This is an area I really need to work on. Wasted food is wasted money. I may as well take a few dollar bills out of my wallet and toss them in the trash can each week. So I'm trying to be vigilant with either eating, repurposing or freezing leftovers and not over purchasing produce.
My plan is to post here everyday and fess up to anything that ended up in the garbage.
How about you? What is your biggest food waste and how do you plan on reducing it?
To kick off the New Year I have to admit to tossing almost a full head of lettuce today (actually it was composted so not a total loss but still). They're running anywhere between $1.19-$1.50 a head right now so I pretty much just tossed a dollar bill in the trash.:down:
Ugh, I've had to toss lettuce too. Trying to plan better and not over buy/cook what we can't eat. I had some LO brown rice with lunch today that I would have normally tossed, since it was 3 days old. I'm alive and fine.
Sounds like my kind of challenge! I am in! I also cleaned out my fridge to. Egin the new year. I will begin today. We had leftover takeout for lunch and leftover new year' s eve snacks for dinner. I also cooked up The rest of the potatoes and made potato soup with precooked bacon from Christmas morning. Two no wastes!
I'm guilty too but I used to be worse. I realized a couple years ago how much food I was throwing away. I think it started with hamburger buns and bread. GAH!, yes like tossing dollar bills in the garbage. I found my husband will eat a bun thats been frozen before he'll eat one that's stale. He has a very low tolerance for stale <g>. So now I buy the 12 pack of buns (cheaper!) and leave 4 out at a time. Very rarely do I throw any away.
I'll look forward to some tips from others . Freezing is of course one idea, but I don't have a big freezer. And since it's just my husband and myself our small freezer isn't a problem. What we have seems to work if we plan well.
I'm in for this challenge! I desperately want to reduce the amount of food we waste as like you, I feel like it's money wasted. I don't know if this counts, but I threw away some Christmas candy and some pumpkin bread that we'd received as a gift and had opened for a family gathering. The chocolates were truffles and none of us (in my immediate family) is a fan of white chocolate so I ditched the ones that weren't eaten by others in our extended family. The pumpkin bread had been eaten and shared and was pretty much shredded so what remained was tossed today. We didn't spend any money on either of these things but I still felt bad throwing it out.
I'm in again this year, I did a lot better in '11 but not good enough.
I cleaned the fridge and cabinets so starting fresh. Yesterday I made an ambrosia salad using out of date (by 10days) sour cream and there's still enough for a baked potato later in the week. I mean really, how can you tell if sour cream is bad :lol:
I do have a bunch of green onions that need to be used, dh is not an onion fan so I would have to sneak them in something. Any ideas? Will they freeze?
I cleaned the fridge and cabinets so starting fresh. Yesterday I made an ambrosia salad using out of date (by 10days) sour cream and there's still enough for a baked potato later in the week. I mean really, how can you tell if sour cream is bad :lol:
I'm planning to use up some overripe bananas today for banana bread as well as some way overripe pears + apples to make some applesauce to go with our supper tonight! Hopefully the only parts of the pears I have to throw away is a little bit of the skin that is beginning to mold and the cores!
Wunsagin, I agree with mdstrp, I'm pretty sure you can slice them and freeze them then you can toss them in something else later. Maybe you could make some kind of onion dip with them and some of the sour cream?
I learned that green peppers and celery are 2 things that I end up throwing out about 1/2 of before I get it used so I started taking at least half when I buy it and cut it up in small pieces and freezing it on a baking sheet and then storing it in a freezer bag in the freezer. I use both in things that I cook so it really doesn't matter that they are frozen. It has saved me quiet a bit in the long run.
Wrapping celery in aluminum foil is supposed to help extend it's life. I'm doing a test run now but I didn't think about it until there were only a few little heart stalks left so won't trust my results on that one. Gonna try again with a fresh stalk when I shop on Friday.
DH took the last of the ham in his sandwiches today for lunch.
