Tag Archives: leftovers

Easy Leftover Solution: Make Kitchen Sink Fried Rice

It’s the end of the week, I have a strange collection of misfit leftovers, and all I want is a comforting (and cohesive!) dish. Enter: Kitchen Sink Fried Rice.
eating stir fry

Stir-fry can be so forgiving and allow you to throw in almost anything you have on hand. I’ve found my favorite hodgepodge ingredients to combine, but feel free to let your imagination run wild! Have some greens wilting in the back of the fridge? Throw them in! Questionable lentils from last week? Throw them in! Old bag of frozen peas? …Well, you get the idea.

First of all, I have my brown rice cooked ahead of time—that’s the first leftover I’m looking to repurpose! You can also use an instant brown rice to cook the day-of and save on some wait time. Rice n Simple is a brand we’ve tried and enjoy; makes things super easy!

Rice n Simple

While many prefer the taste of white rice to brown, the nutritional benefits of brown rice (extra fiber, vitamins, and minerals) make it clearly superior and the other yummy flavors of this dish help hide the taste of the brown rice.

This is one of my go-to recipes because of it’s flexibility and freedom for it to be different each time. Here are the key steps I’ve stuck with so far: (more…)

3 Easy and Tasty Ways to Eat Through Your Stash of Easter Eggs

Easter is all about eggs. And while your household may have an easy time snacking on the various candy eggs that made their way into your house (chocolate eggs, jelly bean eggs, etc.), good old chicken eggs may be slower to move.

We love eating hard-boiled eggs as a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack—they’re a tasty blend of protein and fat which is why diets like The Royal Danish Diet and The Paleo Diet recommend them. But we also know that eating eggs a la carte can get a little old. Rather than slog through another uninspiring bite, try out one of these simple recipes which calls for hard-boiled eggs.

cobb-salad

Chicken and Apple Cobb Salad: The apples and avocados in this tasty salad add flavor and extra nutrients. Plus it’s gorgeous! (See above.) (more…)

Cumin Scrambled Egg Breakfast Tacos Save Your Morning with Taco Night Leftovers

Taco night is a favorite at our house, but there is always more cilantro than we can use. While I have a few other recipes that call for it as garnish, my favorite use is adding it to cumin scrambled eggs in the morning. This breakfast recipe is great for any taco leftover you might have or just for a different take on eggs. The cumin adds a warm flavor to breakfast which is wonderful, especially on snowy winter mornings.

breakfast tacos
If you have fresh onion and garlic, cook it in a skillet with a bit of avocado oil or lard until soft; your kitchen will smell fantastic. I have used onion powder and garlic powder in the eggs as well, but nothing beats fresh if it is still on hand after your previous night’s taco dinner.

sautee-onions
Prep scrambled eggs for your family, adding a dash of paprika and approximately half a teaspoon of cumin per egg to the whisked egg and (almond) milk. If you don’t have fresh, don’t forget to add onion powder and garlic powder as well. I also enjoy a dash of red pepper, but my son finds it too spicy; I just add mine right before serving. (more…)

No Waste Ideas for Leftover Easter Eggs

Peter Cottontail has hopped all the way down the bunny trail leaving you with an abundance of brightly colored hard-boiled eggs. Seeing the fridge full of the fluorescent eggs can leave you feeling a little intimidated and at a loss of what to do with them all. Rather than throwing them out, try some of these ideas to get the most out of leftover Easter eggs.

Deviled Eggs. This dish and Easter go together like turkey sandwiches and Thanksgiving. This recipe from SparkPeople uses Greek yogurt as a substitute for the usual mayonnaise, making them a lighter version of the side dish. The dye from the shells will stain the egg whites a little, making post-Easter deviled eggs prettier than their less festive counterparts. (more…)

The Ultimate Thanksgiving Leftovers Guide: 20 Delicious Recipes

The big day is over and you likely have a few containers of leftovers lying around your house. This could either mean you eat lots of the same thing over and over again for the next few days or you get creative and turn your turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberries into something much more delicious than they were before.

We’ve rounded up 20 of our favorite recipes from around the web to help you utilize your Thanksgiving leftovers creatively and (mostly) healthfully. Let’s start with the most common leftover item of all: the bird.

