She is 18? Have her contribute to the groceries. Cooking is sounding like a hobby or passion, not just for nutrition or satiating hunger. She can pay for the extra food items she needs to let out her creative energy. Compost the leftover food.

What are these kids that “refuse” to eat leftovers?

That is straight up bad parenting. Serve them the leftovers every meal they cook THAT much. They will stop.

My kids know some meals aren’t their favorite. They can deal, because I always offer them something they like. I have a teen and if he cooks, he eats it. He likes to experiment but he is also careful it doesn’t taste appalling and he eats what he cooks, if not all at first the next day.

Tell your kid to eat what she cooks before she cooks anything else. New family rule. Not eating leftovers she makes is so privileged. Disgusting.

It sounds like you may be one extreme, so she went the other. But it is ridiculous to constantly cook more than you know will be eaten.

You need to lay down some rules. She should only cook enough for 2 people (I assume it is just you and her), unless she plans to eat the leftovers. She can only make a certain amount of desserts. Maybe one a week - and either a small portion or plan to give it away.

It sounds like she likes the creative process of cooking. Friends of ours do dinner challenges, where one person buys a set of ingredients and the other has to make a meal around it.

Have you tried to talk to her - do you think there was a phase where you possibly were not making enough food and she worried about getting enough to eat? I think that can make people always want to have food around.

I’m sorry, OP, I get it. I’m a single mom too and can’t stand food waste. My teenager also refuses to eat most leftovers. There are two separate issues to me- one is the environmental impact of wasting food, the other is the budgetary. It seems you’ve tried explaining the budget concerns with her and that doesn’t work. Would she listen to the environmental side of it?

She needs consequences for wasting food, but I’m not sure exactly what that would be. Can you come up with a household budget and if she exceeds the food budget, take it out of somewhere that would hurt her, like cosmetics or clothing?

Is your DD paying for the groceries? That makes a difference as far as what you can require of her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t you have neighbors?

I don’t think I’d want dinner leftovers from a neighbor.

Maybe she can invite friends over for dinner on the nights she cooks?

I eat and give extra food to/from neighbors all the time. It’s great!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She is 18. I am the only one who is eating leftovers and this is not fair to me. Her dad and I before he died, used to own a bakery/restaurant, so we are used to buying in bulk. We have 2 freezers that are generally full. Leftovers get put in the freezer but are never eaten because she is always busy making the next thing and will not eat leftovers. Also, a lot of the leftovers are concoctions that contain carbs I cannot eat.

So this is the problem. You need to rethink your entire set-up. You do NOT need two freezers. You do not need to buy in bulk if your household has two people. Buying in bulk only saves money when you use up all the food!

She also needs to learn about budgeting, saving and investing, otherwise she's going to end up spending all her money and wondering why she's not accumulating wealth, despite her earnings. A malady a lot of posters on DCUM suffer from... like that recent thread of someone who earns 400K and is complaining they won't be able to retire early because they have two young children. Pure Princess Syndrome.

The OP should not have to revise her entire system instead of teaching her daughter how to properly cook and use food. She said she was a single mom and freezing would allow for less trips to the store and the ability to buy more things on sale.

Stop raising such an entitled brat.

Anonymous wrote:Have her look up close by shelters. Many will take casseroles. She can make the full amount and split into two dishes. You eat one and one gets taken to the shelter weekly.

Or she could just cook less food.

Anonymous wrote:Compost. We compost all food leftovers/scraps in our household. In Europe this is standard, just like recycling and trash removal.

This is still extremely wasteful, you're just skipping the last wasteful step (waste in the landfill). Compost is fine for food scraps and eggshells, but it's really not the answer to "we let food go bad or toss leftovers all the time."

Have her look up close by shelters. Many will take casseroles. She can make the full amount and split into two dishes. You eat one and one gets taken to the shelter weekly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t you have neighbors?

I don’t think I’d want dinner leftovers from a neighbor.

Maybe she can invite friends over for dinner on the nights she cooks?

Yeah, I'm not eating leftovers from a neighbor. That's just weird.

Anonymous wrote:Don’t you have neighbors?

I don’t think I’d want dinner leftovers from a neighbor.

Maybe she can invite friends over for dinner on the nights she cooks?

We have the opposite issue. my kid will cook for a family of 6 but she refuses to double a 2 person recipe. it drives me nuts but hey she's helping somehow.