Until the calendar changes to June, I’m going to ignore the fact that my youngest, my baby girl, is graduating from high school.

Meanwhile, I’ve become obsessed with getting my family to eat leftovers. It’s a task I’ve always taken very seriously; for environmental and economical reasons. Or it just highlights that I don’t get out enough. Either way, it’s distracting me from the reality that my kids are grown up.

It sets my nerves on edge when I find myself throwing out food because my family refuses to eat leftovers on weekends. They prefer macaroni and cheese from a box, or Cup O Noodles. And this last weekend, my adopted daughter decided to cook a couple meals while I was away. What gives her the right to upset the balance of my evil plot to get my family to eat leftovers on the weekends when I don’t cook?

Usually, when we don’t eat food before it goes bad, I’m placated by the yard waste receptacle where we can also throw food waste. But wasting food still grates on my better senses, because it’s like throwing money away. And for a family that now includes five adults with only one of us contributing to the finances, every time food gets tossed, I feel like I’ve failed. Even though my husband doesn’t actually say anything, in my head I hear, “I’ve given you one job: make sure the food gets eaten.”

Most of the time I’m successful, but lately with my obsessive gardening and the kids’ odd schedules as their school careers come to an end, I haven’t been as diligent with the leftovers. A couple weeks, after tossing out half a dozen plastic storage containers of food, the battle was on. It had to stop even if I had to force feed them.

So last Friday, when I found myself staring in the fridge at several containers of food, I decided if they wouldn’t come to the leftovers, the leftovers were going to come to them. I pulled out a large fry pan, threw in potatoes I’d cooked with a pot roast, rice we had put something over (it smelled fine), and grilled cabbage. Then I cut up turkey kielbasa and fried it all up together.

They loved it and most of it got eaten up. It made me laugh and I thought of the baseball movie with Kevin Costner and its tag line, “If you build it, he will come.” So Kevin Costner’s character built a baseball diamond on his land and a bunch of ghost players from days gone by showed up to hit a few.

It also reminded me when my oldest was a toddler. She would eat anything with barbecue sauce on it. I was one of those snobby mothers who thought I was the greatest mother in the world because my toddler would eat anything. Other parents were just misguided into think their kids wouldn’t eat food. I was sure it was only because they assumed their kids wouldn’t eat different types of food and therefore didn’t try. Here I had a toddler I never had to cajole into eating anything. And if she ever balked, I always had barbecue sauce.

Then my youngest was born and set me straight about my mothering skills. But that’s another story.

So as my family wolfed down that meal made up of random leftovers I pulled out of the fridge, I felt like I’d gotten away with something. It was my own ghost moment – ghosts of dinners past; add kielbasa and they will eat it and I didn’t even have to add barbecue sauce.

Like I said, I don’t get out much.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.”or follow her on Twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.