Confessions of a Recovering Food Waster

New blog

2008-07-03T15:53:00.002-04:00

I've decided to start a new blog(yeah, I think this will be the last one!). The main topic of this new blog will be frugality, but I will be incorporating my no-food-waste mission into my frugal blog, with at least one post a week covering that topic.

Anyhow, the new blog is The Frugal Girl. I hope to move the recipes from this blog over to wordpress once I figure out how, but until then, I'll leave this blog up.

Menu(which is late again)

2008-06-26T15:06:00.006-04:00

One of these days I will post a menu before we are nearly done with the week. =P Actually, I'm just going to post two weeks' worth(this week and this coming week) to get myself caught up.

Sunday

Waffles(recipe is forthcoming on my baking blog)

Monday

Chicken panini with cilantro pesto
Mangos

Tuesday

Grilled steaks
Buttermilk biscuits
Watermelon

Wednesday

Tacos
Fruit salad

Thursday

Grilled steak sandwiches on English Muffins
Grapes

Friday

Stromboli
Green salad

Saturday

Ham Sandwiches
Corn on the Cob

Sunday

French Toast

Monday

Asian Chicken Pasta Salad
Grapes
Dinner Rolls

Tuesday

Shrimp pizzas on tortilla crusts
Watermelon

Wednesday

Chicken Wraps
Apple Slices
Chips

Thursday

Deep dish pizza(which I've never made before...I'm trying a Cook's Illustrated recipe, naturally)
Green Salad

Friday

Grilled Hamburgers on homemade buns
Fruit salad

Yay for empty plastic bags!

2008-06-23T20:06:00.004-04:00

You might be wondering what is so exciting about this. Well, a few short days ago, this bag was chock full of a green salad. We had friends over for dinner on Friday who brought a green salad, and they left the leftovers with us. It was a large salad, so the leftovers were nothing to sniff at. I was pretty determined to not let this show up in my food waste photo though, so I've been eating salad for breakfast, lunch, and dinner(Ok, I'm kidding on the breakfast part. I have my limits!). Anyhow, tonight I ate the very last of it, and I'm very pleased about that.

In other happy, not wasteful news, I made chicken panini sandwiches with cilantro pesto tonight. And if you're a regular here, you know that I waste cilantro pretty often. Tonight, I made a large recipe of the pesto and used up most of the bunch of cilantro(usually I make a small batch which leaves me with a lot of cilantro), and I froze the extra pesto to use the next time I make the sandwiches. Now, all too often the freezer is just a pit stop on the way to the trash can, so the pesto is not out of the woods. But I'm going to try really hard not to let it get lost in the freezer...and probably cleaning and organizing my freezer would be a good way to avoid that. My freezer above my fridge is pretty generally a disorganized mess(is there such a thing as an organized mess?) and I know this contributes to my food wasting. I lose track of food in there and then it gets freezer burnt.

I still have a small bunch of cilantro left. I might combine that with the tomatoes that have gone a bit downhill and make some salsa.

Food Waste Photo-6.19

2008-06-19T21:24:00.004-04:00

My twice weekly fridge cleaning seems to be helping me. It didn't drastically reduce the amount of food I waste, but I did actually get around to cleaning it, and I'm posting a food waste photo about a week after the last one, which is an improvement.

So, from left to right: some moldy french bread. We weren't too inspired about eating this, due to the salt issue...I should have made croutons. Next up: two hot dogs. They starred in a recent food waste photo, so I think I've decided to not buy/cook hot dogs anymore. As it is, we eat them rarely(usually only when I'm desperately low on time), but I think we'll eat them even more rarely from here on out.

There are also some bad tomatoes...I'm not sure how I let these go bad. We've been eating lots of salad...I guess I just didn't see these. Below those is a bowl of mayo based soy dipping sauce that we used with some kabobs. The recipe made WAY too much dipping sauce, though. As I was going to throw this out today, I thought better of it and decided that I'm going to try using it in a pasta salad recipe I have(the dressing on that salad is really similar to the dip). For the time being, it's back in my fridge.

Lastly, there are some, um, very fermented milk products...some regular milk, and some buttermilk(the liquid leftover when I made butter). These smelled so bad that I couldn't imagine that they would made edible baked goods(which means baking with them would probably make me waste other ingredients), so they got dumped out into my backyard.

I had another cup of milk that was slightly on the sour side, but I used it to make two loaves of oatmeal bread tonight. So, the milk waste wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. I haven't tasted the bread yet, but I think the milk wasn't far gone enough to give the bread a bad flavor.

The menu(late, of course!)

2008-06-17T21:05:00.005-04:00

I could stay a lot more caught up on my blogging if real life didn't keep getting in the way. =P I'm going to put the whole week's worth of meals on here, even though we're a ways into the week already.

Sunday

Crab Cakes
French Bread

Monday

Pulled Chicken Sandwiches on homemade buns
Green salad

Tuesday

Due to poor planning, we ate a Little Caesar's pizza (ahem)

Wednesday

Italian Panini with tomato, chicken, and basil filling

Thursday

Shrimp Veiness
Fruit Salad
French bread

Friday

Grilled Pizza

Food Waste Photo

2008-06-11T14:36:00.003-04:00

Did you notice I didn't call it a weekly food waste photo?? I don't seem to be doing any better at keeping up with this than with my menu plans!

Since I was a little tardy with the fridge cleaning, this represents more than a week's worth of wastage. I threw away a bag of baby carrots(I have no idea why these went moldy so fast...they're not that old!), a couple of cherries(which is very sad considering how expensive they are!!), two bananas that I should have frozen, a small bowl of ravioli, a little bit of grilled chicken which was leftover from when I made wraps, and finally some ranch dressing. I wanted some to use when I made wraps and didn't have any, so I tried a recipe off the internet and it was waaay too heavy on the garlic(plus I'd left it in the fridge with no lid for a week and it had developed a nasty thick dried layer on top...appetizing, huh?).

This may seem counter-intuitive, but I think that since I'm having trouble cleaning the fridge once a week, I'm going to do it twice a week. My hypothesis is that I put it off because it's a large job after a week, so if I do it more often I'll be less likely to put it off. I'm also hoping that doing it this way will keep me more up to speed on what's in my fridge which will in turn help me waste less food.

Another leftover triumph

2008-06-04T15:11:00.003-04:00

Nine times out of ten when I make tacos, I let the leftover meat go bad. I think it's just laziness on my part...it's sort of a pain to reheat the meat and get all the taco fixings out again to make just one taco. So, I either let it go bad in the fridge, or I put it in the freezer(with good intentions of thawing it and eating it later!) and let it get freezer burnt.

