Food Waste Friday | I wanted to skip this week.
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.
Bleah. I have some bad food waste this week, but no photo, because it happened early on in the week.
I bought a package of chicken, meaning to use it for dinner sometime last week. But for one reason or another, that didn't happen, and by the time I got around to freezing the chicken, it was a day or two past the sell-by date.
That doesn't bother me much usually (a sell-by date is different than a use-by date), but this package of chicken had a distinctively rotten odor emanating through the packaging, and that? That bothers me.
In fact, it bothers me enough to make me throw the package straight into the trash because when it comes to questionable meat, I always err on the side of caution.
Fortunately, this was a small package of chicken, not the family size. Still, I'm annoyed with myself. I think that's the largest meat waste I've had in who knows how long...probably since I started Food Waste Friday! And meat waste is a particularly awful kind of waste for a number of reasons, one of which is that it's not good for composting in the type of compost bin I own.
I also found a few moldy strawberries hiding behind a watermelon in my fridge. (Happily, those went into my compost bin, not into the trash.)
However! I did put forth some anti-waste effort this week. I froze some extra tomatoes, I made a triple batch of Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins (to use up the bananas that went straight from green to spotted), and I made zucchini bread and zucchini muffins to use up some zucchinis and summer squash that have been sitting in my fridge for a while. And of course, we faithfully ate leftovers.
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Today's 365 post: This used to be a pair of shorts.
Heh, I made a double batch of banana bread to use up some rapidly ripening bananas! I did end up[ having to throw away some brown lettuce and a few moldy strawberries. Strawberries get moldy in like 2 days!
When I have bananas that need to be used up, I freeze them. Yep, it's a great solution for me as I don't always have time for baking right at the time the bananas are ready. I freeze them in two different ways:
1) I put whole, peeled bananas in a ziplock bag -- these are fantastic for smoothies!
2) I mash the bananas and put them in a small plastic container in the freezer. I mark these containers with the date and the number of bananas, and I use them freely for baking muffins, banana bread, etc. I love being able to make banana muffins at a moment's notice even when I don't have fresh bananas in the house.
LOL! I don't even peel them. I just throw them in peel and all. The peel is a perfect wrapper. When I am ready to use them I put them into a bowl of warm water and soak a few minutes. then cut off the stem, squeeze and slip the skin off.
Partially frozen for smoothies, or completely thawed for baking, they taste great!
Meat waste is so frusterating! Don't beat yourself up too much about it though. It would have been far worse to have given your whole family food poisoning! Sounds like maybe that chicken wasn't very fresh to begin with, since it went bad so quickly. Nothing you can do!
I HAVE to share this with you and it is a bit lengthy but hopefully amusing...
My husband and I used to visit his mother every Saturday to take her grocery shopping and get her out of the house for the day. She was 80, living alone, and had emphysema and congestive heart disease... She was still spry enough to get into the garden and work with her flowers, but not good enough to get behind the wheel of the car.
Well, one Saturday we went to the back sliding door as we always did and knocked. We could see her through the glass laying on the couch and knocked again. No response. We banged! No response! Panicking now, Bob ran to the front door and used his key to let himself in. He ran to the slider and let me in and that's when the SMELL hit my nose...
It was rotten, horrible and we thought it was MOM! We stood there frozen for several seconds wondering what to do when Bob finally worked up the courage to to over and see if she was really gone...
Suddenly, Mom sat up and said "Oh Hi! I didn't hear you knocking!"
Shocked, we immediately asked her about the stench and she calmly explained that the Family package of chicken had gotten last Saturday had gone bad in the fridge because she had been sick with the flu. She had taken it out of the fridge intending to throw it into the trash, but it had been raining and she was afraid to walk in the rain with the rotten chicken and dragging her oxygen tank behind her... GACK!
We told her if she was that sick she should have called us!
To which she replied, "I didn't want to bother you."
Oh my goodness...sitting in the house with that smell would be enough to make a person sick! lol
@Lynda - my grandmother would have done the same thing!
The title of my post should be "It Could Have Been Worse." Just like last week's and for the same reason - a household striken with flu for a week. That was a couple weeks ago and I've now worked through the food backlog.
I wasted an entire share of CSA green beans, about a big double handful, the remains of homemade chocolate pudding, and the occasional berry. If there's a way to buy blackberries or raspberries without 1-2 being moldy I would like to hear about it.
