Green Your Gastronomy: DON'T Save Your Food

The days may be long and sweltering, but your meals can still be light on the stomach — and the Earth. This week's tips will help make your summer fare a bit greener.

Tip #4: Get creative with your leftovers.

While composting your leftover food is an excellent way to reduce waste, you can’t compost some kinds of meat and cooked food, and the resultant fertilizer is only useful if you’ve got a whole lotta garden. Instead of tossing your extra food (or leaving it in Tupperware for three weeks), try some new takes on leftovers: Sandwich crusts make bread pudding, overripe bananas become a mean smoothie, and almost any leftovers chopped up with rice make a Colombian picadito — yum.

Tell us: What's your favorite weird leftover recipe?