Food Waste Friday | Wait a minute, that's not moldy.
Every week, I post a picture of the food that has gone bad over the last seven days. Why do I do this? Because in March of 2008, I finally got fed up with the amount of food I was wasting, and I thought that showing my waste to other people would motivate me to use up my food instead of wasting it. Because this often embarrassing practice was so helpful for me, I invited other bloggers to join me in posting their food waste photos, and Food Waste Friday was born.
So, I cleaned out my fridge and found these two things....some soup and half an orange.
But when I opened up the orange container, I realized that the orange was not, after all, bad. It was hidden in the back of the fridge by one of my offspring, and I'd just assumed it was rotten.
I ate it instead of composting it. Excellent.
Just mentally remove the pyrex container from that photo, ok?
________________________________________________
How did you do this week? If you blogged about your food waste, link us up by entering your info into the widget below. You'll save money, reduce your trash output, and get a little publicity for your blog! And if you don't blog, you can still share about your food waste by leaving a comment.
Those of you who participate in Food Waste Friday can now grab a fancy-schmancy button to perk up your posts. If you copy and paste the following code into your Food Waste Friday post, this little graphic will appear.
If you blog on WordPress, just make sure you're in html mode when you copy and paste the code, or it won't work properly.
__________________________________
Today's 365 post: And so it begins.
Joshua's 365 post: A guest photo from Sonia
Well done on saving the orange...I wasn't so lucky with an apple and some grapes. That was my midweek waste, that I composted Wednesday (but remembered to photograph first). My Friday fridge is looking good, and a veggie lasagne is on the cards for 'No Waste Tastes Great' today. Popped over to Lisey's and see you Guys have been creative with some blueberries...however after your verdict I'm going with muffins tomorrow instead for our Saturday Afternoon activity!
Yep, that orange looks good, with or without the pyrex! My food waste is a lemon cake gone horribly wrong; I shall be grateful for any advice on what I can do with it to stop it going to waste!
Triffle? Cut/break up the cake, layer with whipped cream and fruit.
Mix with icing, dip in white chocolate and make cake balls.
bread pudding without a lot of the added sugar?
About 1c. homemade onion dip that was questionable rather than certainly bad.
Rescued:
- 1/2 c. cherries (terrible job but someone has to do it)
- fresh-made pico de gallo from the local farmer's market (see above about terrible jobs)
- I will be making ice cream from overly soft strawberries, drinkable yogurt that I thought was regular yogurt, and cream.
I am reminded of something that happened last week: my roommate stuck a kebab sandwich in his coat pocket and forgot about it overnight. Even I, famously unpicky and with a castiron stomach, wasn't willing to eat it. The meat was fine by me but the yogurt sauce was not.
Good call there on the kebab sandwich. 😉
Also- I wish I'd have thought of making ice cream with overly soft strawberries! I'll keep that in mind for next time for sure.
I lost half a carton this week due to mushiness/mold.
Can't do much about the mold except remove those berries so they don't infect others. Mushy fruit can also be used in smoothies, dried, made into fruit leather, made into jam, used in sauces. My general method is to freeze them till I figure out what to do.
Marisa has a good suggestion for what the first commenter calls Desperation Preservation- great name!- of soft strawberries in Food in Jars.
This week, I only had about 1 oz of expired hot sauce. I just used it last week & didn't even notice! Ooops! We have some things to eat up soon, though. I just bought a new container of spinach & arugula that must have sat at the store for a while. I need to start checking produce as soon as I get home because then I could take it back to the store if it was questionable!
Not too shabby at all! Hey, I've figured out a way to use my slightly mushy oranges (these are the ones that I don't really want to eat but seem like a waste to compost), I've whizzed them in the food processor (skin and all) and replaced some of the liquid in my favourite white cake recipe. Still working on the exact equations but I'm really liking my orange cake experiments.
Mmmm sounds good, come back with a recipe please! I have a tray of free oranges that I have no clue what to do with!
