We cook one night, eat leftovers for dinner the next night, anything leftover beyond that for lunch the third day. Beyond that if it's something like a big stew or cut of pulled pork or something, it goes in the freezer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the leftovers?

Salad we don't do because lettuce and tomatoes get soggy (maybe I'll eat leftover dinner salad for lunch, but only with hearty lettuce and no tomatoes).

Meats or mashed potatoes and gloopy stuff...2 days max. I get squeamish.

Soup or stew? Maybe 3 days.

Rice is next day: it harbors too much bacteria too easily.

Restaurant food or Thanksgiving? 2 days.

Bean salads or similar? All week.

I never heard that rice goes bad easily. I cook in a rice cooker and put leftovers in the fridge in the same container it was cooked in and seal it with foil. It can last a week this way.

Nobody has ever heard it because it is not true.

I keep my fridge very cold and will disinfect it every month. My home cooked meals can go up to a week and is perfectly fine. I find that if you have mold swimming around the fridge your food will spoil very fast. Keeping it cold and cleaning it every weekend helps to preserve food.

Also, nowadays, with kids in college, we are cooking very small amounts of food so that we do not have leftovers. If I do cook a largish amount of food, I will go and distribute the extras to my neighbors or call people over for a meal.

Probably 4-5 days. I'll make dinner one day & then have it again within a few days, and individual items might be eaten up to 5 days later.

For instance, yesterday we finished a stew I'd made on Wednesday & chicken I'd made on Thursday. I still have noodles in the fridge from last week & will likely finish them today or tomorrow.

A dish has to be absolutely splendid for me to eat it past two days. Heating and reheating has to take some the taste away.

Anonymous wrote:5 days. My husband will eat leftover up to 7 days

PP here. That's for homemade leftovers. For restaurant leftovers we do 2-3 days.

5 days. My husband will eat leftover up to 7 days

If I don’t eat it the next day, I freeze it.

48 hours max. One bad experience with expired leftovers and I will never take the chance again.

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the leftovers?

Salad we don't do because lettuce and tomatoes get soggy (maybe I'll eat leftover dinner salad for lunch, but only with hearty lettuce and no tomatoes).

Meats or mashed potatoes and gloopy stuff...2 days max. I get squeamish.

Soup or stew? Maybe 3 days.

Rice is next day: it harbors too much bacteria too easily.

Restaurant food or Thanksgiving? 2 days.

Bean salads or similar? All week.

Really? I've never heard this before.

Zero days

The waste is astonishing. We eat everything and like another poster said, Friday is usually everything must go. My fridge is full now, and we’ll eat various things throughout the week. The one thing I won’t eat leftover is fish - so we either buy just enough for one meal, or eat that in a restaurant.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the leftovers?

Salad we don't do because lettuce and tomatoes get soggy (maybe I'll eat leftover dinner salad for lunch, but only with hearty lettuce and no tomatoes).

Meats or mashed potatoes and gloopy stuff...2 days max. I get squeamish.

Soup or stew? Maybe 3 days.

Rice is next day: it harbors too much bacteria too easily.

Restaurant food or Thanksgiving? 2 days.

Bean salads or similar? All week.

I never heard that rice goes bad easily. I cook in a rice cooker and put leftovers in the fridge in the same container it was cooked in and seal it with foil. It can last a week this way.

I didn't know this either. We'll eat rice up to 5 days.

I use up the leftovers, so, until they are gone?

Some items will go in the freezer (soups, leftover pulled pork from a large batch), some in the refrigerator for lunches.

Occasionally we have an EMG night for dinner (Everything Must Go), where I pull put all the leftovers and everyone eats what they want.

Reading the previous responses, I now understand why I read about so much food waste, because it certainly isn't happening in our home

Two days: the day I cook it and either lunch or dinner for an adult the next day.