— Callie Wenciker

That's a great question. You know the the obvious answer in our our refrigerators when there's mold on top and when it looks green or smells funny then you know, it's not edible and that does happen our refrigerator. We have, you know, five children now living at home and sometimes things get pushed to the back and you pull it out and it looks a little green smells funny goes right out to the compost, you know, ideally you should eat leftovers if they're in a sealed container in a couple of days, we do start to lose nutrients in our food actually from the time that you bring it home and put it in your refrigerator. Even before you prepare it there's a slow degradation of nutrients and phytochemicals. So it's better to eat things fresh and even your produce, you know, you buy it. You don't want to keep it more than a couple of days two to three days maximum. For you use it if you've cooked food. I really would suggest trying to eat it in a day or two. If you think that you prepared too much the way to really optimize the saving of your food is to put it in some jars or some bags freezer bags or containers and just freeze it for another day. That's something that we commonly will. Do, you know if we prepare a bunch of food and our Crock-Pot or our Our steamer will just simply take the leftover put it in freezer bags and put it in for another day. So that's certainly a way to try and retain a lot of the nutrients and there's lots of ways to maintain the freshness and and prepare food and and freeze it for another day. So leftovers are great. One of the common ways that I also use leftovers are for lunches. And if I'm you know, preparing my lunch for the next day and dinner time. I just grab a tupperware and I'll take some of our main dish I'll take some salads some steamed vegetables. I'll put a piece of fruit in I'll snap it on and I'll put that in the refrigerator and instantly I have lunch just in the process of cleaning up dinner. So that's another nice way to use leftovers. We do the same thing with our children too. So hopefully that gives you some general guidance. It's a great question because we don't want to have food waste Foods expensive and so as many ways as you can reuse the food, you know, you can certainly do that. Also, you know in our refrigerator if we notice The lettuce or our spinach or kale is just on the edge. We'll chop it up put it in the freezer bag and freeze it and then we can always pull that back out. We can throw it in soup stews and smoothies so we can reuse it that way rather than you know, losing it. We'll figure out other ways to utilize some of our produce. So that's a great question. Thank you Kelly. I appreciate that.