There's something I share in common with Stephanie Alexander and Annabel Crabb.
Sadly it's not cookbook authorship. Stephanie has just brought out The Cook's Table and Annabel launched Special Delivery last year, but I'm letting the side down.
![Stephanie Alexander looks forward to leftovers.](/web/20161129034134im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/1/1/b/6/t/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsy1l6.png/1480384998408.jpg)
And I'm not thinking of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, though Annabel and I both have school-age kids who benefit from the program.
It's something much simpler: we all love leftovers.
![Stephanie Alexander's <i>The Cook's Table</i>.](/web/20161129034134im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/u/u/l/j/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gsy1l6.png/1480384998408.jpg)
You can join our little club too. We can call it the Leftovers Lovers League and since I'm the Money editor, I'll be the treasurer. I haven't asked Annabel and Stephanie yet, but I'm sure they'll be keen.
The discussion came up on Friday night at a reader event organised by a local bookstore, with Crabb interviewing Alexander on stage.
At one point the chef revealed that she'll often get inspired by the random bits of leftover food in her fridge.
She'll also deliberately cook more of a dish than required, knowing that the leftover food will have another incarnation.
Crabb is the same, but the problem is her partner is vehemently anti-leftovers and throws food out when she's not looking. "I'm on constant bin patrol," she says.
At dinner afterwards, mum and I sat opposite another mother and daughter duo. The younger woman told me that she has one sister who hates leftovers and throws out any and all uneaten food, while the other sister cooks perfect portions so there isn't any leftover food.
Personally, I don't understand the aversion. I love having a bit of dinner left over to take for lunch at work the next day, or for an easy meal later in the week. If it was good the first time, it's still good the second time around.
I'll also cook extra food and freeze portions for a later date – a great timesaver since I have a demanding job and a young family.
Australians throw out one out of every five shopping bags, which equates to every household throwing out $1036 of groceries each year.
I'm also good at creatively repurposing food. A roast chicken for dinner one night can become chicken rice paper rolls the next night, for example.
This practice provides variety without needing to reinvent the wheel every night.
As well as saving time, embracing your leftovers will save you money.
We spend $150-$180 on food each week for a family of four, most of it delivered from Aussie Farmers Direct so that we can avoid spending our precious leisure time at the supermarket. Let's call it $200, including the occasional work lunch or school canteen order.
We're not particularly frugal – money is not too tight and I love to buy good food. This week we have fresh fish, beef, mango, blueberries and asparagus in the box, for example.
In the past when we were scrimping to pay for preschool fees and the mortgage on one income, we managed to keep our weekly grocery bill to about $100.
Yet according to ASIC's MoneySmart website, the average family with children the same age as mine spends $279 a week on food and drink.
And we waste an astonishing amount of it. Australians throw out $10 billion of food every year, and four million tonnes of food a year ends up in landfill, according to OzHarvest.
Australians throw out one out of every five shopping bags, which equates to every household throwing out $1036 of groceries each year, OzHarvest says.
This breaks my heart. Not only are there hungry people in the world, but the environmental impact is devastating.
Food production requires an enormous amount of resources, while food in landfill can't decompose naturally and releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Recycling your food scraps in a worm farm or compost bin at home can help abate this. If they're properly maintained, they don't smell at all.
Depending on your lifestyle, reducing food waste and recycling scraps is possibly the single biggest thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.
Australians also eat out a lot, and I'd love to see a cultural change for it to be more acceptable to take food home from a restaurant. Like many people, I'm often too embarrassed to ask.
I lived in San Francisco for two years before we had kids and one of the things I appreciated was how the restaurants went out of their way to make this easy for you.
You didn't have to ask and no one called it anything embarrassing like a "doggie bag". If you didn't finish your meal, the waiters would naturally assume you wanted to take it home since it was your food and you'd paid for it.
I remember going to a fancy restaurant for a relative's significant birthday and even there it was considered quite normal. "Madam, would you like that in a box?" they asked.
Well that's a "yes please" from me, and both the planet and my finances agree.
I think Stephanie and Annabel would approve.
Caitlin Fitzsimmons is the editor of Money for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
PS Since publishing this article, I've learned that there is an official "love your leftovers" app. If you try it, please let me know what you think.
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