Refrigerator Cleaning Duty

I honestly dislike leftovers. They rarely get eaten as intended, and they clutter up the fridge. Especially when several people are rifling through them every day and I hear something similar to, "What do we have in here that's good to eat?" I end up with a refrigerator that looks like this:

UGH!!

 I've gotten to the point of putting leftovers into ziplock baggies (except things with liquid, of course!) so that if they start hanging around too long, I can throw out the whole kit and kaboodle. Mostly I try to be very conscientious of just how much I make of something to avoid leftovers, but sometimes dealing with them just can't be helped. I figure if they're at least in baggies, I don't have to deal with washing out plastic containers, which is one of the other things that I really dislike! (After all, what's the point of wasting water to wash out the containers from food that was saved, but didn't get eaten, and that got wasted, too??!) So I go back to my original thought - MAKING ONLY WHAT I THINK MY FAMILY WILL EAT! ☺

Here's my clean, now practically empty fridge:

Ahhhh.....much better!

Now it's time for me to do some sensible shopping!

~ ♥ ~

What's your trick in dealing with leftovers?

Using Up Leftovers

A couple nights ago, we had chicken for dinner (see my post http://simplymekimberlymarie.blogspot.com/2013/04/crockpot-chicken-dinner.html ) and I made gravy from the broth. We had a nice bit of leftovers. I also had some peas from dinner the previous night. 

Today for lunch, since it was just me, I wanted something quick and easy from what we already had. Toast with peas and gravy sounded kind of promising....similar to creamed tuna and peas on toast, minus the tuna, of course! So, I toasted and buttered 2 pieces of bread, and seasoned them with my favorite creole seasoning (see my post http://simplymekimberlymarie.blogspot.com/2013/03/product-rave.html ). Then I heated a bit of the gravy and peas together. I poured half over the one piece of seasoned toast, and the rest of the gravy and peas over the other.Then I topped it off with a bit of fresh ground pepper. This is what the finished results looked like:

And I have to say that the bit of creole seasoning on the buttered bread, the flavorful gravy, sweet peas and freshly ground pepper all blended so nicely together to make one tasty, quick and easy meal!