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.

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So, I made pancakes, had some left over, and put them into a Pyrex container. Just a bit over 24 hours later, they were moldy.

What the what???

The only thing I can think is that maybe they weren’t completely cool when I put them in, and the moisture from the condensation made them mold quickly.

Anyway, I feel slightly annoyed that they went bad so rapidly.

Now, the other two things I have? Totally my fault.

First up, here’s some Asiago. It may have been aged 6 months before I bought it…

…but considering the expiration date was March 2011, I’m pretty sure it’s now been aged for, um, about 18 months at least.

This was a case of me buying something with no plan in hand. I bought it on a whim and never got around to using it.

And this process cheese actually expired in 2010. Dear me.

That I don’t mind throwing out so much, because I don’t feel too badly about wasting cheese that’s not even really cheese.

Hey, did you notice something? I have no produce in my pictures this week…sweet!

Oh, and since it’s Friday, Lisey’s got a new baking post up.

Go visit if you’d like to learn how to make these chewy sandwich cookies!

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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.

Here’s a fancy-schmancy button to perk up your Food Waste Friday 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.

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Today’s 365 post: Grilling in February

Joshua’s 365 post: Coffee Maker!!

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. You should join in!

I think I just might have broken my exclamation point button with that title.

!!!!!

Nope, it still works.

Ok. So, the first marvy-fab thing for today is that 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.

A thousand thanks to reader Jen from Dear Mommy Brain for gently nudging me to get this done and for sending me the code pattern.

The second newsy bit I have for you is that Lisey and I have been working on a baking blog. It’s called Baking With Lisey because Lisey loves to bake/cook and I’m a disaster at making time to help her with it. So, I’m taking an approach similar to the one I’m using with my crafting negligence, except Lisey and I started a whole new blog, and we’ll be posting recipes once a week.

Hopefully this will help me make time to bake/cook with Lisey, and hopefully you’ll have fun watching us! Since we’ll only be posting once a week or so, I highly recommend subscribing via email…that way you’ll always know when we’ve got something new up. Go on over and check it all out!

Alrighty! On to food waste.

I have some grape tomatoes that went bad (not dry, just bad…you know the way they get thin-skinned and really mushy?), and part of a lemon that got moldy.

And I think I might have a few spinach leaves that are slimy, but I’m feeling too lazy to go check right now.
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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.

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Today’s 365 post: Dental Office Reading

Joshua’s 365 post: The Answer!

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. If you’re not a blogger but still want some food waste accountability, feel free to participate by leaving a comment.

This is a piece of what used to be fresh ginger.

I used almost all of it up (I had a fairly large piece), but this last piece got moldy.

Happily, ginger is so cheap, it’s almost free, and of course this bit went into the compost.  So, not much of a loss on the financial or environmental fronts.

I also found a rotten clementine in my fruit drawer.  Plus, a mango I bought was in very odd shape…it had this weird webby stuff mixed in with the flesh of the fruit, and that makes me think it was a bad mango before it ever came into my house.

So, I’m not taking responsibility for that one.

All in all, it was a good food waste week at my house, and I’m feeling particularly pleased with myself because my fridge is relatively empty at the moment, and that always bodes well for the next week’s food waste photo.

Hey, if you haven’t joined us Food-Waste-Friday-ers yet, could I encourage you to consider it? Even if you don’t blog, or don’t want to publicly share your photo, join us in fighting to reduce the food waste in your home.

I know it might seem like a small thing, but if every reader of this blog reduced their food waste, we could make a huge difference in the amount of food that gets thrown into our landfills. There are thousands of people here in the Frugal Girl community, and if we each change and also encourage others in our lives to change, the effect could be really tremendous.

Ten-foot tall snowdrifts are made up of billions of teeny snowflakes, right? All those tiny snowflakes make something enormous, and you and I can can have an effect like that together.

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: I seriously need to redo this.

Joshua’s 365 post: Dragons and Eyes and Art! Oh My!

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.

That’s pretty bad, huh? Not as understandable as wasting, say, delicate herbs.

I found these during my cabinet clean-out.

The problem is that most of this stuff was up on the very highest shelf, in the back. We know what that means: forgotten food.

I would totally have used this stuff up if I’d remembered that it was there.

None of these foods are unsafe to eat…they’re just rancid, which means the oils have oxidized. Oxidized oils won’t typically make you sick, but they do taste icky.

Fortunately, the bread crumbs were almost gone, and there’s not much rice left in that bag either.

I also found some bad food in my fridge.

The spinach had an expiration of 12.20, so I’m surprised it doesn’t look worse than it does! The grapes aren’t that old, but they went south surprisingly soon after I bought them (I should have frozen them for smoothies when I noticed they were on their way out).

The mozzarella turned, um, pink because for some reason, I didn’t make pizza one week (I make pizza almost every week so I hardly ever waste mozzarella!), and the leftover chicken thighs went bad because I just forgot about them. On the upside, they weren’t local, organic chicken thighs, so I don’t feel quite as distressed about wasting them.

(Organic, local chicken is both expensive and delicious, so letting that go bad is a terrible crime on two counts.)

Well, at least I ought not to have any pantry waste for a while…I know exactly what’s in my cabinets, and my cabinets are organized in a way that will help me to keep better track of what I’ve got.

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: (paper) snowflake aftermath

Joshua’s 365 post: Matildabelle??

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. If you’re not a blogger but still want some food waste accountability, feel free to participate by leaving a comment.

I’m not gonna lie…it had gotten pretty bad in there over the holidays.  It’s not that there was a ton of bad food in there, it’s just that it was dreadfully disorganized.  I forgot to snap a before picture, but here’s what it looks like now.