Well, this week I made tacos, and I am proud to say that I didn't throw away one bit of the meat. I decided to make a taco salad with it to eat for lunch and it was actually pretty tasty. I had some iceberg lettuce that was on its last leg, so I cut that up and topped it with the meat, some cheese, and some sour cream. It was maybe not the healthiest lunch ever, but it saved the lettuce and the taco meat from the trash. And, I drank a yogurt smoothie with it, so that redeemed it a bit. =P I still had some left, so last night we had sort of a clean the fridge/freezer night...I had another taco salad, the kids had spaghetti(needed to use some tomato sauce), and the husband had ravioli(which I needed to use up before it got freezer burnt).

I did still manage to waste some food, though. I don't have a picture yet, because I haven't cleaned out my fridge yet(my office is looking fantastic, though! =P). Hopefully tomorrow I will get to that. Or maybe tonight if I am feeling super energetic.

The lost weekly menu

2008-06-04T15:01:00.005-04:00

I haven't posted my menu for a few weeks now...maybe I should title these, "Occasional menus". I really have been planning one each week, I just haven't gotten around to posting them.

Wednesday

BLT Chicken Salad
Pull-apart garlic bread

Thursday

Grilled Greek Pitas
Watermelon

Friday

Grilled Pizza(which I've never done before!)

Saturday

Ham sandwiches
cherries

Sunday

French Toast
Orange Julius

Monday

Cheddar Bacon Quesadillas
Chips and salsa

Tuesday

Pork Chops
Challah
Green salad

Wednesday

Swiss Mushroom Chicken
Apples
Garlic Breadsticks

Since these next two nights are over a week from now, I haven't planned side dishes to go with them...I'll do that next Wednesday(and hey, maybe I'll actually post another menu a week from now!).
Thursday

Tilapia

Friday

Hot Dogs

Strawberry update

2008-06-03T05:30:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to say that we are through those two big bins of strawberries. We've eaten a lot on cereal and in fruit salad and just plain, and I used some to make the dessert pictured above, which had strawberries both in and on it, and which used a can of Eagle Brand(as a side note, I think I'm down to two cans of Eagle Brand now!). I froze the rest of the strawberries today. However, I went with my sister to pick more strawberries(my parents are still away, so no one is there to pick them) and I now have another bin full of them. We'll probably eat most of those and also freeze some.

Anyhow, as of now, nothing but the strawberry tops and the occasional mushy berry has gotten thrown away!

Chocolate Pudding from scratch

2008-06-02T14:50:00.003-04:00

I had some sour milk to use up this past week(poor planning at work again!), and I remembered that this is a good thing to make when I have a surplus of milk, or when I have milk that has gone slightly sour(not so sour that it has a horrible smell, but sour enough that you don't want to eat it on your cereal!). For some reason, once it's cooked into pudding, you don't taste the sourness at all(especially if you top it with whipped cream and a cherry! If you don't want to bother with doing it from scratch, you can certainly use up sour milk by making pudding with a mix from a box. But, this is cheaper and I think it tastes better(especially when compared with instant pudding).

Chocolate Pudding

2 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
2 cups milk, divided
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

In a pot, mix cocoa with enough water to make a smooth paste. I'm sorry, that's not very exact...um, it's my grandma's recipe! Ahem. Start with just a little bit of water. At first, it will seem like the cocoa is not ever going to absorb any water, but be patient. Keep whisking, and once you've whisked enough and added enough water(I'd say probably a couple of tablespoons should be good), it should look like this.

Add the sugar, salt, and 1 1/2 cups milk. Mix remaining 1/2 cup with the cornstarch and set aside.

Heat the milk and cocoa mixture to boiling, stirring regularly. Once it boils, stir in the cornstarch/milk mixture(you'll want to stir it up before adding it, as the cornstarch likes to settle into a sludge at the bottom of the measuring cup), and boil for one minute. The pudding will thicken up and look like this.

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour into a bowl(or into whatever you wish to refrigerate the pudding in!), cover, and refrigerate. It will continue to thicken and become more firm as it cools.

My strawberry challenge

2008-05-30T20:44:00.002-04:00

My parents' strawberry patch is in full swing right now, and today they left on vacation. Happily for me, they had a bunch of strawberries that they didn't need and couldn't use before they left, so as of this morning, I am the proud owner of 20 pounds of strawberries! They were free, and as an added bonus, they were already picked for me. Yay!

So, now I need to use them before they go bad. I made some pretty good progress on them today...in fact, 10 pounds of them are now taken care of. I made something like 10 pints of jam, I made strawberry ice cream(I had some cream I needed to use anyway!), and I froze a panful of them to use in smoothies.

I'm not positive what I'm going to do with the other 10 pounds. I think I'll freeze a bunch of them, and I have several strawberry-heavy recipes that I've been filing away to try when strawberry season arrived. Last year my mom gave me a fair number of strawberries, and I know I let some of them rot in my fridge. I'm determined that this year is going to be different, though.

Long time, no blog, plus a food waste photo

2008-05-29T15:21:00.004-04:00

Real life has been busy as usual, and then last weekend, my husband I got to go away(kidless! woot!) by ourselves rather unexpectedly. So, I've been a little behind on life, and blogging. Happily, our sudden departure last weekend resulted in surpringly little food wasting. I managed to get most of the food in our fridge either eaten or frozen, and I just skipped going to the grocery store. And while we bought a few groceries while we were away, we ate most of them and brought the rest home in our cooler.

I did have to throw a couple of things away, though...both of these things were in the fridge before we went on our trip.

That's a two week old hot dog, and a who-knows-how-old bit of french bread pizza which was lost in the back of my fridge! And not pictured is some lettuce that I'd washed before our trip. We ate some of it one night, but the rest was supposed to be eaten over the weekend, and we weren't home to do it.

My fridge was almost completely empty when we came home, so I went grocery shopping today. I bought a bunch of produce:

...hopefully none of it will end up in my compost bin!

The milk crisis is over.

2008-05-16T15:56:00.003-04:00

In a previous post, I'd mentioned that we had a glut of milk and yogurt to deal with. Yesterday morning, I took care of that. As I was packing my husband's lunch, I took a gallon out of the fridge in order to reach the iced tea. The milk from the farm comes in huge glass Mason jars(the kind that pickles come in when you buy them in bulk!). The jar was heavy, and slippery, and before I could get it up onto the counter, it slipped out of my hands and fell to the floor with a crash, leaving my floor covered with milk and shards of glass. Not the best way to start my morning, to be sure.

There are a few upsides, though. For starters, I certainly don't have to worry about how I will use up all the milk anymore. In addition, I had skimmed a pint of cream off of that gallon the night before which I used for our dinner and dessert, so it wasn't a total loss. And mercifully, my kitchen floor appears to be sloped just a tad, and the slope runs AWAY from the fridge. So, very little milk went under my fridge, and what little splashed under there slowly ran out. And lastly, my kitchen floor has rarely been cleaner at the hour of 7 AM!

