Food Waste Friday | And thank you.
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.
I responded to quite a few of the comments you dear people left on yesterday's post, but I wanted to say thank you here as well, in case you guys don't visit and revisit the comments section (that's probably wise because you could waste a lot of time that way!).
Though the point of that post was to trot out what I've written about my imperfections (because I truly, truly don't want to be all fake and perfect-looking), I wanted to say thank you to all of you that reached out and encouraged me through comments and emails.
Your kind words have touched me, the tales of your own struggles have humbled me (you all manage to be content after losing babies and husbands, and even while being terminally ill!), and the testimonies of how my blog has helped you...well, those give me the inspiration to keep on going.
Thank you.
I am freshly motivated to carry on and do what I feel called to do without letting fear dictate what I write and share. Fear-ruled blogging won't be fun for me or helpful for you.
Jon Acuff recently wrote a post about making sure you disappoint the right people. For me, that means blogging on cheerfully without fear of upsetting people who don't like incessant positivity or people who want to see more imperfections. If I worried about that audience, then I'd disappoint all of you that ARE served by my typical blogging style. You, the 99.99%, are the people I need to blog for.
I'm just going to be me...100% natural Kristen.
My blogging will never be perfect, though, so it's awfully good that things don't need to be perfect to bless others.
I'm preachin' it to myself, people! 🙂
Ok.
Maybe we should talk about some food waste, huh?
Seeing as this is Food Waste Friday, not Thank You For Being Lovely People Friday.
(though that would make a lovely feature)
Here's my photo.
The pyrex container sadly has a little bit of leftover beef and some jus. I am mad at myself for wasting this, because the Beef Au Jus I make is really stinking awesome if I do say so myself. Oh well.
And at the bottom, we have a completely unopened package of zucchini. It's been a long, long time since I bought produce and didn't even touch it before it went bad, so I suppose that's a good thing.
It happened allllll the time before I started blogging, though. I can't even tell you how many untouched cucumbers went completely to mush in my produce drawer over the years.
So, boo that I let these ones go, but yay that I've mostly kicked the habit of wholesale produce waste.
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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 dare you to look at this and be sad.
I think you're brilliant, end of story x
Never second guess your posts - the key word of warning is "cheerfully", right. And you do it best.
My fridge is certainly a horror story today - in fact a major blood bath - seriously! The photograph shows all! It's karma at play I reckon as I was rather disingenuous last week about my Mom's home grown pickled beetroot in the FWF comments. I knew there was something spooky about that jar...
Kristen You Rock - and the 99.9% of us know it!
I hope you are feeling better today. I just want to say that despite what you feel you do wrong or fail at, you do a HECK of a lot of things right and I thank you for that. You continue to be a humble source of cheerful determination and inspiration and you have made a genuine difference in so many people's lives who turn to your blog for continued support. You are seriously cool too - you balance out kids, work, happy home while keeping your bills down, planning awesome vacations and oh yeah, homeschooling on top of it. Seriously, you're awesome. don't forget it!
This was an extremely bad week for food in our house. I wasted: Banana bread that tasted nothing like banana,Banana's,apples that were supposed to be golden delicious but were more like golden disgusting,a tomato,hot dogs and the rolls to go with,severely freezer burned chicken,oatmeal that my mom has had in the cabinet for well over a year,a pear that went bad.
The biggest disappoint was the banana's,they were from Aldi and the last few times I've gotten them there this has been an issue. They go bad too fast for me and mom to eat them up in enough time. Going to try this time getting them elsewhere and only get 2 or 3.
I never buy bananas at Aldi. The kind that come in a plastic bag have been gassed to ripen them, and they always, always go from green to spotted with no happy in between for me.
I highly recommend purchasing your bananas elsewhere. 🙂
Wanda and Kristen
With the bananas from wherever you buy them, here's a tip. Take them out of the bag and separate them. I usually put them in different areas of the kitchen/dining area. I can buy +2lbs and have them stay ripe for 1-1.5weeks without going mushy. Very rarely do I have bananas go bad once I learned to keep them separate.
This note is just for Kristen about the bad comments, etc the other day. As my 6yr son would say 'You rock!' Keep your chin up and keep blogging your style...it rocks!
Jinx! 🙂
Great tip on the bananas...I did not know that!
Do you take them out of the bag as soon as you get home? I do that and haven't had that many problems. Although I have been known to freeze a lot of bananas or make banana pudding when they get too brown.
Oatmeal went bad? That happens?
