A half-consumed can of jellied cranberry sauce is kind of a sad sight, but there's no reason to toss this tart and sweet substance, even if you're eaten every last bit of turkey.

It is easy to get overenthusiastic at the salad bar. I tend to both overestimate my appetite and underestimate the filling nature of fibre, and thus usually end up with at least half a cup of salad that is fully dressed with nowhere to go.

Unless it’s made of sturdy stuff, next-day salad is a sad affair, but only if you try to eat it as a salad. Cook it into a scramble, however, and you get to start your day on a very virtuous note.

When you’re staring down the barrel of days-old leftovers, it’s almost impossible to summon up the creativity to do something, anything, besides shovel them into your mouth in front of an open fridge. There’s no shame in the fridge-shovel game, but breathing new life into the last dregs of yesterday's feast is as easy as picking up a pack of dumpling skins or wonton wrappers.

Did you forget to put the leftovers away? If it's only an hour or two, that's OK, but as the food temperature drops under 60 degrees, the risk of bacterial growth – and food poisoning – increase.

The time between Christmas and New Year’s is a strange one. Things feel oddly festive and slightly depressing at the same time, I never know what day it is, and I am so, so tired of food. Not only am I tired of the holiday leftovers in my fridge, I’m tired of thinking about food in general. Obviously, the solution to my food-related problems is more food, and that food is red beans and rice.

If I had to pick one casserole to eat for the rest of my life, it would be chicken—or in this case, turkey—spaghetti. This thing is a cheesy, kitschy, condensed-soup-soaked masterpiece. It is a casserole in the truest sense of the word, and it is a great vehicle for even the saddest leftover turkey.

Make-ahead entrées are a godsend during holiday entertaining season, but for some reason, it’s not the default technique for special-occasion meals. It really should be: not only is a day-old hearty braise easier on the host, but it actually tastes better than it does fresh from the oven.

I don’t know that anyone has ever run out of cranberry sauce during a roast dinner. It’s very easy to make, and people tend to make a lot of it, and I usually find myself with a bit of bonus sauce the day after the turkey has been gobbled.

Most leftovers last four days in the fridge, but do you really remember whether that takeaway is from Friday or from Saturday? And here are the meatballs from yesterday — or wait, are they from the batch you made last week? Get in the habit of dating your food, and you can stop wondering.

Savoury cocktails are having a moment, but the fancy concoctions you see in magazines always seem to involve three custom infusions and a hand-crafted garnish. If that's not quite your style, check your fridge — you might already have what you need for complex, savoury adult beverages.

When I was in school, I didn’t think of restaurant food in terms of single meals. I always tried to order dishes I could stretch into future meals because, like most university students, I was a little poor. The ability of any given dish to be a future meal has a lot of factors.

I love my vintage fridge-to-oven Pyrex dishes. They look great on the table, in the fridge, and in photos, but there’s one small issue with them: I rarely end up eating the leftovers contained within the colourful, stackable glass rectangles.

Let's be honest: People don't order a Caesar salad for the romaine. The crisp lettuce may be a perfect blank canvas for those garlicky, lemony and umami-packed flavours, but Caesar salad fixings, particularly the dressing, can work wonders on all of your favourite salads.

Arepas, those golden brown discs made of corn masa (dough) that usually get stuffed or topped, are the "daily bread" for a lot of Latin Americans (especially if you hail from my home country of Colombia or neighbouring Venezuela). Although not technically a bread, they can be consumed at any time of the day, much like the leavened stuff. They're served up plain alongside a steaming bowl of frijoles (beans), buttered for breakfast and topped with a fried or scrambled egg, or stuffed with all sorts of goodies such as chicken salad or marinated strips of grilled steak. The options are endless.

There is no such thing as "leftover cheese" but, if you are a cheese collector such as myself, you probably find yourself with little nubs and ends of various dairy treasures. You could keep making increasingly tiny cheese plates, or you could make fromage fort.

It is a widely known fact that leftover pizza tastes better after a day or two in the fridge. The same is true of many popular takeaway dishes. But how long is too long? This infographic explains when ten popular takeaway dishes begin to enter the danger zone - along with warning signs to look out for.

I know that none of you ever leave a bottle of wine anything less than completely drained, but sometimes people make mistakes, and a bit of "extra" wine may oxidize. But even if you can't drink it, this now-vinegary, fermented grape juice doesn't need to be tossed.

Whether over-easy, soft-boiled, lightly fried, or poached, runny-yolk eggs are one of the simplest, most delicious things in the world. But with so many ways to cook an egg, we can often fall back on one way to enjoy that yolk: bread.

Leftover pasta, while rare, never seems to have the same flavour and consistency as it did before refrigerating. The sauce has congealed, the noodles are tough, and nuking it in the microwave doesn't help much. But this quick and easy fix will make it taste like new.