Still, I was really bummed about this(in fact, I nearly cried over the spilled milk, but resisted only because of the cliche!). I'd paid $4 for the milk just the day before, and now all I had to show for the $4 was a messy kitchen floor and a trash can full of glass. Here's the thing, though...I threw away at least $4 worth of food just the other day, and I hardly gave the money a thought. And I'm sure I've throw away more than $4 worth of food every week for a long time. I think it's just not as easy to see when it's bits and pieces as it is when it's a whole gallon of milk. I'm sure if I could see an enormous pile of all my food waste from the last 11 years(that's how long I've been out of my parents' house) and a tally of the monetary value of it, it would be insanely depressing.

So, I'm freshly motivated to work on reducing my waste. In fact, tonight we are having a smorgasbord of leftovers, which is quite a rarity at our house. I think, though, that the fridge will be completely emptied of leftovers after dinner.(another rarity!)

What to do with extra carrots and apples...

2008-05-14T21:08:00.004-04:00

if you happen to have horses in your neighborhood.

This is perhaps not my most useful leftover tip ever.

But, it works for us.

and horses never seem to mind if the carrots are a little bit hairy.

A note on glass jars for the yogurt recipe

2008-05-14T07:50:00.002-04:00

Since you only need four quart jars to make yogurt from a gallon of milk, you might be loathe to go out and buy a box of 12 or so from the store, especially if you're not planning on getting into canning. =P My suggestion for you is to check out your local Salvation Army or Goodwill store...they usually have singleton canning jars aplenty, and you can easily and cheaply buy a pack of lids and screwtops at a grocery store or big box store(like Target or Walmart).

Speaking of yogurt, I currently have four quarts in my fridge from last week's milk, and I'm due to pick up two more gallons of milk today. Usually we use one gallon for cereal and cooking and the other for yogurt, but I really don't need another four quarts of yogurt right now.

So, I'm going to have to either come up with a way to use up another gallon of milk before it goes bad, or I'm going to have to make it into yogurt and come up with some ways to use a lot of yogurt. I'll keep you posted on what I come up with!

How did this happen again???

2008-05-13T16:50:00.003-04:00

How in the world did my fridge get this full again?? And not only is my fridge full...as of this morning, I had exactly zero empty leftover containers in my cabinet.

I didn't post a food waste photo last week, so this one is sort of going to be a two-weeks-worth-of-food-waste photo.(and yep, there are a number of my leftover containers!)

So, what did I throw away this week?

-part of a bag of green onions. I hate that they sell this in a bag. I used to be able to buy just one bunch, but now they come in a bag of about three bunches, and I never manage to use three bunches!

-some leftover cooked broccoli. This is one of those leftovers that I detest.

-leftover pizza. I did eat a lot of what was left over, but not all of it.

-half of a ham and cheese panini.

-a teeny yellow bowl of spaghetti. Here again we did eat almost all of the leftover spaghetti..only a tiny bit was wasted.

-two bananas. These were bruised and mushy(I discovered this after buying them!) and I decided not to risk using them for muffins.

-some dill dip. I made this to eat with the cauliflower. You might be thinking, "That was a long time ago!" and you'd be right. It was hairy...literally, and I don't mean just fuzzy. There was a whole crop of yellow, fine hairs growing in the middle. I've never managed to grow something that was truly hairy before!

-sliced zucchini. I just forgot about this, sadly.

-a teeny container of cilantro. This is actually a minor triumph, as I usually end up wasting about half of the cilantro I buy(as with the green onions, this comes in a large bunch and there is no option to buy a smaller one).

Happily, a lot of this could go into the compost bin. Unhappily though, that still means I paid good money for good food and I have nothing to show for it except some compost.

My fridge is looking better, though, and hopefully my food waste pile will be smaller next week.

Weekly Menu for 5/9-5-16

2008-05-09T11:00:00.003-04:00

Note: I thought I published this on Friday, but for some reason it didn't show up! So, I'm a number of days into this menu, but I figured I'd post the whole thing anyways.

Friday

I'm going out for my birthday. Woohoo!

Saturday

Grilled Hamburgers on homemade buns
Watermelon

Sunday

Ham Sandwiches
Jello
Chips and Dip

Monday

Parmesan Chicken
Potato cubes
Green salad

Tuesday

Cuban Steak Sandwiches
English Muffins
Orange slices

Wednesday

Chicken Pasta Primavera
Garlic Breadsticks
Apple slices

Thursday

BBQ Beef Sandwiches on homemade buns
Green salad

Friday

Mandarin Chicken Rollups
Chips and dip
Fruit Salad

How to Make Homemade Yogurt

2008-05-08T14:30:00.001-04:00

One of my readers asked me about how I make yogurt, so here's the recipe.
I make my yogurt with raw milk from a local farm, but it can be made with pasteurized, homogenized milk as well. The recipes requires no special machines...you probably have most, if not all of these items in your kitchen already.

Equipment Needed
2 large stockpots
1 thermometer
4 quart canning jars with lids and bands
1 medium-sized cooler

Ingredients
1 gallon of milk
1 cup yogurt starter(you can use a small cup of plain Dannon or Yoplait yogurt, or you can use a cup from your previous batch. I've had not so good luck with off-brand yogurts. Whatever starter you use, make sure you don't open it until you are ready to use it.)

1. Place four quart glass canning jars, four lids, and four screw-tops in a large pot. Fill with an inch of water; cover with lid and heat to boiling. Boil for ten minutes. Leave the lid on the pot and move it off the heat until you are ready to use the jars.

2. Pour one gallon of milk into a large stockpot. One with a heavy bottom will make the heating process simpler(you won't have to watch so carefully for burning). I use a Revere Ware copper bottomed stock pot. Heat the milk to 185-195 degrees Farenheit(90-90 Celcius).

3. Place the pot in a sink filled with cold water and let the milk cool to 122-130 degrees farenheit(50-55 degrees celsius)

4. Stir one cup of yogurt starter into the cooled milk, using a whisk. Here I have used 1 cup of starter from my previous batch.

Stir well to ensure that the starter is thoroughly incorporated into the milk.

5. Pour the milk into jars, and put the lids and bands on. Place them into a cooler. To simplify this process, I pour the milk into a clean pitcher, because I can never manage to pour milk neatly from a pot into the jars.

6. Heat one gallon of water to 122-130 degrees F(50-55 degrees C) and pour into cooler. Note: Do not use plastic containers, because they float as I discovered while making this particular batch.

Shut cooler lid and leave in a warm place for three hours. When the three hours are up, place the yogurt in the refrigerator. If all went well, your yogurt should be thick like this:

Don't worry if it's not this thick right out of the cooler...sometimes mine isn't thick until it's become completely cool in the refrigerator.