Turkey
You can easily chop up leftover turkey and add it to a salad, vegetable soup or sandwich for a quick and easy source of protein. Try these creative and healthy recipes for a unique spin on your Thanksgiving bird. (more…)

8 Easy Tips On How to Store Your Easter Leftovers

For Easter you are probably planning on making a traditional meal with ham, maybe a rack of lamb, potatoes and your famous deviled eggs recipe.

Once the feast is over, you may have some leftovers you are planning on saving for later. Even though storing food is not exactly rocket science, I am going to let you in on some tricks and tips you may not have known so your food stays safe and delicious.

Your ham, lamb, potatoes and other cooked dishes need to be refrigerated within two hours of serving. Before you store it, carve the meat off any bones.

Also make sure you divide the leftovers into smaller containers. The shallower containers will help the food cool quicker.

For your ham, make sure you sliced it into smaller pieces before storing. You can refrigerate it for 3-4 days, it can can stay in the freezer for up to 4 months.

If you have cooked a rack of lamb, it can also stay in the fridge for 3-4 days. If you want to put it in the freezer make sure you put it in airtight freezer bags or tightly wrap with heavy duty aluminum foil. (more…)

5 Healthy Recipes to Enjoy Using Holiday Leftovers

Now that January is upon us, your weight loss resolutions might tempt you to fill a trash bag with all of the high-sugar, calorie-laden sweets and treats leftover from December’s celebrations and festivities. Before you do, think twice.

According to Jonathan Bloom, creator of WastedFood.com and author of the 2024 book American WastelandAmericans waste as much as half of the food produced every year. Instead of contributing to this growing crisis, turn some of your favorite sweets and decadent holiday meals into healthier recipes that will help you get back on track for the New Year.

Use: Leftover holiday ham
Make: Country-Style Split Pea Soup with Ham
. Instead of repeating your holiday meals well into the new year, use leftover meats, especially of the sodium-packed variety, in healthy soups or stews. This one is packed with fiber…and flavor.


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The Word Mommy Doesn’t Have to be Synonymous with Fat

It begins so innocently. You spoon feed your baby, and he turns up his nose. “Look at mommy!” you say as you pop a bite into your mouth. “So good!” Baby pops a Cheerio into your mouth, several times a day. He offers you a bite of his dinner, and you want to play along, so you chew and swallow.

It’s the dreaded mommy diet. Not a classic weight loss plan, the mommy diet refers to the poor food choices that many women make as they raise a family. We devote the vast majority of our time and day to raising strong and healthy children that often we get lost. The stereotypical mom is heavy, amorphous and fitness is far from her mind. I dealt with this myself, as I added children to my family and pounds to my frame. At my heaviest, I outweighed my husband by 50 pounds and wore a size 20. Finding time to work out or prepare healthy meals was difficult, rewarding myself with food and finishing my kids’ dinner plates became second nature, and very soon I resembled that stereotypical mom.

We need to change that image. After all, we’d like our children to be at their best physically – and as parents we deserve nothing less. Let’s take a look at some of the most common roadblocks that moms face. (more…)

5 Ways to Use Leftover Easter Eggs

By Jessie Gorges

Easter is now over, and while your children (and maybe even you) are waking up from your sugar coma with a belly ache, a nice healthy meal is the perfect thing to get you right back into the swing of things. Luckily, you probably have a whole carton of eggs left in your fridge that didn’t get hard boiled or dyed that you were planning on tossing before the expiration date hits. Before you throw them away, consider using them in one of these healthy and delicious egg recipes that will energize your family and undo some of those handfuls of jelly beans you had yesterday.

French toast: Whisk four eggs in a bowl. Mix in a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Add a cup of milk. Dip a slice of bread in the mixture, and cook on a sprayed skillet or griddle. Heat them on low and flip. You’ll know they’re done when both sides are golden brown. Do that 12 times, and you can serve a family of five.

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Healthy Ways to Use Your Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey

The day after Thanksgiving is practically a food holiday in itself, with refrigerators across America filled to the brim with leftover stuffing, yesterday’s mashed potatoes and enough turkey to feed half the neighborhood. If you’re trying to lose weight or maintain your size this holiday season, some health and medical experts recommend skipping the leftovers.

“One of the biggest [diet] mistakes people make is not realizing that the holidays are really only 3-4 days,” said Kathy Taylor, R.D. , Director., of Nutrition at Grady Hospital in Atlanta, GA. “Even if you [go off your diet] on those few days you can recover from that damage.  It’s the mentality that you can let everything go between Thanksgiving and New Years that causes weight gain.”

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