Managing Thanksgiving leftovers can be almost as stressful as making the feast.
You try to dole out as many leftovers as possible to your guests so that you don't have to bear the brunt of eating two pounds of sweet potatoes alone, but you also want to keep enough so you can savor the feast for a little longer.
Storing these leftovers in food containers can also create some problems. Who took what, when will they give back your Tupperware (if ever), how many dishes can you keep in your fridge — the list goes on.
But one woman has a genius hack to make rationing Thanksgiving day leftovers much simpler using recyclable aluminum muffin tins.
The scoop
Everyone's favorite cooking grandma, Babs (@brunchwithbabs), shared an Instagram Reel of a mind-blowingly easy Thanksgiving day leftovers hack.
She shows how she uses each activity of the to-go aluminum muffin tins to hold a different leftover, essentially creating a tv dinner tray of Thanksgiving leftovers.
This hack is amazing because it's simple, customizable, and transportable.
You can find these to-go muffin tins in the baking section at your local grocery store. The lids Babs shows may be more difficult to find, but you can always substitute them with aluminum foil.
How it's helping
When you've recovered from your first food coma and plan on reentering another, you won't have to dirty another dish to heat your food — just like a tv dinner, you can pop this tin in the oven and eat right out of it.
Another benefit of this hack is that people can get what they want in perfect portions, meaning no one gets stuck with over a week's worth of leftovers, and it reduces the amount of food wasted after the holiday.
Instead of trying to play fridge Tetras with food storage containers, these tins stack nicely and are much simpler to store. And when you've finished eating, these aluminum containers can be rinsed out and recycled or reused.
Along with being an effective way of keeping materials out of landfills, recycling is also a critical part of the aluminum production business, according to Aluminum.org.
The website states that creating recycled aluminum only takes around 5% of the energy needed to make new aluminum, which decreases the amount of harmful carbon pollution created by the industry and saves money for businesses and end consumers.
Recycling aluminum is so effective that an estimated 75% of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today.
What everyone's saying
In her comment section, a majority of users commented on how brilliant this hack is. The comment "great idea," or something similar, was made dozens of times under Babs' post.
So as you're preparing to host a holiday gathering, don't forget to add recyclable aluminum muffin tins to your shopping list.
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