To which School of Leftovers do you belong?

1. Throw them out immediately because you know you’ll never eat them.
2. Put them in airtight containers to be thrown out after they have had a chance to putrefy.
3. Anticipate the quick and easy meal that you can make in one-quarter of the time—thanks to leftovers.

I was a follower of the first and second principals but I’ve recently converted to the third.

When I was growing up my parents prodded me to finish my dinners by invoking starving Biafran children. But even after that admonition I often didn’t finish my meal—and yet I never saw the dish in a new incarnation the next day. All those calories wasted!

Working with leftovers tends to be a great way to stretch a tight budget. It turns out you’re making a huge environmental contribution in the process. More on that in a minute.

The great chefs, like Jacques Pepin, know that to make the most of their food budget they need to be creative:

1. Leftover salmon can be transformed into salmon cakes with little more than Old Bay Seasoning, an egg, onion and old bread. I like to use Panko breadcrumbs for a crunchy exterior.
2. Turkey can be given a second life when served with mole sauce.
3. Almost any vegetable will live happily ever after in pasta primavera.

In the process you save time and money, and feel as smart as any celebrity chef. Take those savings and buy a new book, kitchen utensil, even a new outfit.

Stop Us Before We Toss Again

When you reuse rather than toss you’re cutting down on the millions of tons of food that goes into the waste stream every year. Fully 12% of the entire US waste stream—both residential and commercial—is made up of food waste.

An estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption is discarded, according to a government study. It happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen.

The Department of Agriculture estimated that 96.4 billion pounds of the annual 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. That’s 3,000 pounds per second or one pound per person every day. With 36 million people going hungry, we can do better.

Groups like City Harvest in New York do step in, annually saving more than 26 million pounds of excess food from establishments across the country. A tray of lasagna that was never served, bread that’s a day old, tomatoes with a minor bruise that would be great in sauce or a salad—all can be repurposed.

City Harvest’s 17 trucks and three bikes pick up food from sources as varied as the St. Regis Hotel and Trader Joe’s, 7-Eleven and Goldman Sachs, Le Bernardin and the Delta Shuttle. The food is delivered to 600 community programs at a cost of 22 cents per pound.

Two More Ways to Recycle Leftovers

If you didn’t make that casserole or shred the pork for a sandwich, you still have options. Of course, you can freeze it and feast another day (be sure to put a date on the bag).

Or, turn food waste into lovely compost for your garden. There are small sink-side composting units for urban living and larger ones for those with more outdoor space.

When I calculated how much effort goes into food production and how many people go without, coming up with a simple strategy to transform leftovers into something tasty seemed like a pretty easy thing to do.

Useful Links:

City Harvest

Compost: An Incredible Transformation

How Long Can I Store _________ Before It Is No Longer Safe to Eat?

Clever Composting for Urban Dwellers

75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn’t