Leftover wine gets made into cookies (red wine cookies) or put in the soup pot too. Extra vegetables and grains/beans always get turned into soups and stews.

Scraps of cheese get tossed into soups or dotted over a fresh pizza. Baked goods were rarely purchased but we were allowed to make them from scratch. My mom raised my siblings and me without a lot of extra sugar. I freeze my stale bread to use in soups, bread salads, and to make breadcrumbs and/or bread pudding out of. I also have a vegetable scrap zip top bag in my freezer along with other bags for chicken bones/backs, meat bones, shrimp shells/lobster shells/clam shells/fish bones.all for making stock. Extra yogurt/buttermilk goes into baked goods. Cold coffee is turned into coffee syrup and added to vanilla ice cream base or poured over vanilla ice cream.

Chicken skin is often turned into gribnes which is like pork cracklings. Both sets of grandparents were fans of the sayings 'waste not, want not' and my one grandmother reminded us at every meal to 'take all you want but eat all you take' which was apparently said at the mess hall in the army. I go by a waste nothing rule in my own kitchen fueled by countless stories told to me of thrift by my grandparents offset by their plain values of not wasting a thing and the Great Depression, World War 1 and 2.

Thrifty and red button ice cream