Food Waste Friday | Beans and Peppers
Every week, I post a picture of the food that has gone bad over the last seven days. I started doing this in March of 2008 to help motivate myself to use up my food instead of wasting it and it's been very effective. Since it helped me so much, I invited other bloggers to join me in posting their food waste photos, and Food Waste Friday was born.
Sooo, this week I learned that those big bargain cans of beans are only appropriate for households where more than two people eat them. Ahem. It's small cans from now on here at Chez Frugal Girl (I know I could cook them myself, but I'm not inspired enough to soak and cook a small amount of beans, and canned beans are still really cheap!).
The red thing on top is the last bit of a red pepper that went bad before I finished it. I should have frozen it, but I was totally going to, you know, add it to my salad (good intentions and all that!).
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I don't think I can possibly be first-- can I?
You can freeze cooked beans for later use. I cook up whole bags of dried beans, drain them and portion them into pint sized canning jars, which is about the same as a 15 oz can. Don't add any water or anything, just beans, top with lid and pop in the freezer. Dried is definitely cheaper, I get about 3 to 4 cans worth of cooked beans to one 1lb bag of dried. Plus they taste WAY better. Same with home made refried beans, which I do in the crock pot and freeze. Yummy.
Soak them overnight, then cook them on the stove for an hour or two. If you have a pressure cooker, it takes like 30 min.
I was going to say the same thing. Oh, and you don't really have to soak beans. There's a quick-soak method. So, making a batch and freezing 1/2 ends up taking less time than, say, making a quart of yogurt. . .
i have lost parts of several large cans of beans, too, and learned that I freeze what I can't use for later. I keep it at the front of the freezer above the fridge so I see it and don't lose it 🙂
No waste here! 🙂
Like Rebecca, I cook up a whole bag of dried beans and freeze in 2c. portions. The process of cooking them is easy because it's hands-off. I soak them overnight and then let them cook all day in my crockpot. My kids used to be less than enthusiastic about eating beans and rice until I used a psychology trick on them. Beans and rice is now called Burrito Bowls and they're more than willing to eat it because it's "just like the dish at Chipotle." They actually get excited when they know it's on the menu -- who would have guessed?
Love your storage containers. I'm on a kick to eliminate 90% of the plastic containers in our house (we've accumulated way too many of those disposable ziploc storage containers). I want to go to all glass. I'm on the hunt for 2c pyrex containers like what you show here.
I do what Nancy does and freeze cooked beans in 1 1/2 cup portions. Also, I don't soak beans. I just don't. I haven't noticed a difference with soaking vs. not soaking. I cook them in the crockpot (except for red kidney beans or other beans with toxins) and it couldn't be easier! However, if you don't eat a lot of beans, it's totally easier to just pick up a can here and there.
As for food waste, what a sad, sad week at our house! Mostly bad luck...an empanada that fell on the floor, a piecrust that turned out funny, queso that separated, olive oil that went rancid...sigh.
Cate, I cook my chickpeas in the slow cooker, and was about to cook some red kidney beans. Are you saying that the kidney beans shouldn't be? I've never seen that elsewhere when I've looked up instructions ...
Supposedly red kidney beans have some kind of toxin wherein they need to be boiled for 10 minutes before cooking? However, outbreaks are very uncommon in the U.S., so you're probably fine! I'm really not the top authority on the subject, honestly..
Thanks, Cate! I am the MOST novice of cooks and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out I was doing something to poison myself or others! Ha ha. I don't seem to have any common sense at all when it comes to cooking.
Not such a great week here. Four kiwi that got hidden under the clementines, 1/2 c. honeydew that just wasn't eaten in time, 1/2 orange ditto. The kiwis annoy me. I do like them so why do the ones I buy usually molder?
On the plus side I scrubbed out the fridge thoroughly, including pulling glass from frames to get in the corners (now I have to reglue); finally emptied out the standing freezer enough to defrost and scrub that; now am waiting for fridge freezer to turn off (it has an "off" setting, no need to turn off the entire fridge, yay) so I can scrub that. Roommate volunteered to pull both fridge and freezer out of their nooks to vacuum compressors and clean outsides and nooks. We're going to gleam!
Beans that don't get eaten in my house are turned into dip - just add salsa and spices. Apparently everything tastes good with a tortilla chip.
Cate: my experience is that unsoaked beans take longer to cook.
Cook's Illustrated has, over the years, compared beans soaked in plain water, beans soaked in salty water, beans soaked overnight, beans quicksoaked, and beans not soaked at all. The ultimate conclusion is that soaking beans in salty water yields creamier more intact beans than beans soaked in plain water, and that quick soaking does just as much good as overnight, and that unsoaked beans take up to an hour longer to cook on the stove.
