Do you try to stretch youir meals out to last more days?

That is very good ways to stretch your food budget. Have you tried (like we do) *Meatless Mondays*? On most Mondays I make like a homemade mac and cheese. On the *leftover days* I add some hot dogs, fried bologna, or hamburger. Or even sloppy joes or taco meat. That is a good ways of stretching one meal into two meals.

I do very much the same thing as you just described. But not two days in a row. My husband has no problem eating left overs, I just have to change them out. Like Sundays baked chicken, ham or pot roast will be okay for a casserole on Tuesday or wensday. We eat a lot of one pot meals, so freezing is easy. Also left over vegetables are always used end week in what I call refrigerator soup. Mashed potatoes are great when you add an egg and a little bit of flour then browned in butter served pancake style with syrup for breakfast. It's getting so hard to stay with in a food budget that I try and not let anything go to waste. almost everything you cook can prove to have a second table showing if its done right.

Make Bisquick dumplings, put them on top of your chili and then bake them in the oven or on the stove top. Use your left over meat, and your left over veggies, mix in cream of mushroom or chicken soup and then do the dumplings on top. The recipe in on the box - cook for 10 minutes uncovered then 10 minutes covered. Not sure of the exact recipe though. Or use extra meat and bones to make soup. Instead of pasta, use barley - is more economical and healthier.

Yeah, we always do that - not much of a choice, and we'd do it anyway even if we had money. Waste not, want not.

yes but sometimes we put the left overs in the freezer or sometimes we will eat it the next day...for instance, i made a big pot of soup for supper on friday and we are having the left overs for lunch today...we often do that with a roast, chili or soup (i make soup about every other week - with homemade bread)

Yes, I try to make food last. I love cooking, so I always come up with recipes to combine leftovers with spare things like frsh vegies & fruit, or rice or something.

I live alone, so a pound of ground beef or a whole chicken will go a long way. Regardless, I try to stretch it as far as I can. If I cook ground beef and a little left over, I fry and crumble it to make macaroni and beef, or make hamburger stew out of it, or stuff green peppers, etc. I buy whole chickens because I can get so much mileage from one. I slice pieces of white meat for sandwiches, boil the carcass and pick off any remaining meat for soup or salad. I use the dark meat from the drumstick and thigh for casseroles. It's amazing how many ways you can use cooked chicken.

I have one with SPam if I make enough it goes 2 to 3 days @ cands of spam the sodium free ones dice and brown in a big skilet, a Yellow Pepper cut into strips,MAc any kind ya want sometimes the kids like the bows lol. an onion cut up and lots of cheese I usually use velvetta the whole box but then that would have to be your taste on how much cheese ya like. Simmer till mac is done and cheese is melted.

I love to make chili and then add macaroni later for chili-mac. I also make stew from anything I can find then add rice or cubed bread and leftover veggies and turn it into a casserole. Turn old bread into bread pudding, croutons, strata, or mini pizzas (with leftover pasta sauce). Leftover pasta sauce and rice and cheese can be baked together as a casserole. Lots of leftovers can be turned into sandwiches. I love to have leftovers that way I don't have to cook from scratch every night.

I am tired at the moment, and not thinking of any ideas to tell you right now. But that is very creative of you stretching it out this way. Three meals, and not get tired of it before it is finished. There is something that I do with hamburger meat, is make sloppy joes and put it on rice. So you could have sloppy joes one night and then with the remaining for another meal you can top it on rice. I usually top it with cheese!

You're so good at stretching meals that I doubt I could come up with something you haven't thought of. But we buy a chicken, eat some meat off from it for day 1. Day 2 more of the meat goes into sandwhiches. Day 3 boil it with whatever meat is left, add some beans and either pasta or rice. That way we have chicken rice or chicken and pasta soup. Same kind of thing with bone-in ham (before I had high blood pressure). Same with a roast. I have saved the juice from meat that we didn't have very much of and used the juice to flavor lentils as well as saute some onions in either olive oil or butter. Then put lentils over rice one night and before high blood pressure, water down some bouillion and make lentil soup with carrots, potatoes and more onions. My parents had tons of ways to stretch bacon. Bacon, onions, and liver (our Neighborhood farmers used to give us liver for free), bacon, vinegar, and a whole bunch of greens cooked down, bacon and navy beans for baked beans. Emmerald would have been proud of my parents and my Dad would have been proud of him. If my Dad was alive now, he'd be running around quoting Emmerald "Pork Fat rules!"

yeah i always do that specially when the food leftover is not easy to spoil in just one day like fried and also rice because i cook rice more so i can cook it again in the morning i make it fried rice:-)