The Leftovers Favorite In Tiffani Thiessen's House

What do you do when there are little bits of leftover cereal sitting at the bottom of a long-ago-opened box? If you only know Tiffani Thiessen from "Saved by the Bell," you may be surprised to hear she has the solution.

Thiessen indeed found fame in her role as head cheerleader Kelly Kapowski, but if you search the star's website today, you'll find scant mention of her career in Hollywood. In recent years, she's shifted her focus to the culinary world. In fact, Thiessen heads her own cooking show, "Dinner at Tiffani's" on the Cooking Channel, and now hosts "Deliciousness," a food-centric spinoff of "Ridiculousness" on MTV.

As if that weren't enough, Thiessen has also made her mark on the food-centric corner of the literary world. Her first cookbook, entitled "Pull Up A Chair: Recipes from My Family to Yours," was published in 2018 and largely focuses on family-friendly meals. Her second foray into cookbooks will be released on September 26, 2023, and it has an unexpected focus: a cookbook entirely devoted to leftovers. You read that correctly — that's what Thiessen's "Here We Go Again: Recipes and Inspiration to Level Up Your Leftovers" is all about. She also spoke more about the subject in a recent interview on Tasting Table's "Shared Tastes," revealing that her family's favorite leftovers recipe uses cereal to make ice cream-esque milk bars.

To promote the impending release of "Here We Go Again," Tiffani Thiessen sat down for a chat with TikTok star and "MasterChef" alumnus Nick DiGiovanni, whose own cookbook, entitled "Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook," is also set to hit shelves soon. In their joint interview, the pair discussed the challenges of cookbook authorship, gave credit to their biggest inspirations, and dove deep into the topic of leftovers.

Thiessen noted that dealing with leftovers has historically been a challenge in her household, as her husband found them unappetizing and she didn't want her kids to adopt the same attitude. So, the recipes collected in her new book reflect her efforts to transform leftovers into brand-new treats. Thiessen says that a particular favorite in her house is cereal milk bars, which she succinctly describes as being "like ice cream bars, but they're [made] from leftover cereal." This ensures that the last little bit of cereal at the bottom of the box never gets wasted, and preventing waste is at the heart of the matter for Thiessen.

In their interview, Tiffani Thiessen told Nick DiGiovanni that her motivation to write a leftovers-focused cookbook came from her concerns over climate change. She highlighted the issue of food waste, which has a catastrophic impact on the environment, often sending perfectly good food to landfills while wasting the energy and resources required to produce it in the first place. The theme of Thiessen's first book also tied neatly into her second. "Now that I have children, my biggest thing is teaching them about waste," Thiessen explained. "I think [food waste] it's one of our biggest issues [related to] global warming ... I really wanted to teach my children there's really so many things you can do with leftover food."

Indeed, "Here We Go Again" is Thiessen's effort to expand those lessons to a broader audience beyond her own home. In addition to her kids' beloved cereal milk bars, the book offers recipes to help you use up the last bit of buttermilk — the one you bought when you wanted to make biscuits and only needed a cup, but found that the store only sells buttermilk in pints. (We've all been there.) It'll also show you how to get the most out of any leftovers from your holiday meals.

Static Media owns and operates Daily Meal and Tasting Table.