Food Waste Friday | I almost made it...
So, you all know I was trying REALLY hard for a no-waste week this week, right?
Well, this tomato has thwarted my efforts.
However, I'm not taking full blame for this because the pack of tomatoes was not old and the other tomatoes are perfectly fine.
Still, I don't feel quite right saying I had a no waste week when I chucked a slimy tomato into the compost, so there you go.
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How did you do this week?
No Waste for me second week running but mainly due to unfortunate circumstances. I didn't book my online grocery delivery for Saturday Morning as I was having a 'regroup' after my Cooking From Scratch Cost Experiment last week, the plan was to do a shop Monday. Alas no there was a change of plan and survival kicked in. So my Scratch Experiment turned into one for real, whereby I used my 'In case of emergency' supplies to get me through the week. Proving Cooking From Scratch not only has cost benefits but can get you out of a tight spot! No rotten tomato for me this week, no rotten anything, infact unsure what we are going to eat today the cupboard is soooo bare. I can hear a takeaway calling 🙂
Arugula. It was slimy and smelled a bit sewerish. Blech.
My post says lettuce and olives, but I'm giving the olives a second (third, fourth?) chance. So it's really just lettuce. Not too bad considering I cleaned out my fridge and freezer this week. We didn't really have anything to throw out from that, and what we didn't want to keep storing we just ate to get rid of it.
BTW, for those that are very serious about food waste here is an interesting article from change.org. I'm looking forward to seeing this documentary when it comes out.
http://news.change.org/stories/filmmaker-asks-trader-joes-to-stop-wasting-food
Happy Friday!
~LeeAnn
Might have to dive back into the crisper drawer and toss some cilantro, I suspect it has turned to mush by now... sigh...
Icky lettuce and a little bit of chicken. By a miracle, no citrus!
No idea what's going to get chucked tomorrow when we do our grocery shop/redo the fridge.
However.
We now have enough worms for a SECOND worm bin. Woohooo!
Oh I want worms.....I miss my worm bin!!!
You did way better than me! I wasted rolls, chili, 1/2 a sandwich, and some sprouts I was sprouting.
We wasted watermelon this week. I am not sure how this was possible other than we are just growing tired of it.
You can dehydrate watermelon---takes 24 hours if the slices are thick, but ends up like a roll up in consistency. You can also freeze watermelon, throw in a banana and makes a great smoothie.
I didn't post about my food waste today because I have another post scheduled, but I had a rough week. I cleaned out the freezer this week and there was a LOT that had been in there over a year, and some of it, I'm so ashamed to say, since we got married a YEAR and a HALF ago!!
I'm so embarrassed, I can't even remember how many things I threw out, so lets just move on and hope that next week is better 😛
Carrot-Ginger soup and some Chicken Red Curry here. I was just too sick to care for a chunk of the week, so we still have someother stuff to use up before I shop again. At least hubby ate from the freezer whileI wasn't cooking, so we didn't spend on takeout.
We had some grilled onion left from *gasp* Fathers Day that needed to go. Then there was some homemade sandwhich bread that went bad over the holiday since we weren't eating our normal food 🙁 I forgot all about it until I went to pack lunches Tuesday morning...
I threw away a few (10?) grapes that were bad when I bought them (it was in a big bag and the grapes were on the stems still!), but we did throw out an entire bunch of watercress. TFH wanted some with homemade salad this week, brought it out (it was fine!) and deemed it unworthy to eat because it was a) sour tasting, b) wilting, and c) he didn't want it. Into the trash it went...I'm sure I could have used it in SOMETHING (right?).
Love the the goggle adjustments before the dive. 😉 Cute!
Well, I had a big and epic fail on the foodwaste front this week, and I'll take responsibility for most of it - but will share the blame with the fridge which went all squirrelly this week, and up and died day before yesterday. Unfortunately, I'd stored a bunch of stuff that was sort of on the edge inside the dying fridge since I was completely off my schedule last weekend. Resulting in dead broccoli, dill, cilantro, baby bok choy, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and the tail-ends of some homemade yogurt, yogurt cheese, and homemade lemon curd (only about a tablespoon, thank goodness). Oh, and some cheese. Dead. Just dead. Like Megg, I'm just moving forward.
However, I have YOU to thank that it wasn't worse!! I'd also just bought 2 half-gallons of some very expensive whole milk from happy cows (was gonna make more yogurt), and the open one went all curdley and sour. (The still-sealed one that I brought in to our good fridge at work that seems to have survived for the moment.) So I researched some recipes, and made 3 batches of biscuits and a big batch of pancakes from my 6.5 cups (OY!!) of curdled milk! I CAN'T BELIEVE how amazing they taste! I also noted in amazement that the eggs seem to have also survived the gradual warming just fine (they were still cool to the touch).
I moved most of the contents of my fridge and freezer to my landlady's - and we're hoping the repair guy can get it fixed today...
THANK YOU for blithely saying "I cook with soured milk..." and for resources on the internet that can help navigate new and interesting experiences!
I totally feel your pain. This happened to me at my mom's place in June. Argh.
More sour milk baking! The other milk didn't survive, so I now have yet more pancakes in the freezer, and two loaves of the most delicious buttermilk bread ever! On the bright side, I fixed the fridge myself (with a little online sleuthing!), and my landlady is taking the cost of the repair-dude off my rent!!! Whoo-hoo!!
Woohoo! You are rockin' the sour milk thing lately. 🙂
Just a sub sandwich this week, shooting for nothing next week!
I bought a bunch (like 5 lbs) of organic cherries today and am going to try my darndest not to lose any of them to rotting.
I have spent *no* time for blogging today - but at least I got my food waste pic in!!!
It's NOT your fault that there was a bad tomato in that package. Really. It's not!
I'm so sick of buying packaged produce and finding some of it already bad that I've started opening the packages and looking through the items to make sure none of them are bad (I'm not paying for rotten food). I don't care if people look at me funny when I do that. I've even told the produce guys "hey, there's some fuzzy grapes in this package".
I want to select each and every grape, berry, tomato, etc. that I buy. It's tough enough to live with food going bad because I didn't eat it/get it cooked/froze it.
Long live farmer's markets and farm stands!
It was the week for tomatoes....although ours was definitely a 'because of the kids'....
When you compost tomatoes like this, do you get rouge Tomato plants? I have over a dozen volunteer tomato plants in my compost pile (doing much better than the plants I bought this year) & the neighbor has a couple of potato plants that have popped up in hers!
I don't count random bad cherries/tomatoes/berries. Customer are no longer able to select these items one by one and so a rotten apple (so to speak) is inevitable. Since pretty much a store's only option, now, is to throw out an entire box of berries if someone complains about a single bad one, I don't complain about one or two. That would create *more* food waste. Counterproductive, that.
The three week old half-head of iceburg must have bad spots but other than that, nothing!
If you have food that you can juice before it waste, juice it. in the spirit of juicing. lol