Katy, aka The Non-Consumer Advocate, aka Coin Girl, shared this one via Facebook:

Last night I made scalloped potatoes which included the mashed potatoes from Christmas. Tonight I made fettucine alfredo with the last of the whipped cream from Christmas. It turns out that adding obscene amounts of butter to leftovers is the key to palatability.

No food waste in 2012, but much cardiovascular disease.

Kudos to Katy for sacrificing her family’s health to use up those leftovers. Kidding!

While adding boatloads of butter to leftovers is certainly one way to use up your food, there are plenty of other options. What’s the American version of bubble and squeak? Hash?

Anyone have a leftover tale or tip?

And so, because a hefty portion of us will have done some Independence Day grilling, I hereby declare July 5 to be National French Freedom Toast Day. (Think of it as a cousin to National Leftovers Day, or as some people call it, the day after Thanksgiving.)

After all, what the heck else are you going to do with all those extra buns? Sure, you can have another cookout, or enjoy the buns with leftover proteins. But making French toast (even for dinner!) is another, lighter use for those baked goods.

To give full credit, I got the hamburger-bun-to-French-toast idea from The Bay Area’s Eco-Chef. And I had a pleasant experience doing the same with hot dog buns last year.

So I encourage you to give it a shot (or at least find another use for those buns). Do it for your budget, your pantry, or your country. Here’s to freedom and Freedom Toast!

A great question arose in the comments  from that post: Are there foods that taste better as leftovers? Or at least after sitting a day.

Janes’_kid breeched the topic with the suggestion of pasta sauce (homemade, of course). And Caroline wrote in with a classic suggestion–chili. But what else comes to mind?

Let’s try to come up with a solid list. After all, leftovers could use a little good press.

They’re economical, easy and environmentally friendly. That first adjective is pretty self-evident. If you’ve already paid for the food—whether eating in or out—you may as well use it.

As for easy, it doesn’t get much more convenient than taking leftovers for lunch the next day. They’re already packed, after all. (Be sure to pack lunch-sized containers the night before so I don’t look like a liar.) And if you’ve already put in the effort of deciding what to prepare, getting the ingredients and cooking it, why not put it all to use?

But did you know that using your leftovers is the green thing to do, too? A sizable amount of fossil fuel energy goes into growing, processing, transporting and cooling our food. When we don’t eat it, those resources were used in vain. Also, when food rots in a landfill, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas more than 20 times as potent a heat-trapper as CO2.

In the first sentence of the above paragraph, I wrote ‘using’ for a reason. Simply saving your leftovers, only to have them turn odd colors in your fridge doesn’t really help.

If you’re just not a leftover person (and refuse to see the light), it may make sense to prepare less food, maybe halving the recipe. Another idea is to try repurposing your leftovers into a new dish. In so doing, you get to exhibit a little creativity.

There’s a good chance many of you regulars here already love leftovers. Or at least like them. But if you don’t, now may be the time to reconsider—to preserve your money and time and our environment. [he steps down from the soap box]

Anyway, I have four leftover potato hot dog rolls and we need a break from hot dogs, sausages and the like. Since I’m not confident that I can get a decent lobster in North Carolina, lobster rolls are out.

So, in short, HELP! Without your ideas, I’ll be having peanut butter & banana rolls all week. OK, maybe not. I can think of a few other moves, mostly involving butter and garlic, but I’d like to throw the question out to you resourceful readers. What do you do with extra hot dog buns?

And while we’re on the topic, here’s an amazing homemade contraption that allows one to toast buns without the dreaded break-in-half.

On the heels of that fruitful exercise, I thought it’d be fun to start a recurring feature that lets readers help other readers give new life to their leftovers. Hence, ”Life to Leftovers.” You send in your pleas for help (with a photo, if possible) and I’ll post them. Send your ideas to wasted food at gmail dot com.

We’ll start off easy. Leigh (aka Calimama) from Compact By Design wrote in with this question:

I have a can of white cake icing in my fridge.  We don’t do a lot of super sweet desserts and I don’t bake. We tend not to keep cake and such around. 

The icing itself is pretty much a container of sugar.  Delicious in that “I love sugar” kid mentality but not something I need to be taking spoonfuls of.  So, I would make a box mix, but then it would sit here.  And I’d feel guilty if I didn’t eat it.  And I’d feel guilty if my husband did.  And my toddler would be more squirrely than he already is.

Of course, I could make a cake and take it somewhere.  Although most of my friends wouldn’t be terribly thrilled with that delivery, for all the same reasons.  I was just curious what ideas someone would come up with for such an odd item just taking up space in the fridge. Hate to throw it out but what to do?

OK, so we’re looking for a non-cake use for icing. And for those of you with minds more savory than sweet, Leigh has another query:

I also have some freezer-burned chicken. I have 3 chicken strips with pretty bad burn (2 days in uncovered) and 2 huge boneless breasts with mild burn.  I know, I did it again. I am so ashamed I can hardly admit it.  I should spend all my kitchen time sleeping and then these things
won’t happen.

Freezer-burned chicken, anyone?