Apparently so. I didn't think oatmeal could smell like that but it did and we didn't notice because its individual packets.
Yes we take the banana's immediately out of the bag when we get home from Aldi. I just don't know what the problem is and at this point I am going to try something else. It is the only thing at Aldi I have gotten that didn't work out.
I have that issue as well, I bought bananas last Friday and today is the last of eating them. I'm making some banana bread to take to a benefit at church tomorrow. I was pretty excited because my bananas were green when I got them and TOO hard the first couple of days, but it was like they went from green to brown in a day. Very uncool. But at least now I know I'm not the only one.
Agreed - I've finally learned that produce in packaging goes bad faster. Took me quite awhile to learn. That said, we wasted a bag of lettuce this week, so maybe I didn't learn! But at least I know why.
I have to stop at whole fooods tomorrow so I will get a few there and hope for the best.
I also have to say I missed all the drama yesterday about positivity and negativity,etc.... Personally I enjoy reading your blog and its one of the few blogs I have saved to my iphone to read on the weekends. I don't always agree with your point of view but I would dislike strongly if you changed your blog. After all this is your blog and it should be written in a style that best suites the writer,not the reader. I think most people realize that you are not perfect,no one is,but you choose to be positive about life when others would love to relish in negativity.
I will admit I am jealous of your baking and sewing skills and the time you have for both. But I treat this jealous feeling with a positive intent to better my own life by appreciating my own self and my own unique talents and by simplfying my life so I will have more time to try to learn new skills.
So thank you for presenting your blog in such a fashion that it brings a great deal of joy and positivity. Keep up the great job and I cannot wait to see what the rest of the year brings for your blog.
My banana tip: Buy a large bunch of green -- really green, never gassed -- bananas, and two yellow bananas with spots that are looking near their end (or just keep two from the last batch). keep them together on the counter for a couple days, and then throw the brown ones in the freezer (for bread or whatever). I'm no scientist, but there's some chemical, naturally emitted from the ripe bananas that will naturally encourage the green ones to do their thing. This way, you KNOW you're getting bananas that haven't been forced to ripen, and that nature is going to make them delicious. You may have a two day lag without bananas, but it's SOOOOO worth it.
If you can't get green bananas, seperate those yellow ones so they don't turn each other too quickly.
Heaven forbid you have to make banana bread. 😉
Don't doubt, you are pretty awesome 🙂
Now those furry cucumbers...
I would have commented on yesterday's post, but you were already flooded with adoring fans. I come here to cheer up, and to learn something. This is YOUR blog, if someone doesn't like it, they can look elsewhere. I'm glad you are going to stay 100% Kristen, because I LOVE that!!!
Food Waste...I've let too many zucchini go this past season...meant to make minestrone soup with it, but I was always too late. I'm now only buying what I'll use for the week...so hopefully that will help!
Sharon
Those zucchini are yucky looking.
I was all excited this morning when I thought I'd had a food waste FREE week. Then I realized we'd had one sad apple we took on vacation that didn't make it. It got too bumped and bruised. But I think one apple is none too shabby.
FWF is an occasion for sadness for me this week:
- I wasted half a large bunch of kale. I wanted to put it in kale/sausage/bean soup but I waited too long.
- I scortched a small batch of roast broccoli. There's nothing to be done about it, whatever it goes into will taste scortched.
On the plus side, last night I did many things to prevent more waste:
- sliced the moldy outside off some oranges I just bought, sliced the rest for lunch;
- simmered "second" pears for pearsauce;
- made sausage/bean soup;
- made duck stock from the peking duck carcass from dinner out the night before (and the waiter gave me an extra carcass!);
- smoked homemade bacon;
- figured out where to hand the homemade pancetta I'm making. It needs about 50F and damp. Solution? The wine fridge I never use.
Need to do:
- eat those oranges (which I forgot to take for lunch);
- cook the baby bok choi so it won't imitate the kale; I'm going to try a new recipe w/ ginger, and serve it with the leftover peking duck.
Ooh homemade bacon? I feel completely stupid for saying this but I have no idea how one would make bacon. How did you do it?
To make bacon you need to cure the meat, then smoke it. Curing sounds hard but is simple once you get the specialized ingredient, smoking is simple for BBQ users, but I am not one so this is the harder part for me.
