When my now teenage boys were toddlers, leftover bits from meals were the perfect portion size to serve them for lunch the next day. When my now 10 year old daughter was a baby, I would puree leftovers for stage 3 baby food.
If we have some pancakes, egg in a hole, waffles, or french toast left over after a breakfast for dinner meal, we'll put them in our freezer where all of our kids can reach so they can heat them up for breakfast.
We also use ingredients leftover from the previous meal in another meal. This works well if you keep things separate when you serve the food like fajita chicken and peppers or taco meat and rice. I can put the fajita chicken meat with cheese in a tortilla and make quesadillas. I can re-use plain rice in a homemade fried rice meal. I can put taco meat and cheese on tortilla chips for a yummy nacho meal. We also use leftover eggs, bacon, sausage, and tater tots to make breakfast burritos.
Another fun thing for younger kids is making fruit and veggie faces! When my kids were under 6, we would do this a lot. You get out all of the remaining fresh fruits and veggies that need to get eaten, cut them up, wash them, and put them out on the table. Then the kids pick what they want to make the face on their plate. Here's some pictures of the process.
You can put leftover bits of meat and veggies into freezer bags labeled Kitchen Sink Soup or Leftover Soup. This used to be one of my families favorite ways to use up those leftovers. The only rule is that you don't mix the meats. Just have one bag with ham, chicken, turkey, beef, etc. Then add any leftover veggie bits to the bags and when you have a pot full's worth, dump the contents of that bag into a pot, add broth, and season to taste. It's never the same but always yummy!
When my husband is going into the office, he takes a leftover meal with him for lunch. It's no extra trouble to put a hamburger, taco, portion of spaghetti, etc. into a separate container when putting away food after dinner. It also saves us money of him buying a lunch. We keep various meal containers on hand to make doing this quickly very easy.
Side note about containers. Please don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good with this. I am going to show you two of the containers we use. Yes, they are both plastic. One was a hand me down when my grandma died several years back and I chose to use it in her memory instead of just throwing it away. The other is a nice Sistema container I bought when my kids were little. It will probably last another 10 years at least, can go into the freezer, microwave, dishwasher, etc. It is a work horse and high quality so I felt it was a good purchase. I also enjoy storing leftovers in mason jars but that is a little harder to send to work with my husband. We even use old lunch meat containers to store leftovers or send messy things like spaghetti with my husband for work. I would rather use those then just throw them away and go purchase something else. If you want to purchase some sort of glass or metal solution, by all means do, but please don't keep throwing your leftovers away because you want to avoid purchasing plastic. I would rather purchase something plastic that I can use to keep pounds of food out of the landfill than just throw the food away, ya know? That's all I'm saying.
We regularly have leftovers as a lunch once or twice during the week. I'll pull all the leftovers out and each family member gets to chose what they want to eat. We also do that for a diner if we notice we need a quick meal or notice the leftovers are piling up.
On that note, it is really important to keep up with your leftovers. We designated a spot in our garage fridge so they get eaten and don't get lost in the back.
I hope these tips have helped you! I will add to this list if I think of any more later.
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