I’m a cheapskate and refuse to spend money on food, I steal leftover peanuts and meals from flights for my dinner

A FLIGHT attendant has revealed how she steals leftover food from passengers rather than pay for dinner herself.

Self-confessed cheapskate Stephanie Rivers, from Texas, will make an effort to scour the plane once it has landed to see who hasn’t tucked into their in-flight meal.

Speaking on TLC’s Extreme Cheapskates, she says: “When the passengers leave the plane I look for a meal that’s left by a pilot or a passenger. 

“There’s really neat stuff here like ravioli or pasta primavera. 

“The food is perishable items, they’re going to throw it away if I don’t take it home and eat it.

“I’m saving myself about $15 on every meal.”

But her husband Jimmy is less impressed. 

“Stephanie’s idea of fine dining is bringing home what the airline’s leftover,” he says, “We open up the refrigerator and it looks like a deli.”

But it isn’t just the unopened ready meals that Stephanie sticks in her bag.

“In first class they sell mixed nuts, in the main cabin, they serve regular nuts,” she says.

“If they’re unopened, you’re not allowed to take them but if they’re open I bag them up, I bring them home.

“A jar of mixed nuts is about eight dollars, I don’t have to pay for them. They’re good for snacking and they’re really good for protein.”

The flight attendant returns home every day with a haul of pillows leftover from the flight.

She boils the cases to sanitise them so that they can be repurposed as coffee filters, before repurposing the pillows as duvets.

Stephanie even stitches together the used airline blankets to make them into a comforter.