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Day 1: Turkey soup
Day 2: Shepherd’s pie
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Tossed salad
Day 4: Chopped salad with spinach, avocado, hard boiled eggs, walnuts, carrots, and radish
Day 5: Ham, cheddar, and broccoli quiche
Day 6: Cheese and chocolate fondue
Day 7: Scalloped potatoes and ham, Sauteed kale
Notes: Phew! I have been eating and eating and eating for the holidays. And there is more to come this week! If you have leftovers from your holiday meals, you can use every last morsel over the next week. It just takes a little bit of planning and creativity. Of course you can reheat everything for lunch and supper, but I like to transform leftovers into other dishes so my family doesn’t get bored. This is my best bet to make sure none of it ends up in the landfill. So here is a complete (long) explanation of how I am using my leftovers.
I have turkey and ham to use up as well as mashed potatoes. The ham keeps a while in the fridge (lots of salt in that sucker!), but the turkey should be eaten within a couple of days. The carcass is perfect for making a nice broth. You can refer to my post here for an explanation of how I do this. It truly is very simple and super healthy. I will use about half the broth now for Shepherd’s pie and turkey soup and freeze the rest in 4 cup (1 quart) amounts. For the soup I add chopped onion, carrots, celery, and some green beans that I froze from summertime right to the broth and boil until tender, then slip in the chopped turkey at the end and season with salt, pepper, and thyme. You can use whatever veggies you have on hand.
I’m also using some of the turkey meat and all of the mashed potatoes in the Shepherd’s pie. If you want to use your mashed potatoes in a different way, you could go for the twice baked version. Mix in some sour cream, place in an oven safe dish, top with shredded cheese and crumbled bacon and put in the oven until heated through. This is drool worthy!
As for the ham, I’m going to it dice all up at once and portion it out to use some in the quiche, some for scalloped potatoes and save the rest along with the bone to make soup next week.
To round out this week’s meals, of course we have our weekly pizza night. Then I’m taking it a little lighter with a salad using any leftovers from the tossed salad, chopping it up into smaller pieces and adding avocado, hard boiled eggs, nuts, and more veggies. And for a little New Years fun, we will celebrate with fondue (Sorry, I’m not including any recipes for this. I’ll have to do a post on it sometime). I’m not saying this is my healthiest week of meals, but there is a lot of delicious eating!
GLP Tip of the Week: To go along with my long diatribe above, my tip this week is to use your own leftovers. I’d like you to consider the impact of food waste on the environment. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that 31% of the food supply in the US is wasted.(1) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has calculated the amount of food waste at 218.9 pounds per person every year.(1) For an average family of 4 that comes out to 875.6 pounds of wasted food per year!! Why do we waste so much energy, land, water, and labor on something that will just be thrown away? And once that food gets to the landfill, it doesn’t act as you would expect. We are taught that food is 100% biodegradable, but in landfill conditions where stuff is piled upon more stuff, the lack of oxygen prevents breakdown of normally biodegradable things. There have been excavations of landfills where whole carrots have been found perfectly intact 10 years later! The food that does decompose emits methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas.(2) In fact, 8% of greenhouse gases that are emitted yearly come from food waste. If food waste were a country, it would be the third top emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China.(2) This is why I have been going on and on about using leftovers; by reducing food waste, you help to reduce global warming. The EPA has developed a food recovery hierarchy to as part of its goal to reduce food waste 50% by 2030.
Here is how I try to implement this hierarchy into my daily life:
Source reduction: I make a weekly meal plan AND stick to it the best I can so that we are not buying food I know we won’t eat.
Feed hungry people: We eat everything we make. I know this is easier said than done, especially with picky kids. Here are a few examples of how I try to make sure all of our food is eaten. Leftovers are a priority for lunch the next day before anything new is prepared. When I know I’m going to have a lot of leftovers, I plan to use them to make other meals. Extra greens and fruits go into smoothies which are an easier way to get them down the kids gullets! I’m flexible with recipes so that any and all veggies not used up go into soups, stir fries, and curries. We do not peel most fruits and veggies (things like apples and potatoes have the most nutrition in the peel anyways). Any vegetable scraps we do make as well as bones are used to make broth.
Feed animals: We have chickens and a dog. Some food scraps like eggshells, fruit cores, and vegetable peelings are fed to the chickens, but there are certain things they cannot have. Soft bones from broth making and trimmed fat from meat preparation are given to the dog.
Industrial Uses: I use any remaining food scraps to power my DeLorean before I head into the future. J/k, I’m not that good 😉 This step is geared towards corporations and governments
Composting: Veggie scraps from making broth and any remaining fruit/veggie scraps go into our tumbler bins along with yard waste and chicken poop. The compost is mixed with soil and spread on my plants and garden in the spring.
Incineration or Landfill: Meat, dairy, and oils should not be composted. Any leftovers we have in these areas end up in the garbage.
It is not always perfect, but we do our best. Since I’ve been focusing on reducing my family’s food waste, we have gone from 2 bags of garbage each week to 1. I’d say that is a win!
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