2025, Food, Gatherings, holidays

Leftovers

28 Comments

One of the hallmarks of my annual holiday party is the amount of food – it seems like enough to feed an army.  I can’t help myself; there are so many things I like and so many things that others like. 

Of course, that much food means lots of leftovers.  For the most part this isn’t a problem; YA and I happily nosh on party goodies for days afterwards.  Most everything lasts a few days and some things (like the sliced cheese) can go longer if they’re wrapped well.

What doesn’t last too long is the leftover crudite.  I wanted carrots, peppers and cauliflower this year.  YA wanted broccoli and celery.  I also had grape tomatoes left over after making the mozzarella skewers, so I added them to the serving plate with the other veggies.  I have to say that most years I end up tossing more veggies than I like so this year I really committed to myself that I would figure out a way to not waste so much.

The first up was ramen with veggies in a peanut sauce.  This is something we have a lot at our house but usually I make it with frozen vegetables.  I chopped up a couple of cups of veggies, sauteed them then added the ramen and the peanut sauce.  Quite tasty.

The next day I made a veggie and cheese frittata (extra points for using some of the leftover cheese).  Sauteed chopped veggie, added eggs and cheese and a bunch of spices and baked it up.  So easy and yummy.

The last of the veggies went into a soup.  I was going to add some pasta but YA wanted potato.  I ended up putting some of both in.  It made a huge pot, which disappeared pretty quickly.

So for the first time ever we managed to get through all the leftovers on our own, including all the crudite, without having to toss anything!

Did you have any leftovers this holiday season that you had to deal with?

28 thoughts on “Leftovers”

  1. No holiday-specific leftover veggies, though your strategy for using up excess veggies or ones that need to be used before they get any older is very similar to mine: a stir-fry, a frittata, fried rice, or some kind of soup. I almost always put more veggies into a recipe than the recipe suggests.

    I ended up with a ham bone that I simmered into stock that I will use this winter for potato-corn chowder. We still have an overabundance of Christmas cookies but we are working on it.

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  2. My roommate overbought sweets (as usual on a holiday), but oddly those leftovers have not been too difficult to deal with. There’s still a bit of peppermint bark left at this late date, but that’s about it. Dealing with the aftermath of all that sugar is what will take time…

    –Crow Girl

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  3. I baked the last of the Christmas cookies last night. Husband wanted more pebbernodder, some Skania ginger cookies, some Ostfriesland Heidesand cookies, and some orange shortbread cookies. I also made some oatmeal cookies, sans raisins, for some friends on the reservation. I only bake cookies at Christmas. These won’t be hard to use up.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I am trying to type this with a dog in my lap. We will see how it goes.

    This year was so atypical with food because some of our usual gatherings did not take place. A friend we gather with was gone, and my son and his wife had a trail of major losses and problems, from before Thanksgiving to New Years, in her extended family located in Milwaukee. So they also were away. So I had little extra cooked food leftover. However, there is some frozen stuff I bought for planned meals that did not happen.

    The usual use of leftovers: soup, fried rice, lo mein.

    OT: I have a question about a product I am considering buying. I want to buy a portable thick pad for beds I sleep in when away from home. Hard mattresses do not agree with my back and hips, so the intent would be to soften the experience. There are many available. Does anyone on the BTrail use one of these? How does it work? They run from $100-$400 so I want to know how it works before I buy.

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    1. I’ve used Thermarest pads on my canoe trips for as long as I can remember. Mine are very sturdy, roll up fairly well, but require inflating and deflating. The inflating part is easy. Just open the valve and air will flow in to a “medium” level of firmness. Blow air into it for a firmer feel.

      Deflating takes some time because you need to squeeze the air out bit by bit as you roll it up tightly enough to fit into the stuff sack.

      But there are about 30 Thermarest models, and another style may be easier to deflate and might be more portable too. I use a thicker than average pad, which rolls up to about 9″ wide and 26″ long. A shorter, narrower pad will be several inches shorter and wider to pack. Check their website to see what they offer.

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    2. I used a 2” thick memory foam mattress topper, then I put the quilted mattress pad over that. It made a hard mattress much more comfortable. Several years ago I made the switch to an adjustable base bed with a thick hybrid memory foam mattress. It was expensive but it’s been worth it. It’s softer than I used to sleep on – only moderately firm – and it has worked very well.

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      1. I have an adjustable bed as well. That is very comfortable with a mattress that is just right. However, last Wednesday my sister and I stayed in a motel near the hospital (I had to be at the same day surgery center at 6am, 45 minutes from home in the dark. A motel reduced the stress.). The bed was very hard, producing several days of aches and pains. After that I thought that maybe some company makes a travel pad–they do.

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    2. Oh no! That’s such sad news. Husband and I love Peter, Paul and Mary and saw them several times. When Mary died, we went to a tribute concert with Peter and Paul and I cried through the whole thing. We also got to meet Peter at a book reading/mini concert at Magers and Quinn. He was such a sweet, gentle soul.

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  8. Nope. No leftovers. I didn’t have a party. I went to a community Christmas dinner with a couple of friends. Both of those friends are good cooks. One is a chef. She made cheesecake with salted caramel topping and toasted coconut flakes. I just brought a bottle of wine.

    I always buy a lot of veggies. Carrots and celery always go into soups. I like to have broccoli around for munching or to go into a hotdish or a quiche. I don’t make quiche or frittatas as often as I used to, but I make them with broccoli and feta cheese. I don’t think I have ever wasted veggies – they’re really my preferred foods!

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  9. For Christmas I deliberately prepared a generous sized pork loin roast so as to have leftovers. Hans loves pork and potato hash. With a side of the left-over red cabbage, and a fried egg on top the hash, that’s his idea of Nirvana.

    All the Christmas cookies and stollen are gone. They were wonderful while they lasted. I still have a small chunk of fruit cake left; I’m savoring every crumb, trying to make it last another few days.

    Tonight the remainder of the Brussels sprouts I bought for Christmas will be roasted with sweet potato and onion. and served with roasted chicken. I agree, it’s a shame to let vegetables go to waste – alas, sometimes the do.

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  11. I had made a special Cranberry Meatball dish, with a cranberry compote – takes all day, so I make sure there are plenty of leftovers… have them with rice or potatoes the next day, and then freeze the rest.

    The friends we had Christmas Day served some delicious (very thick) pork chops in a glaze, and sent us home with one – was so large it lasted us another meal…

    I had a magazine once that would give you 3-day meal plans – special ingredients to have on hand to deal with the leftovers. It may have been an issue of Sunset Magazine, and the term used was:
    ré·chauf·fé [ˌrāˌSHōˈfā] – noun
    a dish of warmed-up food left over from a previous meal    .
    Somehow, it sounds a lot more elegant in French.

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