That's really interesting! Guess I'll be adding salt to my beans...I do sometimes quick soak. Since I'm usually cooking beans in the crockpot on high and going about my business while doing it, I don't really care how long it takes, but that's neat!
I fed some sticky pasta salad to the dogs, and threw out some rancid pine nuts that were lurking at the back of the spice cupboard. I hate throwing out something that was so expensive. I did freeze two lonely meatballs and a bit of sauce.
Freeze your pine nuts and any other nuts so they won't get rancid. They are too expensive to waste...
I wish I'd found them in time! I hadn't purchased them, so I didn't know they were in the back of the cupboard until I moved some other things. Lesson learned: Check the backs of the cupboards once a month! Stuff gets pushed there and forgotten.
I have black beans and chopped red pepper in the fridge right now. I use them to make nachos. I just a few chips on the plate, cover them with beans and peppers, then top with cheese. Microwave for 30-45 seconds or until the cheese is just melted and serve with salsa. It's a good quick snack or lunch. The beans are good fiber and I get some veggies in there.
Some night we have "beans and rice" and some nights we have "Mexican Mainstay". 🙂
Beans are yummy in a green salad!
The remains of some mediocre soup were all we had. We ate 3 bowls each and then cried uncle. There's a theme here because it was the very last of the what remained of a whole crockpot full of black-eyed peas. We ate them cooked as a side dish with greens and for me just as a snack, and then the rest went in the soup, which we almost finished. My husband said he just couldn't take any more beans.
I'm positive we wouldn't have eaten that last bowl later if I'd frozen it now, because it wasn't appetizing enough to eat again in a few weeks.
Like several other commenters, I cook up a big batch and freeze them in usable portion sizes. I really only like black beans, so that's all I cook, usually on the stove. In the summer, we like hummus, so I cook up chickpeas.
LOL! I have red bell pepper lingering around too 🙂 We had two meals which needed red bell pepper. I had half of one left over. I didn't want to just use it with either meal because that would have been a bell pepper over load. I had a good idea to just cook it with some onions and eat it on a sandwich. I may just do it, I think its on its last day.
Oh! It's friday already!? Without this post, Kristen, I would have forgotten 😀 (It's been a really busy day. I haven't had time to think of days of the week!).
I've got veggies that went bad from a party---though, in my defense, someone pawned them off on me. I was forced to take the celery home and I don't much like celery (unless it's slathered in pb, and that defeats the purpose!). Also have two pieces of turkey lunchmeat, and a couple small jalapeno peppers. *sigh*
Oh friday... next week you better play nice!
No food waste here either; thankfully. I do have some rice that must be used tomorrow or else. And I found a lonely sausage that I had left in the oven overnight instead of refrigerating, but I made it into a casserole, added plenty of immune boosting garlic and thyme and I'm pleased to report hubby is still alive 😉
That's the beauty of buying fresh from the butcher rather than from a supermarket I suppose.
Hello, just found you and I am encouraged by doing many of the things you do. I will follow you and see how maybe I can improve on the things I do and get even better. God bless you. My 'waste' is not that exactly. Some is fed to our pets, the rest is composted and thus used in our gardens. So it is not exactly wasted. It is kept to a minimum and I am sure we could do even better if we paid more attention.
Thank you for sharing so freely and I hope you are blessed along with all your readers.
I need help. Just saw the story on CBN about your frugal blog, and Food Waste Friday really spoke to me. Let me just say that I'm glad I'm not the only one. I feel so guilty about throwing food (a.k.a., hard-earned money) into the garbage and down the drain. I have made some small baby steps toward correcting my kitchen irresponsibilities, such as letting the dog eat left over meat that wouldn't hurt her a bit; not cooking so much food to begin with; buying in smaller portions or freezing the larger quantities ahead of time. My biggest problem has, and remains to be, lack of imagination. I made something great for dinner, but have no clue what to do with the left overs or the remaining ingredients. We don't like left overs very much (unless it's roast, pizza, spaghetti, ham, or turkey). Anything "interesting and new" on day one, just get looked at again. And, with a narrow side-by-side refrigerator, it's very easy to push everything to the back and forget about it. And, that is the other part of my problem: I do not seem to organize the refrigerator in a way that encourages finding contents easily. I think refrigerators should be 12" deep and 5 feet long!!! Nothing would get lost in there then. Anyway, thanks for the interesting blog; I'm going to keep reading and hopefully find some inspiration to improve my lifestyle, budget, and kitchen skills.
Obviously, I haven't warmed up my typing skills this morning... I meant to say the leftovers just DON'T get looked at again. Sorry.