Reducing how much food we waste can be a difficult issue to tackle, especially when you have kids.
I want to waste less food. It’s horrible really. The food we end up throwing out sickens me. I used to be much better when we were dirt poor and had a $10 a week food budget. (Grocery prices were much lower back then!) I spent the majority of my life unable to waste anything because times were so lean. And now I am ashamed of far I have drifted away from those practices.
Weekends are the worst. On Friday nights we either get takeout or cook dinner very late in the evening. It just works out that way. With takeout, we toss out at least half of the rice.(We generally pick up a Thai stir fry.) With home cooked meals, there seems to always be a few stray veggies in a lonely frying pan. Forgotten until morning. Lucky sleeps near our little kitchen so on weekend evenings we leave the pots and pans until the following morning. I’m sick of tossing out my broccoli in the morning. Even those few bits. It adds up! It’s embarrassing!
From a wasteful point. A consumerism point. And a financial point.
Last week I threw out an entire head of cauliflower. It was congealing in the back of the fridge, unnoticed by all. That was $4 straight in the trash bin. I obviously intended to use it or I would not have purchased it, but somehow it slipped through the cracks.
My goal is to get a designated Tupperware for the veggie castaways. Add them each time they are left and pop it back in the freezer.
Of course one wonders what one does with a Tupperware of frozen vegetables after they have been frozen, thawed, cooked, re-frozen, re-thawed and recooked. There will definitely be a texture issue. I’m thinking I’ll have to develop a good cream soup recipe and invent some casseroles. That would be “hotdish” to the Midwestern folk.
I’ve never really liked these types of dishes, but they are a novelty for a flower child born and bred in Berkeley like Mr.JAC.
Here are my trash bin rescues from just this weekend:
It may only be maybe eight broccoli florets and a half cup of jasmine rice, but I’m guessing by the end of the month I’ll have enough in these containers for a dinner. (Yeah, Yeah, it is stored in plastic. I’m working on it.)
I seem to always find a few wilted mushrooms in the crisper that are a few days past salad quality, so whipping up a cup of cream of mushroom soup would take care of that problem. Instead of the trash pail in the alley, these things could produce a once a month casserole dish that could provide two lunches for Mr.JAC to bring to work. This could in effect, save a good $10 by eliminating two lunch hour trips to the sandwich shop.(He usually brings a lunch, but we often run out of ideas.) And since we would not be throwing out the ingredients like we did before, the original money spent on them would not be wasted, equaling more savings. This may sound like a pain just to save maybe $14 per month. But it’s only one example. It’s mostly just the rice and broccoli.
What about that head of cauliflower? What about the fresh strawberries that spent too much time on the counter top and suffered a few casualties to grey fuzz.? If I had sliced up 1/3 of the strawberries as soon as I bought them, I could have frozen them. We would have finished the berries before ANY went bad. Instead of throwing away $2.50 worth of the $8 package, I could have frozen berries, which I actually use quite often.
I’ve already taken a few steps in the right direction. Like using Glass jars for leftover black olives instead of letting them oxidize in the fridge from sitting in an open can. I’ve stopped buying and cooking chicken breasts. We just don’t like them very much and they don’t get eaten quickly. A whole roasting chicken tastes better and provides me with a carcass to toss in the crock pot for making stock.
Unfortunately, a batch of veggie soup I made last week turned out bad. It has a strong bile taste. I tried all of the tips and tricks to fix it, but to no avail. Two Tupperware of soup will be wasted. But I learned a lesson. Soup never turns out when I try making it in a slow cooker. I’ve given it a fair go with several recipes. Chicken stew and potato soup work fine in the crock pot, but my bean or veggie soups always turn out awful. Now I know for sure and can avoid the mistake in the future.
Do you find you or your family wasting a lot of food? Have you ever documented it to see just how much you wasted? Even if you think you don’t throw much out, you would probably be quite surprised if you recorded every morsel for one month.
Hi, I write a blog about health topics, nutrition, vitamins, etc. at http://healthyeducator.blogspot.com/
I always use leftover vegetables to make omelets. Sometimes I also use them to make pureed soup. Other times, I will just mix them into a casserole. I freeze any fruit I can’t use before it goes bad and use it to make smoothies.
we tend to throw out leftovers. i box them up for my husband and then he forgets they are there. i save them for him for 2 weeks and then he says ‘i forgot’.. um, hon I told you FOUR times and they were in the FRONT of the fridge at your eye level. seriously? ugh. I get tired of eating stuff 5 or 6 times, though since he forgets. Recently I made soup and just froze a couple of containers (enough for 2 or 3 servings) when I was putting the leftovers in the fridge. my husband will be surprised in a few weeks when he comes home to ‘fresh’ soup. I like the idea of the berries, because we ALWAYS lose them. ugh.
My husband does the same thing. Then the following week he will give me a hard time about not having enough lunches and having to buy a sandwich. That is when I open the fridge and point to the ones he never ate. It does get difficult since my husband is a very picky eater with a fast metabolism.
What has worked the best for me is I do a meal plan in advance each week for our dinners. I ONLY buy what is on the ingredient list for the dinners. Plus milk, eggs, cereal & oatmeal for breakfasts, etc.
And random lunch & snack food stuff, like fresh fruits for the week, animal crackers, etc.
If the meal makes enough that we have leftovers, we pack the leftovers up for our lunches at the same time that we put the dirty plates in the sink/dishwasher, and then the pot or baking dish that I cooked in goes in the sink/dishwasher too.
We used to buy tons of stuff and just have it go bad – especially veggies. But with the meal planning, the only food we ever throw out is whatever is left on our son’s high chair tray when he declares “All done!’ – which is rarely very much.
In fact, I just posted this week’s meal plan on my blog yesterday – feel free to check it out!
I hate wasting foods too, luckily my husband is good at bringing left overs to work. My fridge always looks empty too because I am constantly cleaning it out and using everything inside! I think that is how we waste little. I love the idea of putting 1/3 of fruit in the freezer!
My parents’ fridge I always remember being over stuffed with nothing so I try to avoid that. Meal planning is pretty important to us not wasting. It’s also nice my 11 month old wats everything, so those 6 broccoli from last nights dinner make for a good snack.
We also are big fans of bagged frozen veggies.