with some sort of exciting sauce.
There is a little prep work, but not a ton of prep work.
Dinner is often ready in 15 minutes in these cases.
And finally, to make all this happen, you need to cook more than you need for one meal, and enough to cover the additional meals the leftovers are designated for.
This does involve some guessing if you don't have a career in, say, food service.
But like anything, you can experiment here.
I have multiple teenagers in my house.
So food cooking feels like an industrial process over here, and the answer is always cook more.
But if you have fewer or smaller people, you can just try cooking what feels like enough for two meals and then see.
Aim for a second meal that has got some flexibility.
Something like fajitas can often be bulked up with veggies if the protein is more scant than you assumed it would be.
After dinner number one
And if you made more than you need for dinner number two, you could just use that as a protein in breakfast someday, when you are around.
People often resolve to save money and eat more healthfully in the new year.
Eating leftovers can certainly help with that.
You are not spending money on eating out.
And if your dinner's involved say vegetables, eating leftovers for lunch means your lunch will involve vegetables, which might not have been the case at a fast food place.
Eating leftovers saves time too, since you don't have to cook as often or run out to a restaurant to get a meal.
But it does involve a little planning.
So maybe that can be the resolution for the year.
Figuring out that piece can make meals better all around.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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