What's for Dinner: December 7, 2011

Leftovers! 

When I first began to draft this entry, I thought to myself, "this is going to sound like such a lazy excuse for dinner." In truth, it started out as such.  Macario and I have both been sick and we've had a some pretty rough nights this week so planning my "What's for Dinner" entry for this week got pushed to the back burner (pun intended).

However, as I started to think the idea over in my head, I realized that it's actually really a great idea to talk about leftovers.  We eat them pretty often, especially for lunch the following day and there are great reasons to take advantage of leftovers, such as:

Time Saving
Because we usually always have some food left over from dinner, we often have enough stored up for us to have a "leftover night" once a week. I choose to serve leftovers on nights that I'm feeling less energetic or when I have lots of other things needing to be done. Serving leftovers helps check a task off my list with ease and frees up some time!

Money Saving
Aaron and I don't limit our use of leftovers to just dinner time. We also eat our leftovers for lunch almost daily. I usually serve last nights dinner for lunch the next day.  This is easy from a preparation standpoint, but it's great for saving money. Not only are we saving money by not wasting food, we are also saving money by not going out to eat for lunch every day!

Stress Relief
I tend to be a stress-y person because I'm always trying to stay a step ahead of the game and get anxious when I feel like I'm falling behind. Not having to make dinner on nights when I'm feeling especially tired or when Macario is having a rough day is great for my stress level. I guess you could say that this benefit goes hand in hand with the time saving benefit because it would be true. I can get other things done with the time I save which makes me feel so much better.

Health Benefits
If you're like me you pay the most attention to the healthfulness of your meal at dinner time.  It's the meal I put the most effort into planning and preparing, so when we have leftovers for other meals (like the next day's lunch) I feel good knowing that it's going to be good for us. There is no need to scour a restaurant menu to figure out what the healthiest option would be (assuming they have a healthy option) and I know that it's real food, not that processed or filler food.

So, that is my argument for why leftovers are awesome! I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why it's great to use up your leftovers and if you think of any, please feel free to share.

And, if you haven't already guessed, tonight will be a "leftovers night."