The first time I made yogurt, I thought it was a total pain-in-the-rear and I was SO never doing it again. But, after I did it a few times, I realized that it didn't really take that much hands-on time, and that I could get some kitchen tasks done easily while I waited for the jars to boil and for the milk to heat up. And of course during the three hours that the yogurt sits in the cooler, I'm free to do whatever I want to do as the yogurt requires no supervision. =P

I use the yogurt to make smoothies(I combine frozen bananas, frozen strawberries, a little sugar, sometimes some vanilla, and then half a quart of yogurt and blend it all up), but you can also mix jam with it and top it with granola or you can use it in baking too. I haven't experimented with making flavored yogurt yet, but if I do and I'm successful, I'll post about it here.

A leftover triumph

2008-05-07T08:23:00.002-04:00

I was cleaning out my fridge yesterday and discovered a few things that needed to be used. A week or so ago I had made a small batch of applesauce from some leftover apple slices but for some reason, it didn't taste all that great. And then I had one lone sweet potato left. I originally had put it in the oven while I was baking some bread(that way it wouldn't cost me anything to bake it). Unfortunately, the oven wasn't on long enough to cook it all the way through, so I put it back in the fridge. Then I think I tried putting it in the oven again next time I baked bread, but it still wasn't cooked through. Appetizing, huh?

I really didn't want to throw this stuff away though, so I microwaved the sweet potato until it truly was cooked. Then I mashed it, mixed it with the applesauce, and used it to make muffins. The recipe was really only for sweet potatoes but I used the mixture instead, and the muffins turned out pretty well. I don't think they're the tastiest muffins I've ever made or anything, but we happily at them for breakfast, I didn't have to throw away any food and all of my sweet potatoes are finally gone!

Food waste photo

2008-05-06T10:23:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the absence...my family was hit by a digestive bug last week and so blogging kind of went out the window! I have been plugging away in my efforts to use up my leftovers, though.

And I did manage to take a picture of the food I threw away last week(I'm pretty sure I threw away another thing or two, but I can't remember what now!).

There are two banana muffins there...I tried a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that was less than fabulous. I'm not sure what to make of that, as I rarely have a bad recipe from them! I'm thinking that my banana was a little too black to taste good in muffins, maybe.

Then I let some grape tomatoes spoil, which is kind of sad. When they are fresh, I like them so much that I will just eat them plain. I think they got lost in my fridge and I forgot about them.

The chicken salad...well, that I just didn't feel like eating because I wasn't feeling well. =P

Then there is some cilantro pesto. I made this right before we got sick, and by the time we were feeling better, it looked like it might be a little bit slimy, so I put it in my compost bin. When you've just gotten over a digestive bug, the last thing you want to do is eat something that could potentially make you sick again!

I cannot believe how much produce waste I used to throw away!

2008-04-28T17:06:00.003-04:00

Seriously! I just never saw it all together at the end of the day...I threw little bits away here and there and so it never felt like I threw that much out. Nearly every day now there's a decent-sized bowl of peels and rinds and cores for my son to take out(we've renamed him "compost boy"). Anyhow, I'm really happy that this stuff isn't going to the landfill anymore, and I'm annoyed with myself for not having tried this earlier. Another side benefit is that my kitchen trash doesn't smell bad quite so quickly, as the only stinky thing that gets thrown away is meat scraps(chicken skin and bones, for instance).

Now, I have a couple more compost questions for the experienced among you. Is it normal to have a bunch of fruit flies inside the bin? And secondly, can I put bread and grain stuffs into it? I've read conflicting things about that. I don't usually have a bunch of bread to throw away, but sometimes my kids will only eat part of a roll or something and I'd like to throw it in the bin if I can.

Laura, my son is due for a haircut in the next couple of days, and I totally plan on putting his hair into the bin...thanks for the tip. ;-)

I'm not hiding...

2008-04-25T21:47:00.003-04:00

I just got overwhelmed with life this week. In addition to my four kids, I had a VERY energetic two year old niece staying with me, so I'm just behind on everything, including blogging!

I did take a picture of my food waste, though, and I have a menu planned...I just need to get that stuff posted. Hopefully tomorrow...

I did do something very un-wasteful today, though. I bought some split chicken breasts($.99 a pound. Woohoo!) and deboned them when I got home. Now, normally I'd have just chucked the bones and the bits of residual meat on them but instead of doing that, I put them in a pot and boiled them to make chicken broth(I'd have thrown in some stray celery and onions, but unfortunately I didn't have any). And I picked the rest of the meat off of the bones before I threw them away.

Now I just have to remember to use the chicken broth!

I have a compost bin!

2008-04-23T02:00:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Jonathan, a composting blog on No-Impact Man's sidebar, and my faithful tipster Laura, I finally decided to jump on the composting bandwagon!

Mine is a simple Rubbermaid bin, and I filled it following the instructions on You Grow Girl. YGG's directions were fabulous except for one thing...cutting all those holes with a knife would take forever. I used my husband's drill with a large bit and was done in a matter of minutes.

So far mine has newspaper, leaves, cantaloupe rind and a bunch of banana peels. And it's quite wet because shortly after I assembled it, we started having rainy weather and it's been raining on and off since. Right now it's sitting on a concrete pad, but I'm going to move it over to the grass because I've heard that other people have been lucky enough to have a worm or two find their way into the bin. I'm not intentionally vermi-composting, but I sure wouldn't complain if some worms volunteered to help me out.

I do have a question for those of you that are old hands at this composting thing...can I put egg shells into my bin? I remember my mom burying egg shells in her garden along with her produce scraps, but I wasn't sure that they would be ok in a compost bin. Advice would be welcome(and that includes you, Miss Laura!)

That hardly even tasted like leftovers.

2008-04-21T15:54:00.003-04:00

I showed you all my shelf full of leftovers the other day. I've started eating my way through them, and one combination of them was particularly tasty. I put grilled chicken(from the Mandarin chicken salad), pasta(leftover from the Asian pasta salad I made) grilled peppers and onions(from fajitas), and some cilantro and cheese(also leftover from fajitas) and poured some Italian salad dressing on top of it.

I love it when I can make something different out of leftovers...much more interesting than reheating the same thing for days on end! And after I ate this, about 4 containers of leftovers were gone from that shelf. Yay me!

Unfortunately, I think that the Asian pasta salad is going to be in my food waste photo..it's been in there for a week now, and a mayo-covered pasta salad makes me nervous at this point. Happily, though, most of the other leftovers have been eaten.

Not your usual banana suggestion.

2008-04-21T15:31:00.002-04:00

This is a little different than the classic, "Make banana bread!" suggestion for using up an excess of bananas. Not to besmirch the tastiness of banana bread, but it does get kind of boring after a while, especially if you are prone to the regular over purchasing of bananas. Plus, if you loathe baking(I don't, but many do), the banana bread suggestion fails miserably. I do want to point out, though, that this is not such a good suggestion to use when your bananas are already overripe. It's best implemented when you see that your bananas are lovely and yellow but that you have more than you will be able to eat before they start turning spotted and brown.

I haven't done this with bananas in a long while, but a sudden overrun of bananas(I bought some at my regular grocery store and then picked some up at Costco too!) made me give this a whirl again.