Full, but clean. And organized.

Here are two bad things I found lurking…some seriously shriveled green beans, and a cucumber with some moldy spots.

That’s not nearly as horrible as I was expecting. Phew.

And I am feeling very positive about my food waste prospects for the next week since my fridge is so organized.

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: Just because I thought it was pretty.

Joshua’s 365 post: A DOUBLE guess post!

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. If you’re not a blogger but still want some food waste accountability, feel free to participate by leaving a comment.

Cantaloupe has been really cheap of late, probably because a lot of people are still nervous about buying it after the listeria problem.

I’ve bought quite a few, and they’ve been surprisingly good, considering that it’s not exactly cantaloupe-growing season. But, the last two I bought were not so tasty. I cut some up to throw into smoothies, and we ate some, but we were just not up for consuming this last half.

So of course, I just let it sit in my fridge until it got moldy.

Because that is very sensible.

I’ll probably refrain from buying cantaloupe again until the winter is over because the odds of getting a tasteless melon are just too good right now.

I will not be tempted by low prices! I will not!

Ok.

I also wanted to tell you that this will be the last Food Waste Friday for 2011. The next two Fridays are right before Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, and I think most of us will be far too busy to think about food waste!

And because this is a very busy time of year for you and for me, posts for the next week or two will be a little more hit and miss than usual…we’ll probably skip some of the regular features, and I might even skip some days.

So, don’t worry about me if I don’t post. I’m probably just baking cookies or something.

Oh, and I want to tell you about a new glass straw that I have, but I’ll do that this afternoon in a separate post.

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: Joshua and his best buddy

Joshua’s 365 post: Oh, yeah!

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. If you’re not a blogger but still want some food waste accountability, feel free to participate by leaving a comment.

Thanks in part to my thorough fridge clean-out from last week, I have very little waste to report this week…I just lost a clementine, which looked fine on the outside but was moldy in the middle. We were in the midst of lunch when I discovered it, though, and I didn’t stop to take a photo.

So, here’s a random photo to help keep this post from being boring.

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: Christmas Light Bokeh

Joshua’s 365 post: My first Christmas video, and another blog (not mine)

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. If you’re not a blogger but still want some food waste accountability, feel free to participate by leaving a comment.

Not just clean as in, not-filled-with-rotting-food, but clean as in I-wiped/washed-the-whole-thing. I took drawers and shelves out, even. It was a rare event, indeed.

(I’m sure some of you super-duper-housekeepers are cringing at the thought that I don’t do this very often, but alas, it is true.)

Since I cleaned a little deeper than usual, I found some things that had been lurking in the deep dark depths of my fridge for a while.

We’ll go from left to right. First, we have Honey Nut cream cheese spread, which was just…weird. My kids wanted me to buy it, but most of them thought it was weird too.

Atop that is a bit of canned pumpkin. I should have just thrown it into the pumpkin bread batter, but I was being precise (baking being sort of scientific and all that).

The Dijon mustard had been in there for eons and I had a newer opened container on the shelf as well. So, there didn’t seem to be much point in keeping the last bit of the super old stuff.

I bought the buttermilk from Target when I had stopped in for a few other things, and apparently buttermilk doesn’t move too quickly at Target because when I got home, I realized the buttermilk was almost at its sell-by date. I used up most of it, but the last bit went bad before I could get to it.

And lastly, the red things are some very, very, very shriveled up grape tomatoes. And not only are they shriveled, they are also very, very, very old.

Then again, most very shriveled things are also very old, aren’t they?

(this thought has been brought to you by Captain Obvious and the word “very”.)

Anyhoo! I’m pleased to be starting out a new food waste week with an organized AND clean fridge.

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: Silhouette

Joshua’s 365 post: The New Fad

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. If you’re not a blogger but still want some food waste accountability, feel free to participate by leaving a comment.

You didn’t think we’d skip Food Waste Friday because it’s a little ol’ shopping day, did you?

No, indeed.

I wasted some cucumber slices.

And some spinach.

So, those are my failures.

My triumph?

I ended up with some leftover gravy (we’d eaten all the chicken), and some leftover broccoli (which made me nervous…I wasn’t sure who would eat it!).

But then I realized that gravy is sort of like cream soup, and broccoli is good in cream soup. So, I just combined and heated the two, and voila! Cream of broccoli soup.

It was really quite tasty, and I was delighted I came up with a way to eat two difficult-to-use leftovers.

Sweet.

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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.

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.

Kindly overlook the spatters. We have more embarrassing stuff to focus on than that!

From left to right, we have some moldy grapes (forgotten in a drawer) a bit of fruit salad (should have thrown that into a smoothie), half a cucumber that got frozen in the back of the fridge, and the worst thing, an entire eggplant.

Whoops.

I don’t really like eggplant, but I saw a juice recipe that called for it, and I thought, “Ooh! Maybe I wouldn’t mind eggplant in a juice.”

But you know, the road to the trash (or compost!) bin is paved with good intentions, and this eggplant is evidence of that.

Also, I had to get rid of a bad tangerine.  I’m not sure this is my fault, though, because it’s the only one out of the fairly new bag that went south.

Happily, all of this food went straight into my compost bin, so although it’s a waste of money, it’s not a total ecological disaster.

And I have to say, I do love the feeling of a cleaned-out fridge. It’s so nice to have a fresh start every week (back in my pre-blogging days, I’d go for a LONG time between fridge-cleanings, and the amount of stuff lurking in there got to be truly scary.)

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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.

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Today’s 365 post: This kind of grosses my kids out.

Joshua’s 365 post: The Things Sisters Think Of….