Sigh.
I’ll take it from the top, where there are three mushrooms. These dried out, so I rehydrated them, and promptly forgot to use them in that night’s dinner. Now they are slimy and smelly, so out they go.
Then I have some chicken. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly when I cooked this, so I’m too nervous to keep it. It’s been at least a week, which is an iffy amount of time in my book.
And lastly, there’s some brown rice. This was leftover from a while ago, and I froze it to use later. Unfortunately, it had a really weird, dry texture to it when I thawed it, so I didn’t use it with the dinner I’d planned to. I was going to come up with some other use, but I inadvertently left it out of the fridge, and it’s now way too far gone to use.
I certainly hope I do better this week! I could use another zero waste week as it’s been a while since I attained to that goal.
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How did you do this week? If you blogged about your food waste, leave a comment with a link to your post, and you’ll get a spot on my food waste blogroll for a week. 
Normally we do a Mister Linky, but he still seems to be down for the count, so comments will have to suffice.
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I find that unfrozen brown rice can be difficult to deal with. The only uses that work for me are the ones that involve a lot of liquid: omlets, soups, porridge, etc.
I’m about to compost 2c. of homemade spinach/bean/rice stew. This is the frozen second half, that I’ve been working on all week. It just isn’t all that good. :-<
My first food waste post is up at http://thegreencanadian.blogspot.com/. Thanks for the inspiration, hopefully there’ll be some no-waste weeks in my future!
I use thawed, previously frozen brown rice (and just plain leftover brown rice) for fried rice. Even with a dry texture (quite common in my experience), the extra liquid added during the stir-fry process (usually in the form of veggie broth) compensates for the odd texture.
I wasted store bought veggies because I “shopped” from the garden rather than the fridge: http://premeditatedleftovers.blogspot.com/2009/06/now-that-i-am-harvesting-so-much-from.html
I imagine you’re not eating a lot of soup these days but I would think the brown rice could be added there. (Had it not been left out of the fridge of course!)
I have found the menu plan really helps me keep track of leftovers as I can tell from that what night we had chicken so I know when it was cooked. Thank you for inspiring a menu which has helped more than just getting dinner each night.
My waste is minimal this week, but it is there. Or here… http://tinyurl.com/foodwaste6
A so-so week. An onion and a grapefruit half were forgotten about after the beautiful CSA delivery full of more interesting produce. Here’s my post:
http://myyearwithoutspending.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-that-time-again.html
It was a better week than usual for us, food waste wise, but I am still striving for a no waste week! Here’s my post: http://momsplans.blogspot.com/2009/06/food-waste-wednesday-6309.html
I did very well/poorly with food waste today.
Poorly:
Into the compost went some brown rice, a half bag of edamame that no one would eat, (the Trader Joe’s edamame is juicy yet crispy with the perfect amount of salt, and has spoiled us for the cheap Asian grocery store stuff) and a small amount of cooked asparagus that got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten.
Well:
Dinner was a buffet of leftovers. Choices were chicken salad sandwich, (chicken was picked off a roasted chicken from two nights ago, only enough for one person. My 11-year-old snagged this one) chicken pasta with homemade pesto and Japanese curry over rice. (My husband and I ate up all of this.) A few handfuls of cherries were served as a side dish.
I had not cleaned out the fridge in a few weeks, so this was actually three weeks of food waste, which is okay, but still not great. I have a hard time using up leftover rice, and have started cooking smaller amounts.
No pictures though, as my goal was to simply get people fed and dinner over with.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
We wasted a lot this week because our daughter was just born! I don’t feel terrible about it for obvious reasons, but it’ll be nice when we’re wasting less again.
Only a half a lemon and half a container of yogurt this week!
http://moneysavindiva-lovefromthekitchen.blogspot.com/2009/06/food-waste.html
We had some cooked veg for the compost – I put them in the cold oven to use that evening, but forgot Mr G has radically changed his diet to high raw. I found the veggies in the oven on Thursday – sweating, stinky and furry. Ewwww.
http://myzerowaste.com/2009/06/food-waste-friday-and-weekly-weigh-in-year-1-week-1/
Sorry to hear about your bad week, maybe this week will be a good one!
Congrats on the birth of your baby Cate – how lovely
I cleaned out my deep freezer, so a horrible week for me. Next week will be better! http://motherhen68.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/food-waste-friday-6509/
I have this trouble w/ leftover rice all the time. I usually just toss a little water or lemon juice (or soy, or whatever you like), then reheat it. Alternately, slightly drier rice is good for fried rice (lovely for breakfast with egg, bacon, onion and a bit of tomato fried in at the end) or also is fine for making those fried rice balls. Mix in onion, herbs, egg, and roll in bread crumbs before frying.