I let a container of leftover fettichini primavera go bad (PEE-EW) but thats the only thing I lost this week.
Nothing chucked this week, Zilch, Nada, and Zero!
Whoo Hoo!
Not bad I say... The tuna finally went out, a cup of watermelon (blush). I dont know if I am really saving because we have been eating out lately. It is so hard to cook, rest, keep clean, shop and watch the baby... But this too shall pass and will be wishing for the kids to stop growing so fast... I need to get a menu going again, fast! lol
I found a pyrex encased half orange in the back of my fridge this week, too. Must have been from the company we had last weekend. Cut it up and added it to my salad of spinach, pecans, and dried cranberries.
My company left 2 1/2 loaves of bread behind, which I promptly popped in the freezer since we eat less than a loaf a month.
We did lose some pre-cut salad greens which I'd bought to throw together dinner salads since I was working while they were here. Didn't get to all of them. And there is some marginal (hopefully usable) spinach that needs to go in eggs, soup or smoothies ASAP.
You all did a lot better than me. I'm still about the same. 🙁
We did really well this week, though being sick and busy and having no time to go to the grocery store helped. I did have a lot of eggs. Still do. The kids weren't keen about the cheese custard I made. Guess I'll have to make something else.
Crockpot Egg Breakfast. I do this at easter and put it on the night before...
layer hash browns, ham/smoked sausage/cooked breakfast sausage and cheese in a crockpot dish with whatever you like in an omelet. If it is a small sauce crockpot, beat up 6 eggs and maybe mix with seasoning and milk, then pour over the top. IF a normal sized crockpot, beat up 12 eggs and maybe mix with seasoning and milk, the pour over the top. Next morning wake up to a heavenly scent that just makes you want to get out of bed. (Well, almost makes you want to get up. I am not a morning person.) Also made this on Mother's Day this year for our evening meal.
We also love an apple pancake recipe that is leavened with 3 eggs. 🙂
I was sick and did barely any cooking. I only had some celery go to waste this week but if I'm not careful I'll have a boat load of produce go bad soon. I bought it all on Sunday and have been too sick to cook.
Well I have to admit that I found a nasty half a head of lettuce in my fridge drawer.....composted it. It's all my garden's fault! Honest! We've been eating our own organically grown lettuce this month..... started in a cold frame last fall, froze during winter, and some of it started up again in March.
This week, some celery that I kept meaning to use up. It was part of a free meal deal awhile ago and I just don't like celery much and my son does like ants on a log, but hasn't decided to have it, even though I did encourage him to. So that was tossed. Also tossed some pepperoni. Seems I buy a small pack of pepperoni when we make homemade pizza and then we never tend to use it all. Maybe I should be freezing it between homemade pizza makings. My spinach is about to go, but it is almost gone, so will keep picking through it. Been eating a salad every day, as we moved dinner to a slightly later time and I get so hungry, but want to still have plenty of calories for dinner, hence a salad as a late afternoon snack. Nice to be at home, instead of in an office. Think that is about it.
Wow, you had a good week! It's always nice when you find something in the fridge that you thought was bad and it turns out to be good still. 🙂
Since I began reading this, I have nearly stopped all food waste and I have none this week!! Last night I discovered while washing and chopping vegies that I could just as easily keep going and toss ingredients into a second bowl for more ready made salad for a few days. I love this zero waste and am grateful to have found this blog!
All right y'all, I've got the epic fail of food waste... long story short neurotics should use caution when stocking a pantry!
Feeling bad with all that bread..again..reminding myself with these bloggings of the theme. Thankyou!!! And from so much more.
I threw out a bunch of brown rice from a crockpot chicken and brown rice casserole that was extremely bland, dried out, and burnt around the edges. The rice was pretty burnt and wasn't good enough to bother trying to eat.
I have to make a good effort to clean the fridge since we are about to go on vacation for two weeks.
Blogging so didn't happen over the weekend so just linking now. Gotta get caught up!