Life to Leftovers

In a recent post, I put out a call for suggestions on what to do with some leftover cheese spread. Your ideas came pouring back, much to my benefit.

On the heels of that fruitful exercise, I thought it’d be fun to start a recurring feature that lets readers help other readers give new life to their leftovers. Hence, “Life to Leftovers.” You send in your pleas for help (with a photo, if possible) and I’ll post them. Send your ideas to wasted food at gmail dot com.

We’ll start off easy. Leigh (aka Calimama) from Compact By Design wrote in with this question:

I have a can of white cake icing in my fridge.  We don’t do a lot of super sweet desserts and I don’t bake. We tend not to keep cake and such around. 

The icing itself is pretty much a container of sugar.  Delicious in that “I love sugar” kid mentality but not something I need to be taking spoonfuls of.  So, I would make a box mix, but then it would sit here.  And I’d feel guilty if I didn’t eat it.  And I’d feel guilty if my husband did.  And my toddler would be more squirrely than he already is.

Of course, I could make a cake and take it somewhere.  Although most of my friends wouldn’t be terribly thrilled with that delivery, for all the same reasons.  I was just curious what ideas someone would come up with for such an odd item just taking up space in the fridge. Hate to throw it out but what to do?

OK, so we’re looking for a non-cake use for icing. And for those of you with minds more savory than sweet, Leigh has another query:

I also have some freezer-burned chicken. I have 3 chicken strips with pretty bad burn (2 days in uncovered) and 2 huge boneless breasts with mild burn.  I know, I did it again. I am so ashamed I can hardly admit it.  I should spend all my kitchen time sleeping and then these things
won’t happen.

Freezer-burned chicken, anyone?