Rising food prices prompt kitchen alchemy: ‘fridge foraging’ and collecting bones. ‘I never really dreaded the end of the week until I started eating leftovers.’
Thrifty eaters are leveling up their leftover game.
By Jesse Newman and Dean Seal
Nov. 28, 2025
Bone bags. Pizza eggs. Fridge foraging. Welcome to the Leftover Olympics.
For years, uneaten hot dogs and half-empty cans of tomato paste languishing in the fridge have charted a quick path to the trash in American kitchens. Now, thanks to inflation and stubbornly high grocery bills, they’re more often getting promoted—sometimes to the main course.
Take Kelly Bair’s “bone bags.” The Chicago-based architecture professor stashes vegetable scraps and leftover meat bones in plastic bags in her freezer. Once filled, the contents go into an Instapot with water and apple-cider vinegar, brewing broth that Bair uses in soups, rice and quinoa.
Restaurants have become a source, too, after bones from a rack of barbecue ribs produced her best broth so far. Bair, her husband and their two sons now dutifully haul home any leftover bones—beef, pork or chicken.
Kelly Bair’s ‘bone bags’ help juice up the flavor of meals, without added cost.
“Everyone is really well trained,” said Bair, who is motivated by food waste and finances.
Sarah Duggal, a development coordinator in Plymouth, Minn., is equally intent on optimizing every bit of food on the plate when she eats out—which, like many Americans, is less often these days.
Chinese takeout? Extra rice becomes a fried-rice dinner. Leftover pizza gets cut up, crisped on the stove and mixed into scrambled eggs—a remnant from Duggal’s college days that she has christened “pizza eggs.”
Everything from Parmesan cheese rinds to a quarter can of coconut milk is fair game for one of Nora Schlesinger’s “leftover nights,” in which all four members of her family can wind up eating a different meal. The 41-year-old business consultant is a leftover die-hard, batch-cooking and freezing meals or piecing together spare ingredients into collagelike creations.
“I do that ‘Beautiful Mind’ thing where things float into place and I create something new,” Schlesinger said, referring to Nobel-prize winning mathematician John Nash’s kaleidoscopic approach. The method requires multiple freezers in her suburban Chicago home.
Her husband, Bryan Den Hartog, is on board. The kitchen-sink meals taste good, save money and, happily, result in fewer dishes. “I am responsible for cleaning up,” he said.
Nora Schlesinger puts a lot of effort—and storage space—into her leftover meal plans. But ‘if the apocalypse happens I’m going to get the last laugh,’ she says.
The couple’s two children are usually game for leftovers, too, and Schlesinger isn’t shy about relaying how much effort goes into making them appetizing.
“I’m not a trad wife influencer,” she said. “It’s a lot of work.”
Rampant inflation that followed the Covid-19 pandemic led Americans to spend the highest proportion of their income on food in roughly three decades. While food prices have generally stabilized since then, some staples like beef, coffee and chocolate keep getting costlier.
On Wall Street, consumers’ dedication to leftovers is closely tracked. Mizuho analyst John Baumgartner, who has been surveying consumers’ leftover habits for 15 years, said 49% of respondents in October reported eating more leftovers than six months ago, a record since the survey began.
Usually it’s around 20%, Baumgartner said. These days, even high-income consumers are upping their game, with usage among those earning more than $200,000 annually increasing 4% since July.
Big food companies like General Mills and Conagra say economic pressures have more people cooking from scratch, and scraping their plates into Tupperware containers. Brendan Foley, chief executive of spice maker McCormick, said in June that consumers are buying more seasonings to zhuzh up home-cooked meals.
Some companies are tapping into the trend. Anticipating the Thanksgiving holiday and mountains of leftover turkey sandwiches to come, Kraft Heinz this month began selling its Heinz Homestyle Turkey Gravy with a new, squeezable bottle. The bottle, sold for a limited time, is labeled “Leftover Gravy.”
A fridge packed with leftovers can be an endless source of inspiration for the budget-conscious cook.
Nashville-based food blogger and restaurateur Amanda Frederickson has helped popularize the practice of “fridge foraging” on social media. About eight years ago she launched a series of Instagram videos in which she whips up meals using leftovers and other odds and ends she finds in her fridge.
The series quickly found a following among budget-conscious cooks, and became even more popular during the pandemic when the housebound masses had few options besides cooking at home. Frederickson put the series on pause last year after opening two of her five restaurants, but brought it back over the summer.
“We’re all trying to figure out what to make for dinner and we’re all trying to save money on groceries,” Frederickson said. “If you throw away food, you’re literally throwing away your money.”
Thanksgiving offers a chance to get crafty with traditional holiday staples. “I’ve taken mashed potatoes and turned them into waffles, like savory waffles for my kids,” she said.
The leftovers era has its limits. Baumgartner, the Wall Street analyst, said he’s tried his hand at repurposing grilled steak, but grew wary after it lingered a few days in his fridge.
“On Monday it’s like ‘Alright this is great,’” he said. “By Wednesday, Thursday I’d look at it and think ‘Eh, I’ll get something fresh instead.’”
The Agriculture Department provides a handy how-to for dealing with leftover food, advising consumers on wrapping, reheating and thawing, and handling what the agency calls “leftover ‘leftovers.’”
“I never really dreaded the end of the week until I started eating leftovers,” Baumgartner said.
Back at Bone Bag HQ, Bair’s mother won’t set foot in her daughter’s home for two days after she’s cooked up a batch of broth, because the smell reminds her of colonoscopy prep, a dreaded medical ritual in which the liquid is one of only a few sanctioned meals.
“It really smells up the house,” Bair acknowledged.
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