No matter how good you are at rationing or guessing how much food you and your family would be needing during a certain time period, there is often an error in judgment. Sometimes, we make food that gets wasted because we prepared too much–for some people, food wastage is a common occurrence, whether we’re talking about prepared meals or buying food items from the market.

We all know it is bad to waste food, but sometimes, it’s simply unavoidable. Lucky for you, this article discusses four innovative ways you can convert leftovers to good food for your next meal, snack, appetizer, or dessert.

Pixabay/Pexels | Strawberries

Blitz Bruised Strawberries

Keeping strawberries fresh for a long time can be tough and so, wastage is inevitable. However, this does not necessarily have to be the case–if a few of the strawberries have gone soft but do not have mold, they can be used in a variety of other dishes. You can freeze the strawberries into pops, use them with ice cream, make a strawberry sauce, blend them into smoothies, or even mix them into drinks.

Ant Lane/Pexels| A Clementine

Clementine

Generally speaking, fruits can be fickle when it comes to long-term preservation at home. Clementine begins to turn soft or change color and in extreme cases, it can even have mold. Once you start noticing the color changes or when clementine is about to go bad, you don’t have to throw them away. Instead, you can use them for making cakes and little sponges, orange juice, or even detergents.

Rogerio Martins/Pexels | Tangerines

Tangerines

Broad stroke, tangerines fall into the category as clementine. When tangerines look like they are about to go bad, you can use them for a variety of food purposes. You can serve them alongside meals as juice or they can become part of ingredients for dishes such as tangerine garlic chicken, tangerine sauce, tangerine salsa, and other tangerine-based food/smoothies.

Greens

When it comes to Greens, there is so much you can do with leftovers. You can use them in making lettuce soup, rice with greens, coleslaw, spinach yogurt dip, green smoothies, kale pesto for spaghetti, and so much more.

On the flip side, you can also simply donate leftover food items to those in need. That way, you don’t need to deal with the hassle of storing extra food, and even better, you just might make someone’s day!