If you are a college student now, or used to be one, you pretty much know about the left over system. Get a giant pizza (or five) for you and your dorm pals, but you manage to eat only about three pizzas in that all night study/gaming/jam session. The rest you just stick in the fridge, probably never to be seen or touched again. Yet, you are broke and have no money to run down to the student union and pick up a quick bite to eat. It just dawned to you about the left over pizza from the night before, so you just start jamming the slices down your throat for about twenty minutes. You manage to repeat this for the next few days until the pizza runs out. While you might have gotten tired of eating pizza for three days, imagined all of the money you saved by just using the left overs. This is why pizza is the breakfast of the college student; it is cheap, reheats well and it is the definition of left over food.
Now with a family of your own in this tight economy, this is one lesson from college that you should bring into the household. While it does not have to be pizza, there are a lot of foods that can be eaten, frozen and reheated so it can survive another day. This is very cost-effective for you, however the fridge will become a cramped place for food and drinks. There is no need to run the store to pick up various things for dinner every night. This will also reduce the amount of times to run out to a restaurant for getting fast food. While many places are having recession specials, they will only go so far. If there is one word of caution about the left over food, it it is that it will only stay good for so long. At most, food can last for about one to two weeks. Some things like pizza will stay good for only a week, but some other foods will only reheat one time and that is it. Noodles will be hard to reheat, so will beef. Regardless, there will be a lot of times that left overs will be present inside your fridge.
Also use that opportunity to just mix things up a bit. So if you have left over ham, get a lot of cheese and small dip and you have crackers that will go well with football parties. There is a lot you can do with left overs, just make sure the only thing that is becoming empty is your fridge, not your wallet.
