Leftover Night Turns from Dismal to Exceptional

I actually thought that leftover night would be a punishment...mostly because I hate leftovers.  But it turns out to be one of the best nights in our house.  We get to reuse all the things in the fridge to make new meals.  Some times it is just taking pizza dough that I already shaped and making individual pizzas like we did last night or salsa sloppy joe potatoes with a little leftover meat that isn't enough for a sandwich.

 I grabbed some leftover taco meat and some corn shells that weren't in great shape to use for tacos whether broken or misshapen to make some enchiladas.  There was already an enchilada sauce in the freezer so I got to use.  I got the sharp cheese out of the fridge that I didn't really like and shredded it.  To add flavor and filler, I started using Mahatma Spicy Rice so I got a pouch out of the pantry and cooked that up.  After it was done cooking, I layered it like a lasagna instead of enchiladas which we call enchilada smash in our house.  Super easy leftovers put to a new purpose.

I used up the end of a bag of mozzarella cheese, some ricotta, roll of sausage that needed to cooked and some spaghetti sauce and crushed tomatoes near expiration from the pantry and threw together some lasagna!! It helped to use up everything in the fridge to make into one meal but the pantry was there to back me up as well as some cheese from the freezer because I thought we were out!!

I spent a busy day trying to figure out how many things I could make out of the things we had in the fridge so that I would have a few more meals from the things on hand.  I love when it works out well!!  Plus I got some extra sausage sauce which is either going to be used for pasta night or frozen for another lasagna soon.

Another day I was working on making all of the leftovers into breakfast foods.  I decided to make applesauce, pear sauce and one lonely apple into applesauce bread.  It is a fabulous bread with a strong cinnamon bread that we love and made way better by using the fresh apple.  I put all the apple in the blender to make sure it was all like applesauce texture.

I made some tasty muffins from the super cheap blackberries that I got at Aldi and some yogurt that I got free at the grocery store.  I might have eaten a few too many after making them because they are my very favorite with the wonderful lemon strudel.  These are the blueberry ones that I usually make but the blackberry ones were a yummy treat!

I made some cranberry salad dressing that was amazing!!!  I had the cranberry sauce in the freezer that I made from leftover cranberries and orange juice.  I enjoyed eating lots of salads with this tasty dressing and some homemade croutons from some leftover bread cubes.

Yummy soft rolls made with the milk that was about to be bad in the fridge along with some pancakes for dinner!!  Used up most of the milk and just a few other things around the house because I have a stocked pantry with flour, yeast, my homemade pancake mix and more at hand!!

I am glad that I have had lots of leftovers to work with and get creative with!  There are so many other things that I have in the cupboard and I am going to be working my creative hands on over this Christmas break!!  Another reason why I really need to start canning so that I can fit all the stuff I make because there is no more room in the huge full sized freezer in the basement.  Here is hoping that eating the turkey will make the room I need to bring up my creativity.

What creative stuff do you make when you are running low on food around the house and to use the leftovers that you have??