Frozen Bananas

Ok, here's what you do. Cut the bananas up into slices and place them in a single layer on a cookie sheet(if you spray the cookie sheet with nonstick spray, they'll come off easier, but I never remember to do this!). Place in the freezer for several hours, or until the bananas are firm. Once they're frozen, you can do a number of things with them. You can:

eat them as is. Bananas have a relatively creamy texture, so they have kind of an ice-creamy texture when they're frozen.

Make banana sherbet. To do this, place the frozen bananas slices in a blender or food processor and add enough milk(or cream cheese, or half and half, or even cottage cheese, or some mixture of these) to give it a smooth, soft-serve like consistency. Since bananas are so sweet, this needs little to no sugar, depending on your taste.

Use in a smoothie. I did this today at lunchtime, and it was delicious! I combined one fresh banana, some of the frozen slices, 6 frozen strawberries, a half-quart of plain whole milk yogurt, and a couple of tablespoons of sugar. With room-temperature bananas or with a higher liquid to solid(or warm to frozen) ratio, this would make a drinkable yogurt. With the proportions I used today, though, it came out with a texture so thick that we needed spoons to eat it. My kids like the yogurt drink version fine, but the texture of the smoothie made with frozen bananas was far more popular. Even though it had less added sugar per serving than a usual cup of flavored yogurt would have, my kids thought that they were eating strawberry ice cream!

If you won't be using the bananas within 24 hours of freezing, simply scrape them off the pan into a ziploc bag and freeze until you're ready to use.

I'm really excited about the possibilities of this idea. Usually I go to the grocery store once a week and I try to buy one bunch of yellow bananas and one bunch of green ones. Even the greenest bananas I buy usually are too ripe for my taste by the time a week has gone by, so we have to go without yogurt smoothies for a day or two prior to the next grocery shopping trip. If I can manage to cut up and freeze the bananas before they are overripe, though, I will never run out of bananas for smoothies before a week is up, and this makes me very happy indeed.

Menu for April 18th-25th

2008-04-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

I've finally managed to use up almost everything from my enormous chest freezer...about all that's left in there is a 50 pound bag of wheat and a turkey that is a few years old. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it...I'm not really a huge fan of turkey, and one that's been frozen for a few years is even less appealing to me. I'm considering offering it on freecycle!

My fridge isn't all that empty, but it is at least organized. The freezer above my fridge is probably in the worst shape...maybe that'll be my next before and after photo post. =P

One last thing before the menu...my sweet potato count is now down to two! We'll probably eat those with tonight's dinner. I also have some mashed cooked sweet potato in the fridge, but that is going into muffins for lunch. So, my sweet potatoes have fared far better than my cauliflower did.

Friday:

Grilled Bacon cheeseburgers on homemade buns
Fruit Salad

Saturday

Pizza
Oven-fried onion rings(a Cook's recipe)

Sunday

Waffles
Orange Julius

Monday

Fried chicken sandwiches(using buns from Friday's hamburgers)
Green salad

Tuesday

Shrimp Taco Salad
Challah

Wednesday

BBQ Chicken Thighs
Broccoli
Garlic Breadsticks

Thursday

Leftovers, or if there aren't enough leftovers, macaroni and cheese

Friday

Homemade pizza
Green salad

Weekly Food Waste Photo-April 17th

2008-04-17T14:47:00.004-04:00

Here's my food waste photo...it's kind of a non-event this week. Woohoo! All I have is a bit of wilty lettuce and the cauliflower soup(I didn't get around to throwing it out earlier in the week!). Also missing from the photo is a rotten lemon that I threw out earlier in the week. It was hairy enough that I decided I didn't really want it to inhabit my fridge for one more day!

So, this week has been a pretty good one, but take a look at my leftover shelf.

Um, yeah...that's a lotta leftovers! Without careful planning, some of those could easily end up in my photo next Thursday. Stay tuned!(I know you'll be on the edge of your computer chairs all week long).

How a messy fridge makes me waste food

2008-04-17T14:43:00.001-04:00

or, how a clean one helps me to be less wasteful.

Today I went grocery shopping and neglected to organize my fridge before I went. Here's a picture of my poor refrigerator after my groceries were unloaded into it.

No wonder I waste food when my fridge looks like that! How can I possibly expect myself to use my food when I can't even see/reach half of it? The leftovers are strewn all over and the produce is here and there and everywhere.

Since it's Thursday(my food waste photo day) and since my fridge was quite obviously in need of organization, I went through and rearranged things in a more sensible order. Below are the results.

I took almost nothing out(and I actually even added two egg cartons), but things are so much more organized now. And the most valuable result of this organization can't be seen...it's that I now know exactly what I have in my fridge. I found a zucchini I didn't even know I had, I found grapes that need to be eaten tonight, I found leftovers that I'll purposefully eat tomorrow, and so on.

I'll be back later today with my weekly food waste picture.

How to Make Applesauce

2008-04-16T21:25:00.003-04:00

I'm guessing that a lot of you out there in blog world end up with random apple slices at your house the way we do at ours. It seems like when I cut an apple up for lunch or dinner, we never eat exactly the number that I cut. Sometimes I save them to eat later, but leftover apple slices are never very appealing since they turn an unappetizing brown. So, sometimes I'll start a Leftover Apple Slice Bowl in the fridge and when it gets full, I use the apples to make applesauce. This is also a good thing to do with apples that have lost their crunch or with apples that have random bad spots or bruises.

Since this isn't a very exact recipe, you can easily adjust it to accomodate the number of apples you happen to have.

Homemade Applesauce

Core and peel the apples and place them in a saucepan or pot.

I felt slightly guilty about having to throw the peels away, but my daughter happened by and cheerfully ate them all for me. Once I start my compost bin, I won't have to throw stufff like this away anymore, even if one of my children doesn't happen by. Must remember to buy a bin this week.

Ok, back to the recipe...add about 1/2 inch of water to the pot, cover, and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Turn heat to low and simmer for about an hour, or until the apples look like this:

and are very soft. Keep an eye on them to make sure that all the water hasn't boiled out(in that case, you'd end up with burnt apples and a very messy pot. Ask me how I know.). Remove the cinnamon stick and, using a slotted spoon, remove apples to a bowl. For chunky applesauce, mash by hand, using a potato masher. For a smoother applesauce, pour the apples into a food processor and process them until they are the desired consistency, adding liquid from the pot as needed.

The finished product should look something like the above picture, and it will be delicious. Even with no sugar added, homemade applesauce is SO much tastier than store-bought applesauce. And it's a far better alternative to throwing the unwanted apples away.

The cauliflower that came to an unfortunate end.

2008-04-14T13:33:00.002-04:00

No picture today...sorry! But, you can imagine cauliflower soup and raw cauliflower in the trash can, and perhaps that will suffice.

