What To Do With Leftovers: Avoiding the Holiday Hangover

When you’re hosting for the holidays there comes the joy or burden of leftovers.

Depends how you see it. Myself, I am super psyched to have lots of food and beer in my home until I find myself eating like a retired supermodel. Turkey, Stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy for breakfast lunch and dinner (don’t forget snacks of cheesecake with whipped cream at least once a day).

Leftovers are holiday extenders. Do you wanna keep the holidays going? Do you want a holiday hangover? I don’t mean the alcohol kind, I mean the food kind.

Do you want to gain that average 5 pounds of holiday baggage?

You enjoyed your holiday, but it’s time to move on.

Time to get tough guys… gotta make some difficult decisions so the holidays don’t eat YOU! So I made this guide and it’s not a bunch of leftovers recipes, it’s OTHER ideas of what you can do with holiday leftovers.

Send your guests home with a “care package”

 You love your guests and I’m sure they loved the food just as much as you did. Why not send them home with one of those disposable containers you kept from your Chinese take out order FULL of some delicious food to take home with them.

It’s a win-win. You get to rid yourself of the holiday goodies while showing your guests that you LOVE them!

Bring your extra desserts into work

I’m sure you guys remember “The Bermuda Triange” from How I Met Your Mother… well we ALL got one of these in the office. Like in the cafeteria or the kitchen, you just place something there and when you look next… POOF it’s gone.

MAGIC! Congratulations, you just saved yourself 3,000 calories of delicous staring you in the face until you ate them!!

Freeze them!

Give your leftovers the cold shoulder. Portion out leftovers in small containers and you got your own little frozen meals for DAYS! It’s super easy and you don’t have to feel bad “wasting” food. This works for savory foods, as for sweets I would suggest options 1 and 2.

Host a Leftovers Party

You’re guests are all gone but the food is not. Why not host your friends for a leftovers party. Less work, no effort and lots of fun! It’s a win-win-win. Win for you: get to see your guests again, have some laughs and get rid of all the leftovers! Win for your guests: another free meal, a night out and some laughs!

This may be my favorite of ALL these tips. Who doesn’t wanna have another party?!

Toss them, Just do it!

This is a tip you may hate. Growing up we hear about the starving children in Afrika and are guilted into eating ALL of your food. This is totally true and yes it sucks to be wasteful. But sometimes you learn it just needs to be done.

I never considered throwing away leftovers until I was serious about my health and weight loss.

Here’s the scenario… It’s 8am and I am waking up the day after hosting my party, within 8 seconds of waking up I remembered there was an amazing, gorgous, sumptuous pumpkin cheesecake with a thick graham cracker crust. Well I never got out of bed so damn fast. I opened the fridge and took out the container opened it and I didn’t even plate it… just container to fork to mouth and then I caught a gimpse of my morning self eating cheesecake as if I had been starved… NOT a good look.

I was so disgusted I did something I never thought I would… I put the rest in the trash.

Sometimes you gotta choose being wasteful or being midful of your waist.

So sometimes, it’s okay to be wasteful especially if you cannot be trusted with dessert.