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Food Waste Friday | Saving asparagus. And lettuce. And tomato sauce.

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 did pretty well.

moldy lime

Not too shabby.

Some wins?

-I threw together a bunch of random tomato sauce/puree from my freezer to make pink sauce to go on ravioli.

IMG_0728-001

-I grilled some asparagus that had been in my fridge for a shockingly long time.   I kept meaning to cook it and then I’d forget, and amazingly enough, only a spear or two got wilty.

-I hacked up the ends of several heads of romaine to make a strawberry green salad. (Except I used apples instead of pears because that’s what I had on hand!)

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.

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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.

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Beth

Sunday 11th of May 2014

You inspired me to freeze and smoothify the following: -less-than-flavorful watermelon -roasted butternut squash -browning/squishy grapes They literally blend right in with delicious bananas and berries!

Kristen

Monday 12th of May 2014

Whoa, I'd never have thought of putting squash in. Go you!!

Karen.

Saturday 10th of May 2014

So, my two-year-old figured out how to freeze the fridge. I think that's bad news ... ? But the only thing lost this round was a grapefruit that was getting past its prime anyway.

It was my fault for pushing the part jar of pizza sauce to the back and forgetting about it, though. And I also put a casserole in the oven while we made a quick trip to take my husband to the tractor and back, but then I agreed to let a kid ride with him a bit, so it was pretty brown when we got home. Edible, but the second set of leftovers were not appealing. Thank goodness for the dog!

Wins? On Tuesday I bought a bag of "overripe" bananas that were by no means overripe — 28 cents a pound, perhaps four pounds — and they are already all gone. This is completely abnormal! I'm almost always freezing a few. Also, discovered that one of the gallons of milk I bought Tuesday was also dated Tuesday, but it was still fine this morning (Saturday) so it is becoming yogurt as I type.

Rebecca

Friday 9th of May 2014

Not a good week for me. Husband out of town, so two servings of soup made it in the trash along with some old rice and a funky broken egg. Lost some orange slices to the compost bin. The good news is I didn't grocery shop last week and just ate what was here, so while I had some waste this week, I didn't spend extra money. :/

Bella

Friday 9th of May 2014

Hello I have follow your blog for over a year now,and every Friday,I wonder the same question. Why don't you have some chickens ,no more food waste ,very little time and money investment and great eggs year round. Between my dogs and the chicken ,we never have any food that not fully use. Maybe that's for question Monday. Bye

Kristen

Friday 9th of May 2014

Well, I'm not sure I have the space for them or the time/energy to take care of them. :)

Hannah @ eat, drink, and save money

Friday 9th of May 2014

No food has been wasted yet! We also ate some food that had been in the fridge for a very long time. I assume that if it smells good and isn't slimy then it is a win, right? We ate some mushrooms that had been in for over a week and I was surprised that they were still fresh!

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