Consumers Are Creatively Utilizing Food Waste to Reduce Food Costs

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on how people are maximizing the utilization of leftovers and food scraps.

One example was the bone bag -  a bag for collecting "vegetable scraps and leftover meat bones in plastic bags and freezing to then utilize the contents by cooking in an Instant Pot with water and apple-cider vinegar and then adding rice and quinoa for a soup base.
Or leftover pizza , chopping it up, crisping and then mixing into scrambled eggs.

A quoted survey looked at "consumers’ leftover habits for 15 years, said 49% of respondents in October reported eating more leftovers than six months ago, a record since the survey began."

This is worth applauding as there is a push to reduce food waste.  But for consumers, this is more for reducing their food bill.

From a safety perspective, freezing leftovers prior to spoilage is key if those leftovers cannot be used within a few days.


Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/americans-are-testing-the-limits-of-leftovers-06dd49ff
Thrifty Americans Are Testing the Limits of Leftovers
Rising food prices prompt kitchen alchemy: ‘fridge foraging’ and collecting bones. ‘I never really dreaded the end of the week until I started eating leftovers.’
By Jesse Newman and Dean Seal
Nov. 28, 2025 5:30 am ET

Bone bags. Pizza eggs. Fridge foraging. Welcome to the Leftover Olympics.

For years, uneaten hot dogs and half-empty cans of tomato paste languishing in the fridge have charted a quick path to the trash in American kitchens. Now, thanks to inflation and stubbornly high grocery bills, they’re more often getting promoted—sometimes to the main course.

Take Kelly Bair’s “bone bags.” The Chicago-based architecture professor stashes vegetable scraps and leftover meat bones in plastic bags in her freezer. Once filled, the contents go into an Instant Pot with water and apple-cider vinegar, brewing broth that Bair uses in soups, rice and quinoa.

Restaurants have become a source, too, after bones from a rack of barbecue ribs produced her best broth so far. Bair, her husband and their two sons now dutifully haul home any leftover bones—beef, pork or chicken.

Two plastic freezer bags containing bones, labeled "THE BONE BAG!" and "THE OTHER BONE BAG!".

Kelly Bair’s ‘bone bags’ help juice up the flavor of meals, without added cost. Kelly Bair

“Everyone is really well trained,” said Bair, who is motivated by food waste and finances.

Sarah Duggal, a development coordinator in Plymouth, Minn., is equally intent on optimizing every bit of food on the plate when she eats out—which, like many Americans, is less often these days.

Chinese takeout? Extra rice becomes a fried-rice dinner. Leftover pizza gets cut up, crisped on the stove and mixed into scrambled eggs—a remnant from Duggal’s college days that she has christened “pizza eggs.”

Everything from Parmesan cheese rinds to a quarter can of coconut milk is fair game for one of Nora Schlesinger’s “leftover nights,” in which all four members of her family can wind up eating a different meal. The 41-year-old business consultant is a leftover die-hard, batch-cooking and freezing meals or piecing together spare ingredients into collagelike creations.

“I do that ‘Beautiful Mind’ thing where things float into place and I create something new,” Schlesinger said, referring to Nobel-prize winning mathematician John Nash’s kaleidoscopic approach. The method requires multiple freezers in her suburban Chicago home.

Her husband, Bryan Den Hartog, is on board. The kitchen-sink meals taste good, save money and, happily, result in fewer dishes. “I am responsible for cleaning up,” he said.

The couple’s two children are usually game for leftovers, too, and Schlesinger isn’t shy about relaying how much effort goes into making them appetizing.

“I’m not a trad wife influencer,” she said. “It’s a lot of work.”

Rampant inflation that followed the Covid-19 pandemic led Americans to spend the highest proportion of their income on food in roughly three decades. While food prices have generally stabilized since then, some staples like beef, coffee and chocolate keep getting costlier.

On Wall Street, consumers’ dedication to leftovers is closely tracked. Mizuho analyst John Baumgartner, who has been surveying consumers’ leftover habits for 15 years, said 49% of respondents in October reported eating more leftovers than six months ago, a record since the survey began.

Rest of article - https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/americans-are-testing-the-limits-of-leftovers-06dd49ff