Comments on: The road to the trash is paved with good intentions.

By: November round-up « Urban Domesticity

November round-up « Urban Domesticity — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:22:10 +0000

[...] “The road to trash is paved with good intentions” @ The Frugal Girl, November 3 I love Kristen’s blog about living a frugal family life. In this post she tackles the difficult task of keeping fresh produce and other healthy food in the house when it spoils so quickly. “How much house do you need?” @ Get Rich Slowly, November 17 In this post, GRS staff writer April Dykman offers some suggestions on how to think about just how much living space we actually need. Bigger is certainly not always better, and often less is more. [...]

By: WilliamB

WilliamB — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:20:27 +0000

Produce lasts a LOT longer in the bags specially designed for produce. My romaine lasts 10 days or more, carrots forever, celery for weeks. My first box of 20, washed and reused, lasted over 8 years.

By: Kai

Kai — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:21:40 +0000

planning the veggie use aswell might be a good idea, so you know, how much to buy. Hope that too much planning will not end up being too constraining and frustrating, though.

you buy grocerys once a week, so what you buy, has to keep for 7 days, right? Some things keep better than others. Carrots, turnips, cabbages will survive a week in a fridge perfectly, green salads would need to be eaten in the first half of the week. Apples and oranges should be fine the whole week, actually cucumbers too, pretty much. Bell peppers 4 to 5 days ( plus, a lot of veggies just gets dryer when it gets a little old, they´re still perfectly ok for soups)

(Oh, have u got a food processor? You could make wonderful salads of raw carrots and turnips and stuff like that, they just need to be cut/chopped quite finely, Plus, atleast in here, these things are cheap. It´s not very possible to hand-grate salads for a family of 5. It would be interesting to know what kind of salads your family eats.)

By: yenny

yenny — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:21:44 +0000

Well, I grocery shop once a week, basically what I do is buy a combination a fresh fruit/veggies and frozen ones. Only what is on sale/reduced price for that given week. I have a rule of thumb to use fresh the first 3-4 days. I separate the fresh for those days and the rest gets chopped, bagged and frozen. The other days of the week I will use frozen.

That way if something happens and wasn’t able to use the fresh for the first 3-4 days. I still can use them later in the week and not go to waste.

By: Kristen

Kristen — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:35:05 +0000

William, I don’t know why it didn’t go through! No comments from you came through for moderation, so don’t worry, I’m not censoring you. I love your comments.

So glad your yogurt came out well. I doubt it takes a ton of energy to heat the water, so I wouldn’t stress terribly about that.

By: WilliamB

WilliamB — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:08:27 +0000

My first two attempts didn’t post, I wonder why? (K, did you finally get tired of my long comments? Just in case, the really short version: I’d rather buy produce, eat most and waste some than buy none, waste none, and eat none. Nevertheless there are weeks that I think the compost pile eats better than I do!

Off topic: today I cured my skim-milk yogurt in 130F water in a cooler. It came out much thicker than letting it sit in a warm oven. Worth the extra effort. Yay – less milk wasted via straining. (But more energy from heating the water, boo.)

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:02:33 +0000

Bananas can be frozen and used for banana bread. Grapes, if they are on the verge of going bad, pop em in the freezer. OMG, its like they gain sweetness and is an honest to god treat! Soup or casseroles for veggies.

By: Kristen

Kristen — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:25:31 +0000

@valletta and LN-Yeah, I would be probably be really depressed if I had to haul all four of my kids to the grocery store every day. It's hard enough to get them all out of the door to go shopping once a week, and once a day would be way more than I could handle! I can totally see that working for someone who has no kids or whose kids are in school, though.

By: AnneT

AnneT — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:29:59 +0000

I used to have the same problem. I do a lot of stir-fries, pasta with veggies, and soups so we have a natural outlet for all sorts of veg. I have a place where I can store onions, garlic, potatoes, and apples, so those I can buy in larger amounts for the two of us. Otherwise I use home-canned tomatoes a lot, my salted mix veggie stock (leeks, celery, parsley, lemon thyme, oregano all processed together and mixed with some salt and then just packed in jars — all stuff from garden or the farmers market), and my standard winter veg purchases: 1 lb of carrots, a green pepper, maybe a red pepper, mushrooms and a zucchini. I grow sprouts in the winter for “fresh greens” and they seem to keep better than trucked-in lettuce. I use alfalfa sprouts for salads and sandwiches and mung sprouts for stir-fries. Sometimes we have a rutabaga on hand for a winter stew. We’ve really reduced our food waste over the past year since I buy for just the next week or two (a bag of mushrooms or pound of carrots lasts us two weeks).

By: Etmny

Etmny — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:57:35 +0000

I’m with Erika. If I store my apples and pears in the fridge they will be forgotten! But I buy at least 6 lbs of apples a week, so I put them out in a big fruit bowl in the kitchen and my kids and hubby will grab them for a snack or pack them up for lunch. They disappear by the end of the week.
I like the frozen veggies for soup tip! Thanks Kristen for this post!