I ate the left over sauerkraut, pork and mashed potatoes for lunch today.
5 apples that were getting soft are in the oven right now magically transformed into apple crisp.
Snack crackers from New Years, left over cheese cubes and a few slices of pepperoni went to work with dh in a container.
Left over foil wrapped chocolate candy went to work with me today and are now being eaten up by coworkers in the lunch room.
Leftover salad from Sunday dinner went to the chickens, as did the potato peelings after being cooked on the wood burner stove for about an hour.
I have really fallen off this wagon. The amount of wasted food here is horrible. But it's a new year and a new leaf right??
Today I did toss several bags of HM leftover Christmas cookies since I was the only person eating them and I dont need the calories...Now onward and upward.......I am going to try to buy less, cook less and have less to waste in the first place! WOOT!!
Small victory but still...I used the last couple tablespoons of Spinach Dip from Saturday's dinner and spread it on a piece of French Bread and toasted it in the oven (along with the other slices of bread.) Started on a new head of lettuce and composted the first few outer leaves along with the end of a new cucumber.
I threw out a half a bag of salad and a couple of slices of lunch meat. I'm not buying lunchmeat for a while, I have a bunch of other stuff I need to use up. If I have leftover bread or baked quickbreads, cookies, etc. I put them out for my birds. I have a flat birdfeeder, they love it! I have people at work bring me their leftover bread and granola so I can put it out for my birds! LOL I still have a regular bird feeder, but man, this flat feeder gets cleaned out in a day!
Wasting food is my biggest problem. It's mainly because I dread cooking so I end up eating fast food instead of what I bought to cook. I will do better in 2012!... hopefully :shame:
Half a block of cream cheese wasted today Lots of leftover chili, pork and mashed potatoes in the fridge right now. Might not cook tomorrow so that more gets used up..
Dh is really getting into this eating leftovers and eating foods from the pantry, fridge and freezer. For lunch today he finished the sloppy joe meat and ate the last of the hamburger buns that the sloppy joes were served on and he also finished the tiny bit of baked beans that were left. YIPPEE!!!
A2M, that's GREAT! I hesitate to say that my DH is catching on but I have noticed him being a little more cooperative with eating the leftovers.
DH took leftovers for lunch today and I finished off the last of hot dogs from the weekend and a small amount of chili. I transformed last night's leftover rice in to something totally different tonight and still had some leftover that ended up in the freezer.
I've got a whole container of sour cream that is worrying me. We eat mexican once or twice or a week and can blow through some sour cream but the holidays threw me off and I bought it before Christmas. I think I'm going to use half of it and make a dip with over the weekend and hope the other half lasts through next week to eat with our two nights of Enchilada's.
We had chili leftover for dinner tonight. Still more left, it may end up in the freezer in individual portions. I have mashed potatoes that will get used again just as they are..and pork that I will need to find a use for. Dh made it in the crock pot, but it didn't come out great..to lean to have much flavor. I will find a use for it though. Maybe soup...
yesterday we had the lo chicken enchiladas and mexican rice. There was a bit of rice left and I was going to toss it but realized there was still enough left for lunch today so that's what I'm having.
I am wondering how long this will be "fun". Right now it is exciting to see how long leftovers will last and find some mystery meal when it looks like nothing is there, but I fear it will get old soon.
I also am sort of hurting myself. To save money I have been making smaller meals and just adding more sides (mostly free from the garden). Well, now we are not having enough for leftovers! Most days it is one helping of leftovers and sandwiches for the rest of us. The deal is, lunch meat is too expensive (like $6 a pound! I can buy steak for that). We will see what kind of creativity I will have for lunch in the future.
We had a little shredded turkey leftover. I turned that into enough turkey salad for 1 1/2 sandwiches. I also cooked up some expired canned bisucits and had 2 sausage biscuits (sausage lo from Christmas). The kids had pbj.
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