The New Corner Office: Learn to love leftovers

Eat better and save time too

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,
the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the
new world of work, where location and hours are more
flexible than in the past. Today's tip is to learn
to love leftovers. When you are working in an office,
you may have gone out for lunch every day. You

(00:26):
may have thought that packing leftovers for lunch was unexciting
or even unappetizing. If you're working from home. Now, let
me encourage you to rethink this assumption. As a veteran
remote worker, I'm here to tell you that leftovers are great,
and if you've been eating turkey sandwiches every day for
the last eight weeks, you may be ready to believe me.

(00:49):
Here are some reasons to love leftovers. First, dinner fare
tends to be heartier than standard lunch fair, so if
you're effectively eating dinner a second time for lunch, you're
going to wind up more satisfied. You may be less
likely to graze on cookies or chips. Second, something that
requires a fork and knife is more likely to force

(01:11):
you to take a real break, which is a good thing.
A real break makes your mind sharper for afternoon work,
so you won't waste time reading the same document over
and over. I mean, unless you're having the equivalent of
Thanksgiving dinner, as you're leftovers, most normal dinners won't put
you in a food coma. Third, since dinner is the

(01:32):
meal most likely to feature vegetables, eating leftovers for lunch
means that now two meals feature vegetables each day. Have
freed at breakfast and fruit for a snack, and you
are winning at the nutritional game. Fourth, preparing leftovers tends
to take less time than making a sandwich. Just throw
the leftovers on a plate, hate them up in the microwave,

(01:53):
and you're ready to go. And finally, eating leftovers means
you probably waste less food, a good thing when no
one wants to go to the grocery store more often
than necessary. So if you're ready to quit the turkey sandwiches,
here's how to build a leftover's habit. If you don't
already own some order a handful of plastic storage containers,

(02:15):
then suss out how often you normally cook. You probably
aren't going to increase this number significantly. So for many
people cooking four dinners a week, which includes Saturdays and
Sundays might be fine for at least some of these.
Choose from options that tend to naturally make leftovers. A
beef or pork roast, roast chicken casseroles, lasagna, enchiladas, or

(02:40):
a pot of hardy soup. A big batch of roasted
veggies can live for days and combine with many things,
as can a big batch of rice or beans, make
a little more than your family needs for any given meal.
Don't plate everything. People can serve themselves from central bowls
or from pots on the stove, since you probably won't

(03:01):
rescue food from individual plates. Ideally, you can combine leftovers
from multiple meals in tasty ways. For instance, I've stretched
leftover soup by mixing it with leftover rice. The other day,
my lunch consisted of steak leftover from Saturday night and
Brussels sprouts leftover from Friday. And if you get take

(03:23):
out or delivery multiple nights per week, well, no judgment.
You can also order a little bit extra there too.
Many restaurant portions are so large that I tend to
assume they're building the next day's lunch into the deal. Now,
it's possible that some family members are more excited about
leftovers than others. But that's fine as long as some
people eat the leftovers. The others can make themselves peanut

(03:46):
butter sandwiches and fruit, and the person enjoying the hot,
tasty lunch can just shake their heads at everyone else's silliness.
Leftovers present the opportunity to have a satisfying meal with
approximately zero extra work. What are your favorite work from
home lunches. You can let me know at Laura at

(04:07):
Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to succeeding in the New
Corner Office. The New Corner Office is a production of iHeartRadio.
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