On the plus side, I used all the okra! I replicated my friend's technique for fried okra (she was on the phone with me the whole time), then got fancy and tried battered fried okra as well - the stove was a mess already so why not? There was more batter than okra so I tried onion rings. Tasty! This means I didn't waste the batter - I waisted it instead.
The other dilemma was the eggplant. A friend fat-fingered a recipe for me; he remarked that just writing it down made him happy so I invited him over to share the dish with me tomorrow. The recipe will use up other things I have hanging around also.
Chicken for me, too! Family size wing package straight from the refrig to the garbage can on trash day! So frustrating!!!
It must be in the air! It's chicken-wasting week, apparently. =P
Half a bag of grapes...if I hadn't had two days of overtime back to back some could have been saved. But, by the time I had time, it was too late.
And a couple of spoonfuls of tuna salad, victim of being pushed to the back of the fridge.
I have a huge bunch of chard, another of kale from the Farmer's Market and gooseberries form a friend's garden right now--time for smoe work to get them processed and saved.
The pushed-to-the-back-of-the-fridge thing happens way too often here. Ugh.
Jenny, I ALWAYS have problems with grapes, even though I really do enjoy them. I've found that if I process them as soon as I get home and then put them in the freezer, I'm far less likely to waste them. And frozen grapes are yummy on a hot day.
Great idea! I like the sound of frozen grapes! And I could always throw them in a smoothie, too.
Bad chicken has THE nastiest smell ever! The bad thing is chicken goes bad pretty fast too! I have also found some forgotten chicken, but the smell reminded me pretty quick. I once worked in a restaurant that would just rinse the chicken off and use it. Needless to say that place is now out of business. Thank you Health Departmnent!
I thought we wouldn't have any waste this week since we just got back from camping, but a half bag of potatoes that we left behind sprouted and went mushy. Potatoes from our garden did just fine though so I've got to wonder how old those store-bought potatoes were.
We currently have more zucchini than we know what to do with, but I'm going to grate a bunch today, squeeze out as much liquid as possible and freeze to use later this winter.
We are soon to be overrun with tomatoes., but I view that as a happy problem. One of our vines fell over while we were gone and I have a ton of green tomatoes sitting on my sink, but will make a green tomato cake this weekend and use them up.
Laura, can you share your green tomato cake recipe, please?
That could have beenme. I told the kids to put the chicken in the fridge so I could do some batch broiling and then forgot about it. Fortunately the sell by date was a ways out, so I had a cushion. However, I seriously panicked when I saw uncooked chicken sitting on the bottom shelf.
You inspired me to go through my veggie drawer and make a monster batch of Gazpacho! I used up 4lbs of tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, 1 green pepper, and 1 onion! And I seem to accumulate tomatoes in the summer.
I nearly had a no waste week and then found a small amount of sour cream in a tupperware container hiding behind the jam (leftover from fajita night two and a bit weeks ago). And I finally bit the bullet and got rid of the homemade mincemeat that I experimented by making at the end of February but never actually got around to using. Since there actually was meat in it but I don't have a pressure canner and thus should have used it up within a few weeks, I have been feeling guilty about it for months and finally decided I needed those jars and the shelf space more than I needed the guilt. So out it went. Smelled surprisingly good though - I was expecting rotten meat smell but you couldn't smell meat at all, just the spicy mix and brandy. I will make it again but this time a few weeks before christmas and then I can make lots of mince pies to use it all up. I already have three pot-luck type celebrations in my diary for December so I know I will have the opportunity to use it up then.
No meat waste at our house - the cat's the only one who eats it, and she doesn't waste any. 🙂
Otherwise, I had to throw out some tomatoes that had gone bad (which made me very sad), some celery (very old, somehow forgotten about), and ... something else that was off. I'll be having a discussion with the hubby today about how we shouldn't buy so much food and how we really shouldn't use the drawers because I forget about them.
Sadly I had to waste some broccoli that decided to sprout fuzz. It wasn't even a week old. I won't be getting it from that vendor at the farmers market again. Otherwise no waste.
I think I'm gonna have to jump on the food waste friday bandwagon...somehow the food at the grocery store has much more of an allure than the food in my fridge, and more is purchased when I still have too much to use up. I'm impressed by how many weeks go by for you with no waste at all.