Making the most of your leftovers! (or not!!)

Christmas dinners are done and now your fridge and cupboards are filled with half eaten turkeys, mashed potatoes and tins of cookies. What's a healthy person to do? Here are some tips to make the most of your leftovers and get right back on track with your fitness goals:

1) The turkey

• cut the excess meat off the carcass and use it on top of salads for the week
• toss the bones in a soup pot with water just covering the bones - add in chopped onions, carrots and celery and a bay leaf, some rosemary and garlic and let simmer over low heat for a few hours to make a great homemade soup stock
• get a bunch of tupperware containers and freeze mini complete meals  - turkey/ham with veggies - when you are stuck for lunch or dinner one day, this is a great option to have a good meal, fast! Label your containers so you know what's inside and the date you froze them
• if you choose to just keep your Christmas dinner in your fridge and eat your way through it, you have 4 days to do it before you should toss it! (and in the case of gravy and stuffing - you only get a 2 day allowance before it needs to go)

2) The mashed potatoes - make up a batch of broccoli or cauliflower soup and use the mashed potatoes as a thickener. Just mix up your soup as you normally would and add in the mashed potatoes right before you puree the soup.

3) The sweets and treats - GET RID OF THEM! it's a proven fact that if you have 'treats' in the house it's only a matter of time before you eat them. If you don't keep the sweet foods in your house, you can't eat them. It's as simple as that. We all wind up with a pile of cookies and chocolates at the holiday season - go through it all and pick out the stuff that you LOVE and the stuff that you can live without. Maybe Grandma only makes her famous shortbreads once a year and they are your favourite. Freeze them and save them for your 'cheat' snacks. As for the stuff that is 'okay' but not your fav? Toss it out (I'd say give it to someone...but then you just transfer the sugar to others and that not really helping them at all!). There is no shortage of Ferraro Rocher's in the world - if you throw them away I promise that you'll never be sitting there thinking 'wow - I really wish I hadn't done that - how can I live without my ferraro's?'  Your future self thanks your current self for eliminating temptation out of your household.