Meal Planning for Leftovers

What are some of your favorite big-enough-to-make-leftovers meals?

This week, I have meetings every single evening. Usually I have 2-3 nights per week that are occupied, but it’s rare that every single night is full—which also means dinner planning needed to be especially strategic this week!

I have a handful of meals that I know exactly how many nights of leftovers they’ll leave for my partner and me—and this past weekend was spent making three of the meals that I know will each yield 2 nights of leftovers!

This way, I don’t have to worry about making dinner before or after any of my meetings this week, and we have a variety of options to choose from.

(Needless to say, our fridge is very full at the moment—we don’t usually do this hefty of meal prepping, all in a row!)

So this week, we have pizza, ziti (both will include a quickly made side salad), and enchiladas! And while this weekend felt busier with making all three of those meals, I can now rest easy for the rest of the week.

Some of my other favorite options include:

  • Chili (2-3 leftover dinners)

  • Curry (1-2 leftover dinners)

  • Peanut tofu (1 leftover dinner)

  • Pasta w/tomato cream sauce (1-2 leftover dinners)

This is also just within a 2-person household—if your meals include more people, I recommend (if possible) making larger portions so that you still have some leftovers available. It is such a nice way to cut down on how many nights per week you cook, and on busy evenings, it can feel so lovely to have dinner ready in the fridge!

The baked ziti and enchiladas I make are both recipes from Nora Cooks Vegan—make sure to check them out!