My not-wasteful self industriously cooked up a bunch of the cauliflower into a soup(which was quite delicious at the time)on Saturday, and I cut up the rest of it to use with dip. I ate a bowl of the soup, and Sonia and I ate some of the raw cauliflower with the dip. I felt fine all day Saturday, but when I woke up on Sunday, I felt horrible. Apparently, the cauliflower was unfresh in a very bad way, because it wreaked havoc on my poor digestive system. I felt really awful all day Sunday, and although my digestive system seems to have recovered today, I still feel tired and achy and my appetite is not at all normal(yesterday I ate almost nothing).

I don't know why it made me sick...it didn't look like it was rotting, except for a bad spot or two, which I cut off(I've done that a ton of times with broccoli and have experienced no horrible repercussions!). It's the only thing I ate differently from the rest of my family, though. Poor Sonia seems to have gotten the digestive upset today, and she is the only one who ate cauliflower besides me.

Suffice it to say that both the cauliflower soup and the raw cauliflower will be thrown out because there is no way that I want to risk feeling like this again. Not to mention that the very thought of cauliflower is way less than appealing to me...it may take years before I want to eat it again!

Menu for April 11th-18th

2008-04-11T17:14:00.001-04:00

My fridge is actually pretty empty right now(which is quite a rarity in this household). And my freeze is not over-stuffed, which is equally as rare! I do still have my bacon that I need to use up(it'll be in the Baked Potato Soup and the Bacon Cheeseburgers), and of course, I still have my sweet potatoes and cauliflower that I need to use. I couldn't really incorporate them into my menu because the whole family won't eat them. I do plan to make a cauliflower soup, though, which I will eat at lunchtime, my daughter and I will be eating baked sweet potatoes with some of our dinners, and I'm going to explore some baking possibilities(muffins, anyone?) with the sweet potatoes for breakfast. I'm also going to make some sour cream dill dip in the hopes that offering it with the cauliflower might win over some of my children.

Here's hoping that those veggies won't be starring in next week's food-wastage photo!

Friday:

Steak Subs
Fruit Salad(I still have more grapes to use up!)

Saturday

Pizza
Apple Slices

Sunday

French Toast
Orange Julius

Monday

Asian Chicken Pasta Salad
Challah

Tuesday

Baked Potato Soup
Challah
steamed green beans

Wednesday

Mandarin Chicken Salad
Breadsticks

Thursday

Fajitas
Applesauce

Friday

Grilled Bacon Cheeseburgers on homemade buns
Apple slices

Photo by PSD

Weekly Food Waste Photo

2008-04-10T17:38:00.007-04:00

Last week, I didn't do too shabbily. Unfortunately, this week was not an improvement. But, my fridge is cleaned out now, and it's a new(and hopefully better!) week.

Here's what I wasted:

pancake batter from Sunday

I forgot to use this on Monday morning, and after that, it developed the most unappealing greenish tinge. Even a wicked stepmother wouldn't have fed that to her daughter.

Chili

This was a new recipe I tried last week, and it wasn't good. The beef was dry, and it was too spicy, so of course, no one wanted to eat the leftovers. I still haven't figured out how to avoid waste when a recipe goes horribly wrong, other than to never try bad recipes(I'm considering switching to using strictly Cook's Illustrated recipes!).

Yogurt cheese

I used some of that ill-fated yogurtto make this, which was going to be used to try an orange-flavored yogurt recipe. Unfortunately, I never got around to it. So, this blessed my backyard along with the other separated yogurt.

Green Onions

Some of these were turning purple. Not being willing to risk food poisoning, I chucked them.

half a cucumber

Considering how many whole cucumbers I've let rot in my fridge, I'm not too down about this one. Half a rotted cucumber is better than a whole one.

a little bit of French bread

This kind of bread has no sugar and no fat, and so it molds faster than you can blink an eye. Usually I do well with using this up, but these bags got lost under the bananas on my counter, and now they're more like a science experiment than bread.

Celery Sticks

These were kind of wilty when I cut them up(I had good intentions of snacking on them), but let's face it...un-crunchy celery is best for cooking, not snacking!

two grape tomatoes

I ate the other less-than-fabulously-fresh ones on my salad last night, but these two were, um, too far gone!

Believe it or not, this is better than many fridge-cleaning sessions of yore. Posting here every day and knowing that I'm going to have to post a picture of my waste really does help me to plan better and persevere in eating up leftovers. Just today I ate a bit of leftover brown rice as a snack, only because I didn't want to have to include one more thing in my picture!!

Gah! Me and my produce purchasing...

2008-04-09T20:58:00.003-04:00

Honestly, when will I get it through my thick head that a good sale on produce doesn't mean I have to buy two or three times what I normally buy??? I'm such a blockhead.

Cauliflower was on sale for $.99 a head this week, and I know it's normally way more than that. In fact, cauliflower is usually expensive enough that I never buy any, and so my family is totally not used to eating it and I'm totally not used to cooking it. So what do I do? I buy not one, but two heads! Dear me. I think I'm going to have to make soup or something with them. Either that or I'm going to be eating a lot of raw cauliflower with sour cream dip.

And then there are the sweet potatoes. Aside from myself, only one of my kids will eat sweet potatoes, and my husband won't touch them either. They were on sale for $.38 a pound, which again, is a fabulous price, but why in the world did I feel the need to buy so many? That's a lot of sweet potatoes for me and my 7 year old to eat! I think, though, that I have some sweet potato muffin and coffeecake recipes in my file somewhere...I'm going to have to dig those out. That'll save me and my daughter from having to eat 5 meals with a baked sweet potato on the side!

I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow, but thankfully there don't appear to be any really good produce sales at my store this week(nothing $.99 or below...well, except for bananas, but they're always cheap).

I really need to develop some self-control when it comes to cheap food.

Can someone please explain....

2008-04-08T16:30:00.003-04:00

..why in the world I have this much canned milk?

Especially since I pretty much never ever use canned milk products??? I found these cans as I was cleaning out my overstuffed cabinets, and I don't really even know why I bought this much canned milk. All I can think is that it was on sale and that I had coupons(which is not a good reason to buy something that you won't use!). Either that, or I had grand plans of making fudge for gifts at Christmastime(my fudge recipe uses condensed milk). I didn't even manage to make Christmas cookies with my kids this year, so, um, the fudge definitely didn't happen.

Some of the condensed milk is past its recommended use-by date, but I'm wondering if I could sneak it into some bread dough without noticing the lack of quality. I've used sour milk before in bread and it was fine, so I'm guessing I can do this and still turn out edible bread.

The Eagle Brand is a little trickier. About the only thing I've ever made with this is Eagle Brand bars, and I don't think I want to make four pans of them. Cook's Illustrated has an easy Rocky Road fudge recipe using Eagle Brand, though, so I might give that a shot(fudge in April is as tasty as fudge in December, no?). I'd certainly welcome some other ideas in the comments, though!