1. To Cure the Meat:
- pork belly
- soldium nitrate (found in Curing Salt #1 or in Pink Salt)
- salt and other flavorings
2. To Smoke the Meat:
- wood chips, such as applewood or hickory
- grill or oven
- patience
To Cure the Meat:
Mix pink salt and other flavorings, coat the meat with it, put in ziplok, let sit in fridge for 1-2 weeks[1] turning it over 1-2 times a week. Wash the cure off the meat. Technically you now have bacon. But to US'ans, it isn't bacon if it isn't smoked so on to step 2.
To Smoke the Meat:
Soak chips in water for at least a few hours. Get grill going, toss wet chips on coal (or follow mfgr instructions for gas grill), put meat on rack, cover, let the wet chips turn into smoke and smoke the meat for 3-??? hrs. This can be done in an oven as well but I don't know the procedure.
I've done this three times now. It's not a well oiled machine yet, my results vary a lot. I won't smoke on a weeknight any more, I want the meat to be more smoked.
[1] I often dawdle so mine sits longer. Dunno what effect this has on the bacon.
I want to come eat at your house! Smoked bacon and bok choi - yum!
I missed all of the controversy yesterday and was shocked to sign on today. I just read through all of the comments.
I think you have tremendous courage to be putting your life under a public microscope everyday. There must be thousands of people who appreciate what you offer us. Thank you for being authentic and willing to share.
I was also struck by how diverse the commentors are. Your blog appeals to college students, grandmothers, men, women, straight, gay, single, married, with children, without children, religious, and non-religious. You would not have this diversity if you weren't doing something really right.
Again - thank you.
Hi Kristen, Good to see your recovery!
About the zucchini, I was wondering if you left them in the package on purpose? I hate plastic-wrapped produce in the fridge, apart from keeping stuff from drying out or from spreading certain smells (smoked fish comes to mind ;-)). But then again, fish is not produce. In general, I unpack this stuff. Sometimes it will come in paper bags, green beans for instance, and then I will leave them in the bag. I generally prefer them to whither and dry out slightly - mold is the worst enemy when you're dealing with preventing food waste...
Oh, and about banana management: my husband takes one to work four days a week. After a lot of experience with weeks filled with all green or all brown bananas I totally agree with the unpack and spread advice. Actually, when they are very green I will leave them packed for a day or two and unpack them according to the time that is left until they are needed. It all comes down to ethylene: ripening produce produces ethylene and the more of this is in the air, the quicker it produces ethylene, thus making itself ripen quicker. So if you want to speed them up you leave them together, and for slowing down you spread them across the room (and unwrap them). A quick biology lesson...
I'm doing so much better with not wasting food. The BF and I are so happy.
Hi Kristen,
Not posting about FWF (ever aiming to use up the food in the fridge - leftovers for lunch and dinner tonight), but here is a link I found on another blog I read titled 'Fake Family'. http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/09/26/fake-family that might counter some of the commentary this week.
Not so bad!! I threw out TWO heads of lettuce from my bountiful baskets basket. After I got the basket home, they looked good. I did not get them into the fridge right away and that may have been my first mistake. I did put them in but then they started doing the shrivel-up thing. I already had some lettuce we were using in my salad spinner container, so I guess I had an over abundance of lettuce. I am mad at myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is the thing with Bountiful baskets though, you never know what you are going to get in them. One week it is two bags carrots or even two huge stalks of celery. Plus I have no idea how they were treated ( the Lettuce!) on the way to me.
I am brushing it off and just trying better this week. Oh geez not to write a longer comment here but......my 20 and 18 year olds have moved out to go to school here. Son is home weekends but daughter is not! It is hard to cook for 5 people and then just cook for 3 people!!!!!
If anyone has advice for me , I will gladly take it !!
Food waste - One packet of small kirby cucumbers that, for some odd reason, didn't miraculously turn into pickles without my intervention. 🙂 Did use up every one of the apples from our apple picking orgy a few weeks ago (my freezer is stocked with all things apple) and made giant batches of soup with various other veg, so in all, not a bad week.
Kristen, I would echo what everyone else has said - you rock. Our lifestyles are hugely different (I work outside my home, and my toddler has been going to daycare since 11 weeks, I do not make yogurt- although I tried and liked your method- and I mostly outsource housework.) Despite our differences, I learn from you all the time, always leave your blog feeling encouraged. On the rare occasion I may not agree, it has never stopped me from coming back. Thanks for that - and bless you for your courage and wisdom.
I don't know if others have mentioned it in the comments above, but I often buy zucchini and then shred and freeze it in 2 cup portions. Then I pull it out to thaw when I want to make zucchini bread. I don't really use zucchini for anything else, but I make a pretty kickin' zucchini bread (at least according to my husband!) 🙂
Blog on, Kristen. I look forward for your daily dose of inspiration!
