What To Do With Your Christmas Leftovers
Christmas Day is sadly over for another year, leaving lots of leftover food and ‘rubbish’. Christmas is one of the worst times of year for waste, but before you head straight for the bin, I will take you through a few things you can do to use up leftovers, reduce waste, and save yourself some money in the process!
Food
One of the biggest leftovers from Christmas Day is food. At this stage Christmas maybe coming to an end but the food is not!! There are a lot of different ways you can use your leftover food. The most popular leftover in my house anyway is the Turkey Sandwich. Depending on the size of Turkey you buy for Christmas Day, turkey sandwiches could be a good lunchtime meal for a good few days after Christmas Day.
If the turkey sandwiches are not your thing then a healthier option is available. If you have some vegetables left over you can use them as well as turkey to create a Turkey Noodle Soup. Some Carrots, Onions and Peas alongside Noodles would be ideal for this, but any leftover vegetables would do the trick! Another meal that could be made is a Shepherd’s Pie. In the pie you can use leftover turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and vegetables.
Other meals you can make with leftover turkey are meals like a turkey quiche, a turkey stir fry or a turkey curry if that’s the type of food you are more into. If you have a chicken instead of a turkey for Christmas dinner then chicken would also suit any of these dishes and chicken fried rice is an especially good meal for any leftovers you might have.
If you are a fan of Brussels sprouts, but you have people who didn’t eat them with their Christmas dinner then you don’t have to eat them all at once. A good way to use up the Brussels sprouts is to make soup out of them or fry them with some bacon. Here is a recipe on how to make sprout soup.
By the time you get to your Christmas pudding you may be feeling rather full up and may not be able to eat all your pudding. If you do come across this scenario then you don’t need to throw the rest of your pudding in the bin. Christmas pudding can be put in the freezer and turned into ice cream which you can eat at a later date.
Christmas Wrapping Paper
You spend money on getting wrapping paper then take all that time to wrap the presents for your loved ones and on Christmas morning the paper gets ripped off like there is no tomorrow and usually gets thrown into the bin. Instead of throwing the wrapping paper into the bin you can use it to make other things such as:
- Fashion Envelopes
- Wrapping paper bunting
- Paper confetti
- Line boxes which contain something fragile
- Line plain looking bookshelves/drawers
- Create bows for presents you will give out throughout the following year
- Cardboard tube art
- Christmas tree paper cone
Christmas Tree
Christmas decorations can have a short life span even though they are only used for about a month of the year. The main decoration is obviously the Christmas tree. If you have got a real Christmas tree which is growing a bit old and you are thinking about getting a new one for next year then you can see if the council can collect your tree to chip it up. If you have a tree which has roots then you can re-plant it in your garden or keep it in a pot to reuse next year.
Decorations
Decorations for tree, the window or the ceiling in the living room all have their own life span and will come a time when you will need to update those decorations. One idea for the old decorations is to put them up in the kid’s room. The kids will love decorations in their own room and it’s a good way to save money by not getting two brand new sets of decorations.
Christmas Cards
Christmas cards are very common to give out to your friends and family as Christmas approaches and after Christmas is done it can be easy to just discard them and then do it all again next year. Instead of just throwing them away you can use your Christmas cards to create gift cards for next year, saving you a little money in the process.
Unwanted Christmas Presents
There will be some of us out there that may not like what they get as a Christmas present and may want to throw it if they can’t exchange it. Instead of throwing your unwanted present into the bin a good idea would be to donate the gift to a local charity that can pass it on to someone who needs the present more.
I hope you have picked up some useful tips whilst reading this blog. Reduce your waste further in the New Year with Greener Kirkcaldy’s Too Good To Waste Project and see our events page for upcoming reduce, repair and reuse events.
Finally, from everyone at Greener Kirkcaldy we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!!
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