And I'm certainly going to think twice about it before I buy canned milk products again(even if they're on sale and I have a coupon!).

On a happier note, I used the buttermilk and some slightly sour milk in some oatmeal bread yesterday, and it turned out just fine.

Holy cow, that's a lot of waste.

2008-04-08T10:15:00.001-04:00

Jonathan over at Wasted Food posted about how many apples are thrown away in Great Britain each day.

Apparently, 4.4 million apples are chucked every day. What a tremendous waste of resources. And like Jonathan points out, the number of apples we Americans probably throw away is even more astounding.

I don't usually throw apples away(applesauce is easy to make with less-than-crunchy apples), but I've certainly thrown away my share of other produce items.

Hibachi Chicken and Shrimp Recipe

2008-04-07T21:16:00.000-04:00

A commenter asked for this recipe, and I thought I'd go ahead and post it here because it is one of those dishes that is good for using up bits of whatever veggies and meat you have. It's not really an authentic Hibachi recipe, as I think that would only use soy sauce and maybe some oil with the meat and vegetables. It's pretty delicious, though, and it tastes a lot like the Hibachi dishes we've eaten out. I have to apologize for the vagueness of the directions, though. I kind of made this up after eating Hibachi in a restaurant, so the directions are in my own words, not the lovely clear words of a cookbook author.

I use sweet onions and fresh zucchini when I make this, but a lot of other vegetables would work too. And I generally use chicken breasts and shrimp, but you could use other meats or seafood, and you can use chicken thighs instead of breasts.

Hibachi Chicken and Shrimp

1 pound chicken breasts(or thighs), cut into 1 inch chunks
1/4-1/2 pound of shrimp, peeled
1 medium sweet onion, cut into chunks
2 small zucchini, cut into chunks

2 cups cooked brown rice(you could use white, but we like brown better)

Marinade/Sauce

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1 tablespoon sugar
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Mix all marinade ingredients together and pour half over chicken. Let marinate in the refrigerator at least one hour or overnight. Reserve half of marinade to use as sauce.

In a large frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of oil and add chicken and onions. Saute until onions is tender and chicken is nearly cooked. Add zucchini(and shrimp, if using) and cook, stirring often, until zucchini is tender-crisp and shrimp is pink. Pour about 1/4 cup of reserved sauce into the pan and cook and stir until all ingredients are coated. Remaining sauce may be stirred into rice if desired. Serve the rice onto dinner plates and top with chicken, shrimp and vegetables.

I actually grill my chicken and then cut it into chunks before I add it to the pan just because I like the texture of grilled chicken. Cooking the chicken on a gas grill is hardly authentic Hibachi, but heck, so is marinating it and so is using a sauce that has 9 ingredients. I'm obviously not terribly concerned about authenticity!

That was dumb.

2008-04-06T20:50:00.004-04:00

So, two out of my four children have the stomach bug right now. Did I remember this when I went to cook dinner tonight? Um, no. Stupid me made the usual double recipe of pancake batter, and of course we have some left over. Rats. I really don't like reheated pancakes. So, I didn't cook all the batter...I put the leftover batter into a container in the fridge, and I'm going to try cooking it up tomorrow morning for my four year old daughter, who is The Number One Pancake Fan In The Whole World. Wish me luck! The old Kristen would have thrown it away, but the new no-waste Kristen just couldn't bring herself to do it.

Speaking of things the old Kristen would have done, check out this picture. I had some cream in the fridge that was on the cusp of going bad, so I decided to make some butter with it(I do this in my food processor, so don't be too impressed). Generally when I make butter, I dump the buttermilk(the thin liquid left after making butter) down the sink because I don't feel like messing with it. I have heard, though, that it works quite well when you incorporate it into baked goods(although it won't have the same effect on pancakes that thick, cultured buttermilk will). So today, I saved the buttermilk in a mason jar and stuck it in the fridge. I really need to bake some whole wheat sandwich bread tomorrow, so my not-wasteful bad self is going to throw the buttermilk into the bread dough instead of throwing it away.

By the way, that is actually butter in the small bowl. I don't know exactly why, but butter made from the cream I skim off the top of my farm-fresh milk makes very yellow butter. It looks disturbingly like margarine, but of course it tastes miles better.

My weekly trash photo(and how I did last week!), plus my grocery spending

2008-04-05T07:43:00.001-04:00

There it is, ladies and gents! My total food trash for the week...not too bad, huh? There are the two jars of my failed yogurt, the last bit of the chicken manicotti I made last week(a new recipe which wasn't that good), a bit of moldy banana bread, and a bag of chips that expired in October. I'm thrilled to report, though, there's happy news on the chip front. Apparently my children are completely clueless when it comes to what a stale chip tastes like, so when I had these out for a picture, they started eating them! I don't know if they were just particularly hungry or what, but I decided to put them back in the cabinet instead of throwing them away.

Last week I posted a list of stuff from my freezer and fridge that I needed to use up. I made pretty decent progress on that list. woot!

I used the tortillas for fajitas, we ate all the ice cream(children also seem to be unaware that ice cream can start to taste like cardboard after a while!), I used the deli meat in stromboli, I made a delicious chocolate cheesecake with the ricotta, and I actually used up all my cilantro in various things. This is a minor miracle, because usually when I buy cilantro(it comes in a bunch at my store), I use a little bit and the rest ends up rotting in my fridge. I think this might be the first time ever that I used it all!

I still have my spinach and bacon to use up, but those aren't quite as pressing as the other stuff of my list.

On the grocery spending front...I went shopping yesterday and spent $69, which is more than I'd have liked(I prefer to be closer to $50). Mostly my bill was high because I bought 12 boxes of cereal. Yeah. Ummm, they were 5 for $10 and 5 for $12, but when you bought 12, you got a $10 coupon off your next order. So, I bought a bunch of cereal for less than $2 a box after my coupon, and since I'll use the coupon next week, my bill next week should be nice and low.(especially since I won't have to buy any cereal next week...or the next...or the next...)

Fortunately cereal doesn't go bad, at least not for a long time!

Menu for April 4th-11th

2008-04-03T14:29:00.000-04:00

Here's what we're eating this week. It's mostly comprised of food I already have here, so my grocery shopping trip should result in a lovely low bill. Yay!

I did something a little different this week in an effort to further reduce my wastefulness...instead of just jotting down my main dish ideas, I also wrote down exactly what I'm planning to do for side dishes. I think this will help me shop for produce more wisely. I find that if I don't plan my sides very well, I end up going to the grocery store and buying random quantities and varieties of produce and I inevitably end up letting some of it go bad.

I'm hoping to eventually get a lot of my recipes posted on here or on another blog so that I can do hand-dandy little links when I post my menus, but I'm not quite there yet. In the meantime, if you want a particular recipe just leave me a comment, and I'll try to post the one you want.

Friday:

Clam Chowder in homemade bread bowls
fruit salad(using up grapes!)

