what I've made out of donated food

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As many of you know, I often bring home items (groceries) from work that are being donated or discarded due to being near or past the package "sell-by" date, and I sometimes get free food from other locations as well. Sometimes it's easy to figure out how to use them (especially things like cartons of milk or pre-wrapped sandwiches from the deli), but occasionally I have to get creative with those items and think outside of the box in order to use them up. Some things I've made recently: Pesto -- I used fresh spinach, basil, hazelnuts (free), garlic (I have a few heads in my freezer from when I received a LOT of fresh garlic. I just pull some out and use it as I need to), olive oil (free), some parmesan from the freezer, and salt & pepper, and blended it all together in my food processor. I've been using it on so many things! Chicken noodle soup -- I was given 7 rotisserie carcasses at work after the leg quarters and breasts were cut off for use in the deli. They still had quite a bit of meat left on them, so I picked off as much meat as I could, put the bones and scraps in the Instant Pot, added some water, and made chicken stock. After straining and defatting the stock, I added some carrots (free), celery, a little bit of roasted onion bouillon concentrate (thank you, @TheSojourner, for the product recommendation!), some thin egg noodles, and the chicken meat. I stirred a little bit of the pesto in my bowl, but the kids were happy with their pesto-free bowls. Carrot raisin salad -- I ended up with a LOT of fresh carrots. Half of them got shredded and put in the freezer in Ziploc bags so I can use them later, but I used some to make carrot raisin salad. Mine is pretty simple: carrots (free!), raisins (which I am now out of), mayo, and a little bit of milk (also free!) to thin it out. The raisins sweetened it plenty, especially after it sat in the fridge for a bit, so I didn't need to add any sugar. Carrot cake -- one of these was requested as a Father's Day dessert, but I was too exhausted to make one from scratch, so I cheated a little. I used a boxed spice cake that I had on my shelf and enhanced it a bit; I replaced the water with milk (free), the oil with melted butter, and I added an extra egg (free). After I mixed up the batter, I folded in some of the shredded carrot (free) and some well-drained crushed pineapple. Some people like pecans and raisins in their carrot cake, but I had used up my raisins already and we have pecan allergies in the house. It turned out well, but if I were to do this again I'd probably start with a yellow cake mix and add spices to it instead of starting with a spice cake mix. Chicken fried rice -- I was given a package of chicken and vegetable kabobs, but there were only 5 kabobs and we still have 10 in the house right now. I pulled the meat and veggies off of the skewers, chopped everything up (which was more tedious than I expected, but it worked out), sauteed the meat and veggies along with some additional mixed veggies from the freezer, and added some leftover cooked rice (free) and scrambled egg (free), seasoned it with soy sauce and sesame oil, and that was dinner! Have you had to get creative in the kitchen? What kinds of things have you been making?