holiday hosting tips & tricks
celebrate the holidays without the waste
Making a Plan:
Right-size your meal: Be sure to plan your cooking to scale! Nothing feels worse than tossing food that you spent hours making. Resources like SavetheFood provide portion estimation calculators (incorporating if you want leftovers), and also have useful guides on storing ingredients and leftovers effectively.
Have a Leftover Plan: Invite guests to bring containers to divide up the leftovers - encourage folks to bring more containers than they think they need! Keeping leftover dishes separate makes them easier to transform into new meals, and tends to help with visual appeal in the fridge.
If the team approach to leftovers doesn't fit, find local food recovery donation partners to share the wealth - be sure to grab some foil to-go containers ahead of time to make donation easy!
Get ready for some compost: Connect with your local composter to handle the non-usable leftovers and scraps! Epic will gladly accept compost drop-offs of any volume for $10/drop off during shop hours.
Use Up the Scraps:
Explore our go-to recommendations below to make the most of your ingredients and leftovers!
Scrap Stock: Our favorite go-to for turkey bones and veggie scraps from food prep.
Veggie Fritters: This is a super forgiving recipe - just mix any fibrous veggie scraps or leftovers into your batter and get frying!
Veggie Skin Chips: Use up all your potato and other root veggie skins to make an easy snack.
Make the Most of Leftovers: Check out Food 52 and Serious Eats' idea lists to transform your leftovers.