Saturday

Hibachi Chicken and Shrimp with vegetables and brown rice
Parmesan cream biscuits

Sunday

Waffles and orange juice(I really go all out for Sunday dinners)

Monday

Baked Ham
grapefruit halves
corn

Tuesday

Chicken Tortellini salad
English Muffin bread

Wednesday

Ham Sandwiches(using up Monday's ham)on homemade buns
apple slices

Thursday

Pasta Primavera with Chicken
homemade braided bread

Friday

Steak Subs

When to give up

2008-04-01T15:27:00.000-04:00

So. I get two gallons of milk every week from a local farm, and I use one of them to make yogurt. Usually, it goes just fabulously. The yogurt turns out deliciously thick and creamy, and we eat it in yogurt smoothies every day for lunch. A couple of weeks ago, though, the yogurt didn't become deliciously thick and creamy. In fact, it was as runny as regular milk. So, I thought I'd just go ahead and remake it and add a new yogurt culture. Unfortunately, when I heated the milk, it separated into solid curdles with thin, clear whey. Not to be deterred, I processed the whole mixture in the blender until it was smooth, and proceeded with the recipe.

Unfortunately, the "yogurt" settled into two distinct layers; one a grainy solid, and the other a watery whey.(normal yogurt is pictured on the left, and the not-so-normal yogurt is on the right!) I thought, "No problem! I'll just make some smoothies with it.", but that was sort of disastrous too. You wouldn't think yogurt could still be grainy once it's blended up, but I'm here to tell you that it can. It made the smoothies have sort of a chalky, grainy texture.

Then I thought I might use some of it some bread dough, but it also imparted a somewhat unusual flavor to the bread(which WAS less detectable when the bread was toasted and buttered, but still!).

So, now I'm trying to decide if I should just call it quits on this failed yogurt and chuck it out in my backyard or if I should risk trying it in something else. I'm leaning towards letting it bless the dirt in my yard, for fear that further efforts to use this yogurt will result in more wasted food(which is what will happen if using it as an ingredient will make a dish inedible).

If anyone has some fabulous idea for me(or if you'd like to vote for the chucking-it-in-the-yard option), feel free to leave a comment.

Weekly Menu-Using Up the Freezer Stash Edition!

2008-03-28T15:13:00.000-04:00

I think I've managed to successfully incorporate all my freezer and fridge ingredients that I posted about earlier today. Yay me.

Friday: Stromboli(uses bacon and the deli ham)

Saturday: Beef Au Jus, homemade french bread, jello, birthday cake and homemade ice cream(it's L's birthday party)

Sunday: French Toast

Monday: Creamy Pasta Primavera(has bacon in it)

Tuesday: Colony Mountain Chili

Wednesday: Fajitas(uses sour cream, tortillas, AND cilantro. woohoo!)

Thursday: Baked Ham, potato cubes, and fruit salad(which will probably include grapes that are on their last leg!)

Friday: Soup and bread bowls...the type of soup will depend on what food I need to use up.

We'll eat the ice cream in milkshakes, I'm going to make some dip with the spinach, and I'm still pondering what to do with the ricotta cheese. I'm leaning towards a chocolate cheesecake. ;-)

Using up stuff from my freezer

2008-03-28T09:29:00.001-04:00

Ok...I went through the freezer above my fridge, and also my fridge and came up with some things I need to incorporate into my menu this week.

-tortillas(I have a bad habit of letting these get freezer burnt, or lost under other stuff, in which case I go and buy more!)
-ice cream(I'm bad about letting the last bits get freezer burn)
-bacon(this is frozen, but I have several partially used packages, which is more than I need to keep around)
-cilantro(I bought some last week to use for panini and I have half a bunch left. Usually, this gets left to rot in the bag.)
-3/4 of a container of ricotta cheese(I used a bit on top of pizza and have most of the container left)
-a frozen package of spinach
-some random pieces of frozen thin sliced deli meat

I'll be back later today with my menu.

What to do with grapes that are going bad

2008-03-27T21:20:00.000-04:00

I've recently discovered that grapes which have seen better days can be fed to(and received well by family members) if they are put into a fruit salad.

Grapes seem to be in season lately, judging by how frequently I'm seeing them on sale for $.99 a pound, so I've been buying them pretty regularly(any produce that is $.99 a pound gets my attention and usually makes it's way into my shopping cart!). We've been doing quite well at eating them up, but sometimes part of the bag gets shoved into the fruit drawer for a little too long, and the grapes end up a little mushy and a little brown on the stem end.

Thrown into a fruit salad though(with the little brown parts cut off!), you'd never know they'd been on a sure path to the trash can. And as a random tip, a little bit of orange juice poured onto a fruit salad makes even relatively boring combinations of fruit quite tasty.

Something else you can do with grapes if you think you're not going to eat them all before they go bad is to freeze them. They turn into something like little bit-sized popsicles are really quite delicious.

The benefits I hope to see, or, why I'm bothering with this at all

2008-03-24T15:32:00.000-04:00

One of the benefits I'm hoping to reap from wasting less food is pretty obvious...I'm hoping to see a reduction in my grocery bill. Buying food, letting it rot and then throwing it away is kind of a no-win situation when it comes to keeping within my grocery budget. I haven't figured out how much exactly I'm throwing away in terms of dollars and cents, but it's probably more than I'd like to think.

Another reason I'm doing this is sort of related to the money wasting thing. It's really sad to think about people who are so poor that they're eating cookies made from dirt(this really happens in Haiti!), and it's especially sad to think about that when I'm throwing away food that could have nourished someone. Once I see some lessening in my grocery budget, I'm going to try to take some of that money and use it to help feed people who are less fortunate.

This is partly motivated by a desire to have less of an impact on the planet. Growing food, harvesting it, packaging it, and transporting it to my grocery store uses resources, and those resources have been used for nothing if my family and I don't even eat the food!

I think I'm going to see some other benefits from doing this too....things like a cleaner fridge, a less-cluttered pantry, and a freezer that doesn't drop heavy objects on the toes of the poor hapless soul who happens to open the door.

My lessened impact on the planet is going to be hard to measure, but the monetary benefits of this change are much more tangible, so I'm going to post how much I've spent on groceries each week. The changes to my fridge, freezer, and pantry will be pretty visible too, so I took some before pictures(which I'll post once I figure out how!), and I'll post some more as these areas of my home improve.

2008-03-10T13:42:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my blog! I've been thinking about starting a blog about frugality lately(which I something I rock at), inspired by all the awesome personal finance blogs I've been reading in the last year. But, it seems like all those blogs were started when the authors were terrible at personal finance! So, I decided to blog about something I'm terrible at, which is wasting food. Well, actually I'm quite good at it, which is why I'm going to blog about it. Hopefully this will help to keep me on track(nothing like public humiliation to inspire a person!), and I also hope that what I learn will help other people to be less wasteful.