What to do with your dinner leftover...Plan-overs

Planovers not Leftovers 

Are you and your family tired of leftovers or going out to eat.  Maybe you just don’t feel like making a big meal every night of the week.  What if I said that you did not have to?

All you have to do is make “Planoves”.  I first heard of this concept from a company called Pampered Chef ( I am not indorsing the company just letting you know where the idea came from).  “Planovers” are a great way to take food that you have cooked the day before and bring new life to it. 

So what’s a “Planover” meal?   Basically what you do is make extra of whatever protein you are cooking one night and save it the next night to make a new dish with it.  You can always add in any extra food that you have from the night before too.  
Let’s say you cook a turkey or chicken for you family of four with potatoes and broccoli with cheese.  Instead of baking four chicken breast you bake 8.  You take the 4 left over chicken breast and put them in a sealed container in the refrigerator.   

The next day you take out those four cooked chicken breast and leftover potatoes and make a chicken potatoes casserole or turkey bake potatoes with broccoli and cheese on top.

One idea that I like to do is to cook ground turkey.  One night we can use it in a pasta dish and the next night we can use the left over for Zucchini boats (pictured above).  The ideas for “planover” meals are endless.

For “planovers” meals to work you should always have the next day’s meal in mind.  You can do this by creating a weekly calendar of meals.  You can even ask your family for input so there are not any groans when they ask “what’s for dinner”.  




The recipe for Zucchini Boats can be found on my other blog.
Here is another good recipe Turkey Pot Pie.  

By Wendy Buxton