Works for Me!

Making more food than necessary sort of runs in my blood. My mom always had more dinner prepared than we could eat in one night, just in case she found out someone needed a home-cooked meal or we invited friends over to dinner. I also have a hard time cooking for only two, so almost every night we have leftovers. With a busy schedule, these can really be a huge hit for nights when I don't have time to cook anything, but I also used to have a problem making sure the leftovers got eaten. To solve this problem, I bought quite a few of the smallish, single-serving size tupperware containers. When I'm cleaning up our dinner mess, I put any leftovers directly into these smaller size containers, divided into lunch-sized portions. I then stick them in the fridge. In the morning, when Jeff and I are putting our lunches together, all we have to do is grab one of these containers, an apple or granola bar, and our lunch is ready! It's also nice because I don't feel bad about making Jeff pack his own lunch since most days all that entails is grabbing a container out of the fridge. I suspect that this trick will continue to be helpful as we have kids, because they'll also have an easy time packing their lunches.

The other benefit is that if we do eat the leftovers for dinner, we can just reheat them right in the container, grab a fork, and keep from dirtying another dish.

Check out the other tips at Rocks in my Dryer.