65 healthy meals you can make from leftovers

I have a problem, and it's about time I admitted it: I am a big-time food-waster. Each Sunday I go shopping with the honest intention of using every ounce of soymilk and every last spoonful of avocado I load into my cart. And every Saturday I throw away something like a few cups of rice, a half-carton of spoiled yogurt, and sometimes even (gasp!) a whole rotten avocado.

But this World Environment Day (coming up on June 5), I'm taking matters into my own hands. The Day's theme is "Think.Eat.Save," also the title of the U.N. initiative to reduce global food waste. In the U.S. alone, we waste about 40 percent of our food, amounting to about $165 billion per year.

So to do my part and to help readers do theirs, I’ve rounded up a bunch of ways to cut down on the amount of food that ends up in the trashcan. What follows is a list of 65 creative ideas for meals to make out of leftovers, from French onion soup to banana ice cream. Some of the ideas are made from entire leftover meals (think half a pizza pie); others make use of ingredients that tend to spoil quickly (like, ugh, brown bananas).