I love your blog because you remind me to be cheerful and that I am lucky lucky lucky.
I don't believe in religion but I believe in good people. Good people like you that make this world a kinder place and a thoughtful place 🙂
Keep on blogging because you have a large cheering crowd who are inspired by you and make lots of small steps that are good for the pocket, planet and family.
This.
An odds and ends week of waste here: Last inch of sour cream and the last half inch of strawberry rhubarb jam that got moldy, a carrot too shriveled and slimy to save, and some roasted beets I dropped on the floor.
I've only been reading your blog for a few weeks now, but it quickly became one of my daily online must reads. Your posts are always positive, helpful, and inspiring. Thank you!
PS - I need to start doing a Food Waste Friday reality check in my own kitchen. I'm slightly scared.
You are definitely an amazing, encouraging woman who lives her faith authentically and inspires me to do so as well! I'm glad that you are cheerful; living with joy no matter what the circumstances is what God calls us to because we have a higher hope than that of this world. I usually need to be reminded of that. 🙂 Thanks for being you!
On the food waste side of things, we just wasted a bunch of oats this week. We're getting better at this!!
I found this for you today, friend:
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2011/10/a-bloggers-prayer/
I hope it helps xo
I was so interested in your website when I came across it about a year ago that I spent days of my internet time going back through the archives. Because I get your posts by email, I rarely read the comments. I was so surprised to hear what was going on. I have never posted a comment on your blog, though I've read every entry, but I couldn't help myself today. From another (a little older...) 30 something, Christian, stay at home, frugal mother of 4 who also plays the piano and gives lessons--(how weird is that?!)--please keep on keeping on. Thanks to your blog we have homemade yogurt around the house all the time now!
Did pretty well on food waste this week! We wasted some awesome pumpkin bread in my hall's common room though. It was sad, because I totally would have eaten it before it went bad had I known about it!
I would like to add my word of support! My goodness, it never crossed my mind to be upset because your blogs are overwhelmingly positive! That is the reason I look forward to reading them every day! I feel no jealousy that your family is able to enjoy the beautiful parks and seashore vacations, even though I am getting older and my crippling arthritis has precluded my much-loved travel days. I enjoy living vicariously through you and seeing the sights through your eyes. I am a retired public school teacher, so have no experience with home schooling, but I am still interested in hearing about how the home school life compares. I'm not able to bake all of my own bread, but I have still gotten a couple of delicious recipes from you that I have used a lot and been asked to pass on to many people. So even though I can't live a life anywhere comparable to yours, I enjoy logging on every day to hear about yours! And by the way, I do enjoy the days you tell us about your not-so-perfect side, too. That only makes you seem more like a real person, just like the rest of us! So keep sending out those positive posts, and those who do not enjoy them certainly do not have to read them! Thanks for your encouragement for those of us who enjoy reading about your positive attitude!
God Bless You! Keep up your beautiful posts! Your great tips! Simple, positive, frugal...i love it! That's one of the problems in the world...the constant negativity. I can get all that negativity on the internet news or CNN or other blogs. I love to read your posts. Most of us mothers (working outside or inside the home) are compassionate and can read between the lines when you are down and tired while still trying to persevere and stay positive. You are the real deal and a hard worker and a person God is so proud of and your goal of your life being to glorify God is a lovely reminder for me. I'm glad to see you are keeping up your way of blogging and who you are!! Its cheered me up many lowwww times. BTW, I didn't waste any food today because I didn't clean out my fridge (...lol)..so ignorance is bliss. See? A little humor is great! But I don't feel sooo guilty if its veggies as i just compost it then too like you do....Nite nite.
i'm embarrassed by my food waste. No picture up yet either.
I am appalled to hear about yesterday's fiasco! I am thrilled that your readers came out in droves to support you and to ask you to 'keep doing what you're doing'. I loved the comment about your blog being a warm and homey place... those are my thoughts exactly. You feel like a friend from afar.
Your blog makes me aspire to be a better person. You are an inspiration and I'm so fortunate to have found your blog. I am inspired because you are real. I don't need perfection, but I do need a cheerful voice encouraging me to keep moving forward.
Thank you.
I was thinking more about the recent commenting craziness and thought perhaps you could do a post sometime about stress--how you manage your own stress?
Thanks!
I really feel sorry when I have to throw away stuff that has not been opened, so I know how you feel. Hope it will be a better week next week?