Food Waste Friday | I cleaned my fridge. Oh yes.
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!
No raw sushi this week 🙁
Your fridge looks great! I clean mine every Friday as part of my routine, but this week took two rather than one photo of it for my post as it's my first week using my new camera! yay! Not so yay! in that I've taken a photo of a pot of cream that has gone to waste 🙁 Shocking... in my defense (if there can be any defense?) I didn't buy it - as part of our open house New Years Eve I encouraged friends to bring along their potential waste and leftovers... gutted I missed it!
Glad that Food Waste Friday is back.
My fridge is now scrubbed too. I took the whole thing apart yesterday. Ick!
Very clean, love the fresh veggies. Our Aldi's did not have very many fresh veggies this week. No lettuce,cucs,green peppers or tomatoes. I did go later than usual, maybe they had just sold out and not re-stocked.
No waste!
One heroic save: spinach timable that I choked down - twice - with the aid of ketchup. Either frozen spinach just isn't as good, or a whole frozen package was too much. But it was in good condition and healthy food so I managed it.
Items to use soon:
* daikon radish (bought on a whim, still don't know what to do with it)
* 3 wrinkly beets (to be roasted)
* 4 yellow peppers bought from the "old veg" rack (dip? plain?)
* Xmas mashed taters (just eat)
* sad-looking swiss chard (to be ham-swiss chard-barley risotto)
I have so much waste this week, it hurts!
I'm pretty sure there isn't any rotting food still left in the fridge, but it desperately needs a clean out. Too many containers with leftovers = inevitable science experiements.
What a great idea! I just found your blog so haven't done a post on food waste from my fridge to share, but I'll be back next week with one! I did write a post a few days ago on the horrors of baking a "tasty" treat only to have it turn out nasty. I hate wasting food. I was so bummed to have to toss a loaf of bread that had such great potential!
Your fridge looks great. Just a note - here in Florida we leave our citrus out on the counter and it stays fine. Of course, we don't have on the heat and the fruit is fresh off the tree so that probably make a big difference. Being out on the counter does remind us to eat it and not let it sit.
I do that in my neck of the woods also, which is chillier and the fruit isn't fresh. Citrus, apples, bananas, whole melons, pretty much anything that isn't berries or cut up. Same reasons as yours, plus I prefer the taste of room temp fruit to cold fruit; cold doesn't have as much flavor.
I do sometimes leave my citrus out on the counter if it's the week I bought it...but if we have some left after that point, I put it in my fridge because it starts to go bad on me.
I leave citrus out..but I'm in the UK and wearing thermals...
I found a slimy onion in the back of my produce drawer this week. I was able to save some of it which is now chopped onion in my freezer.
Half a container of cantaloupe got thrown away, but I saved some leftover cornbread. I have some buttermilk, grapes, grapefruit and oranges to use up.
I see a couple of my favorite Aldi products in your fridge- creamer, salsa, and the awesome salad pack they've recently started selling. 🙂 I went to my local Shoprite the other night and was shocked to see how expensive "gourmet" lettuce costs outside of Aldi's!
your fridge looks great! i think i may go clean my own now! 🙂
I find it's sometimes hard to decide whether or not something is salvageable. There's a point where things are pretty much unusable, but an interesting spectrum between fresh and completely spoiled.
Confession time.... for me this was the worst ever I think time for food waste. As we went elsewhere for Thanksgiving, we did not have a turkey, but I had bought one as it was on a good sale, of course. We cooked it up about two weeks before Christmas. But when Christmas came around, everyone had abandoned the turkey leftovers and well, stupid me didn't think to freeze it. So after New year's I had to throw out the turkey left overs. We are down to about 3 ounces of ham left, so that won't go to waste. Also someone gets a random produce box and then sometimes he gives me stuff he won't eat. Stuff I have never cooked with before. He gave me some zuchinni (I can't even spell it!), and I made some bread with it, but wound up putting in either too much, or we didn't like the recipe. My son and I hated it. My hubby thought it was okay and slowly ate it, but in the end some of it was thrown out too. He also gave me some acorn squash that was a bit bad already. I did use two of the three in a baked stuffed squash dish, that taste almost like dessert, which means it may or may not get eaten completely as left overs. Some of my sliced cheese even developed some green mold, which my husband cut off and threw out. So this was a bad month for food waste. I need to clean out the fridge of left overs, so we know what it is even in there. Then maybe we can do better.
Yes! Cleaning it out is such a lovely way to start fresh.
Just some dip from New Year's that got left out overnight hit the trash here. My fridge it looking fairly empty but my pantry is stuffed. Luckily, that food is not as perishable. I'm about to embark on a new way of eating as a result of some health problems so I am glad to have developed the FWF habit, and hope I can keep it up while trying a new food plan.
I have a confession: I SHOULD have cleaned my fridge today before I put all of our new groceries in it; but I didn't. So now the old bits of onion skins can mingle with the new ones. 😉
It wasn't too horrible, I cleaned it a few weeks ago so I figured I could wait a bit longer.
Wow your fridge looks so clean and organized. Reminds me I have to clean mine.
I really enjoy your blog. I come here every day!
I'm so glad! I'm always honored when people make my blog a daily stop. 🙂
I'm scared to clean out my fridge, after seeing what was in my potato container.
Thank you -- you've inspired our family to add a food waste post to our new blog. It was a great first week (after a major pantry and refrigerator clean-out last week to get a fresh start.) **We chose 'Food Waste Monday' because the garbage gets picked up on Tuesday mornings, and we find more time to make meals with the items approaching expiration over the weekend.**