How long do you keep leftovers?

[nrp]

I get a bit squeamish eating most things after a couple of days. DH is fine with 3-4 at least. Certainly it depends on the food, but do you all have any rules of thumb that you go by? I hate throwing stuff out but I'm not great about planning around our leftovers.

[mezzona]

2 days. If it has vinegar in it, I'm willing to go 3 days.

[Tondi G]

depends on the food... but usually 3 or 4 days we are still ok with eating some things.

[jgenie]

I draw the line at 6 days - DH will smell it if it smells fine he'll it older stuff. He has an iron stomach - me not so much.

[kijip]

Till common sense says don't eat it by smell or appearance. I am not food squeamish, I grew up too poor to waste too much food without feeling really guilty. I have never had a food related illness caused by leftovers. I also don't do things like store food in open cans. I would hazard a guess that I have a strong stomach in part because I grew up creatively cutting spoiled and molded parts out of food- often things we got from food banks for example were RIGHT on the edge, as were the mark downs my parents would scour through.

I make an effort to eat things in the reasonable window of time I know of and ordering things by priority- for example if presented with leftover spagetti sauce, leftover veggie curry, leftover chicken potpie and leftover fish, I will eat the fish first, then the chicken then the veggie curry and then finally the acidic tomato sauce. I also really try not to have a lot of leftovers at all, no more than I can prepack in a couple of serving size containers for grab and go lunches.

[DebbieJ]

We are one of those weird families that eat our leftovers pretty quick, so usually they don't last more than ~3 days in our house anyway.

I love having leftovers for lunch.

[SnuggleBuggles]

5 days or so.

Beth

[nrp]

I think I'm going to try to stretch myself to 3 or 4 days for most things. It will help us eat up our leftovers more easily. And like Katie mentioned, I need to start planning my portions better so as either to have enough to freeze a whole meal for later or just have a serving or two leftover. I'm moving towards having Thursdays as leftover night, which works really well, since its a workday for me. And Mondays (my other workday) are macaroni and cheese around here (or "Macaroni Mondaaaay!!!!" as my kids shout!), and I somehow cannot manage to make cheese sauce in any small amount, so I always end up with sizeable leftovers. The kids will be thrilled if they end up with a bit of macaroni on their leftover plate on Thursday nights!

[salsah]

until they smell /different wrong or have visible mold growing on them. my nose is sensitive to the smell of food gone bad. sometimes the food doesn't smell obviously spoiled, but i can pick up on it beginning to go bad a day before dh can. i won't eat it, but dh will. if he doesn't finish it, it will be obviously bad the next day.