I have a love-hate relationship with leftovers. I love them because I can bring them to work for lunch, which accomplishes multiple goals. I generally eat better, I save time, I save money, and I earn secret bragging points whenever I'm warming up something I made in one microwave, and someone else at work is cooking up a Lean Cuisine in the other.

The hate is because sometimes, the need for leftovers can rule me. On average, I cook five nights a week. On average, I need to make ten lunches worth of leftovers a week. And on average, my meals produce... carry the one... three servings of leftovers. Usually, this works out pretty well, but there are always variables in the mix.

As mentioned, every third Monday, I cook a large meal for friends. This large meal can produce anywhere from zero to eight servings of leftovers, depending on what I make, how much of it I make, how many people show up, how hungry they are, what diets they're on, and how much they like it. And that's fine, really, you Monday folks that read this. Wouldn't have it any other way. You know I only use the word "locusts" out of love.

So most of the time, I can cook what I'm in the mood for, and cook enough of it so that I have the leftovers I need. Sometimes I have too many leftovers, and they either go bad orI get sick of them. And sometimes, I have to force myself to make something when I may not be in the mood to cook.

If you want to cook for leftovers, the first tip is to cook amorphous. The best leftovers are things like stirfries, pasta dishes, curries, soups, stews, etc. Things that are made up of small chunks. Amorphous one-pot dishes can fit into any container, any size, and can be reheated all at once and all together. Formless, shapeless piles are your friend. It's a work lunch, so if you're overly fussy about presentation, get over yourself.

Foods with multiple components are more hassle, like taco filling. I love tacos, but if I want tacos at work, I have to bring the filling and the shells separately at the very least. Guacamole or salsa? A third container. Multiple containers means hassle. Luckily, I love tacos, but if you don't love tacos as much as I do, you may be unwilling to put up with it.

Meat-and-side dinners have their hassle at the other end. Say you're making pan-seared chicken breast and some mashed potatoes, but you want leftovers. You have to deliberately pull out twice as much chicken. Cook twice as much chicken. And try to make exactly twice as much of the mashed potatoes, because if you make two and a half times the mashed potatoes, you'll have an extra serving of mashed potatoes, which you won't have anything to eat with, so it'll probably rot in the fridge anyway.

Proper containerage is key. I use mostly Snapware, which is rigid plastic with rubber gaskets in the lids, because it's very difficult to get them to leak. And when you carry your leftover soup in the same bag as your DS and your netbook, you do not want them to leak. Ever. Snapware comes in some slightly inconvenient sizes for me, and I don't have quite enough storage space for all the sizes I could need, or enough of those sizes so that I always have clean ones at the ready, but I manage.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to find enough clean Snapware for four or five servings of pasta with eggplant, peppers, pesto, and fresh tomatoes. That's at least two more days taken care of, at least.

LATE UPDATE: One additional tip. Don't drop a full, lidless containers of your leftovers in the trash by accident. This will reduce the number of leftovers you have available, somehow.