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My fridge is actually pretty empty right now.

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.

For those of you who are used to the empty fridge that Simply Being Mum shows you every week, this won’t be that impressive. But for me, this is really good…

I didn’t set out to do this, but once I put these two photos in a collage, you do sort of get a panoramic shot of my fridge.

An empty fridge shouldn’t necessarily be everyone’s goal, but I find that I’m much more likely to stay on top of my food waste when my fridge isn’t stuffed to the gills.

My fridge might be in good shape, but the freezer below it could use some help.

One of my goals this week is to use up some of the food in there and also to get it more organized. As things stand, I don’t really have a good idea of what is lurking inside, and that’s not good when you’re trying to avoid food waste.

Speaking of which, here’s mine for the week:

I’m starting to think I should just limit myself to spinach or something, because at least there are multiple things you can do with spinach. Salad greens are mostly just good for…salad.

I suppose I could always just eat more salad. 😉

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Kristyna

Saturday 22nd of September 2012

Just a thought... I'm pretty sure you could add salad greens to a smoothie the same way you can add spinach. Won't affect the taste (unless it's arugula or something really bitter) and definitely NOT salad! :)

AFS

Friday 21st of September 2012

It seems my cream cheese and bagels never get used at the same rate. I lost about a half of a cube of cream cheese. If I had been paying attention I would have used it up but once the bagels were gone I forgot about it.

WilliamB

Saturday 22nd of September 2012

Full-fat cream cheese freezes pretty well.

You can also use it in many of the cooking (not baking) places you'd use cream: soup if you like a bit of tang, pasta sauce. Cooks Illustrated has a great recipe for sugar cookies that uses 2T. cream cheese. Icing. On crackers, of course, or in sandwichs and roll-ups.

Dawn A.

Friday 21st of September 2012

Hi everyone! This is my first week participating. Looking forward to learning & sharing tips to help reduce waste!

Molly F. C.

Friday 21st of September 2012

Another way to use up leftover mashed potatoes is to make pierogi pizza. Start with a pizza shell, (either homemade or store bought), add sauteed onions, mashed potatoes, shredded cheddar, and top with sauerkraut. Bake in oven. If you like potato pierogis, and sauerkraut, you'll probably like this too. I've frozen excess mashed potatoes, and thawed for use in both bread and pizza with great success.

Raye

Friday 21st of September 2012

I love the fact that everyone is "emptying" their refrigerator but please be aware that a refrigerator is one of the home appliances that can generate the most electricity so your refrigerator does need to have enough food in it to keep it from continuously running.

When I bought my first house I came home one day to find my refrigerator filled with my cereal boxes and flour and stuff like that which I usually keep in my pantry. I found out that my Dad did this to keep my refrigerator from running all of the time.

From what my Dad said if there is nothing in the frig then it will take a long time for the frig to reach it's desired temperature because it has to cool all of the "air" in the frig. If you fill your frig with food then there is less "air" in the frig and it doesn't have to run as long to get to the desired temp.

So do as my Dad did to my frig - still have a neat frig (which, BTW, Kristin, your frig looks great!!) but fill it with items that can be refrigerated so it won't run so long and use a lot of electricity.

AFS

Saturday 22nd of September 2012

I've done this with the freezer. freeze jugs of H2o. never thought of doing the same with the fridge. Good idea.

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