Leftovers. Convenient or a pain in the backside? Well, it depends on who you ask. For the person who doesn't have time to cook and looks forward to just opening up the fridge and pulling out yesterday's meat loaf, it's a Godsend. But for the person who's fridge is stuffed to the gills and he doesn't have a place to put the stuff, it could be a total nightmare, especially if you're the type of person who doesn't like to throw out food because of all the starving people in the world. And then of course there is the boredom of eating the same thing night after night after night. Well, your leftover problems are a thing of the past. Below, you will find a few tips to make leftovers a minor problem at worst. For those who don't have the room in the fridge to put the leftovers, especially after a big party, there is one very simple solution. Give the food away. If your guests enjoyed your meat loaf then there is no reason why they can't take some of it home with them. In the case of things like leftover sheet cake, which is always a problem after a party, you simply cut it up into smaller blocks and give it to people to take home. If they don't want it, no problem. Having cut the cake up into smaller blocks, this will make it easier to store the cake in the fridge, which will be necessary when you're dealing with whipped cream frosting. If people aren't thrilled about taking your food home with them, you can always try the cake trick with the food itself. Just because you had one dish of meat loaf and another dish of baked ziti, doesn't mean that you can't put what's left of them both on a plate together. Don't worry, they won't fight. This will save quite a bit of room in the fridge especially if you have a number of things you can consolidate. For those of us where room in the fridge is not the problem but we just don't want to eat the same thing night after night, there is a solution to that problem as well. Riddle. When is ham not ham? When it's ham. If that sounds confusing, let me explain. Let's say you're throwing a graduation party for your daughter and you decide to have a bunch of deli platters. You order enough food for 50 people but only 35 show up. At the end of the night you find out that you have enough deli left over to start your own delicatessen. What do you do? Well, if you've got enough room in the fridge, bring it home in plastic bags. Stuff like turkey, ham and roast beef will have to be used quickly. Things like hard salami will stay longer so there's not an immediate rush to eat it. Now to answer the riddle of when a ham is not a ham. Deli ham is great with mustard on rye bread. But did you know that you can also take it, put a little cinnamon on it and surround it with pineapple and throw it in the oven? Guess what? When you take it out, it tastes nothing like the ham you had on rye with mustard. You just made yourself a new meal. Add some veggies and you're set. What about the roast beef that's also great on a sandwich? Don't want to eat roast beef sandwiches for a week? No problem. Go to the market, get some gravy master and throw that roast beef in the oven. Won't taste anything like the roast beef you had the day before. There are many ways to get creative with leftovers. You just have to have a little imagination. |
