Food Waste Friday | I've been trying hard!
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 do have some waste, though.
These ends of a loaf of bread went moldy mostly because we had more fun and interesting breads around. Who wants to eat whole wheat bread when you can have a squash roll topped with cinnamon and sugar??
I did put some good food waste effort forth yesterday, though.
I used up some sour milk by making two loaves of oatmeal bread.
And I used up the rest of that milk in some chocolate pudding, which I put out to cool on the snowy deck (it cools faster there than at room temperature, and putting hot pudding into the fridge makes the fridge work too hard).
Also, I froze some leftover marinara sauce.
And I scrapped last night's dinner plan and served a smorgasbord of food from the fridge and freezer. Mr. FG had a beef and mushroom panini (using up the beef and the mushrooms), Lisey and Sonia had pepperoni pizza from the freezer, Joshua had a bratwurst from the freezer (also Mr. FG is having those in his lunch today...I had 3 in the freezer for some reason so I just grilled them up last night), and Zoe and I ate leftover meatballs and sauce from when I made meatball subs (I just boiled some spaghetti to make that happen).
So, my fridge and freezer are looking emptier, and that makes me very happy. Plus, I can bump last night's planned meal (Shrimp with Dirty Rice) to my next menu plan, and that's one less meal I have to come up with next time.
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Today's 365 post: You might think this is just a blanket.
No waste for me this week yay! Had the foresight to batch cook a veggie casserole with all my potentially left over veggies. I have frozen it to be dipped into over the holidays, but adding chilli and kidney beans, or curry paste, or sausages, or pasta depending on how the mood takes us on the day - there are at least 3 meals ready to go! Hurrah for Big Ben my extra large slow cooker.
No waste here this week!!
We've had a couple meals of leftovers this week too. I get to move a couple of meals to next week. It does help a LOT!
We were invaded by ants this past week, but all they got into was a bag of sugar, which I thought I had wrapped ell enough to be ant proof, but apparently not. It pained me greatly to have to throw it away.
I like to use sour milk as well for baking projects, including cottage cheese. It's great for pancakes (and boosts the protein way up) and I've also made bread with it (Dilly Casserole Bread).
Can somenone explain the sour milk thing? I have always just tossed it. doesn't it make food taste bad? My family doesn't like sour dough bread so I am not sure if we would like naything else with sour milk. Ideas? Advice? Receipes? Please help.
I wondered the same thing .I did an internet search "using sour milkin baking" it seams to be quite a contraversial subject. I know my mother used up milk that was sour in baked goods, and I'm alive to tell about it.
It depends HOW sour it is and what you use it in. If it's just a little bit off, it usually works fine in breads or in chocolate pudding.
Now, if it's curdly and separated and you can't even stand to open the lid of the milk container, you probably should just throw it out.
Sour milk is not normally a food safety issue, but rather a taste issue. And even if it was a safety issue, I think it gets hot enough in bread and in pudding to make any icky bacteria die.
I have never, ever had a health problem from using slightly sour milk...only a taste problem!
Sour cream, yogurt, and cheese are all the results of milk that has been "soured" intentionally. So sour milk is unlikely to do much to your baked goods. If you like things like buttermilk pancakes or buttermilk biscuits, I definitely wouldn't worry about using milk that's a little "off" in your baked goods. At worst, the taste will come out a bit tangy like buttermilk baked goods.
I totally agree about rotten milk, though - that milk that's curdy and smells so bad you want to throw up when you open the top. Just throw that out or feed it to your pigs (if you happen to have pigs). 😉
Sour dough bread is much different than sour milk. For one, there's no milk in it - the "sour" comes from a starter made from yeast, flour, and water, so the yeast and bacteria will be (and taste) different than lactose-consuming bacteria that show up in milk
No waste here this week, but it might be more due to lack of time to clean out the fridge than anything else!
It was no waste for us until I read your blog and realized I have mushrooms we need to use ASAP! I'm embarrassed to say they are from Thanksgiving! I looked at them and they look fine and have no smell (always a plus for mushrooms). I'm cooking a chicken this weekend and am thinking throwing them in with it. Do y'all think I can still use them or are they compost?
I think if they are not slimey they should be ok. Really the only reason I throw out mushrooms is because they're too slimey to use or have those black spots dotted throughout the entire mushroom.
But I wouldn't want to tell you to use them and then have you become sick, it's just been my experience that age doesn't automatically mean they are bad.
I agree. As long as they don't smell (that "fishy" odor makes them prime candidates for the compost), look fine, and are going to be cooked, I'd go ahead and use them.
I'm impressed you have mushrooms from Thanksgiving that are still ok!
I saved some bread awhile back by processing it into crumbs, but I'm at a loss for what to do with them. Ate too much dressing at Thanksgiving to want to go that route. Would hate to have "saved" the bread only to lose it to freezer burn.
I keep bread crumbs in the freezer for a long time, and they seem fine. I use mine as a coating for chicken (with spices like my own shake and bake), in meatloaf, in meatballs, etc. They also work as a nice topping for casseroles when mixed with butter and/or cheese. This works great for keeping a pasta casserole from getting dried out on top. I have a friend whose family would toast bread crumbs and then use them in place of graham cracker crumbs for crusts in things like layered pudding desserts. I've always meant to try this myself, but I don't make these types of desserts often.
Oatmeal bread recipe? Would love to add that to my recipe box... 🙂
Yeah, I second that! Oatmeal bread recipe, please!
I'd love to see that recipe, too! What I usually do is just make white bread, then add up to 1/2 c. dry oatmeal to the wet ingredients before adding flour.
Not too bad. I did not waste a single thing.
I think I made up for all you non-wasters this week 🙁 I told hubby (who was off today) to please, please, please clean out the fridge for me .... we had way too many leftovers from last Saturday's party and there was NO ROOM for anything. So he did clean it out, tossed, pulled EVERYTHING out and then cleaned all the shelves, drawers and doors! Yes, today he's on my good side (I'm just bummed that we had so much stuff leftover still, Hubby was sick all week as was Sonny Boy so my big eaters ate soup, soup and more soup) ...
I had some waste this week. One clementine fell to the bottom of the fruit basket and petrified. I also threw out a cup of leftover macaroni and cheese (from the blue box). I couldn't bring myself to eat it. It's just is nasty warmed up! I did mix all the odds and ends of veggies into some leftover gravy and made pot pie for dinner tonight.
Squash rolls? I'd love to hear more about those!
Kudos on the sour milk usage, and thanks for clearing up that topic.
My weekly wastea admission: black beans, half a cucumber. Being out of town wreaks havoc on the habits...
Unfortunately, I had a lot of waste this week. I had bought some cabbage two weeks ago to have with pierogi, but me and my pregnant self couldn't face cooking said cabbage. Then we had an unexpetedly large number of visitors last weekend, complete with lots of unexpected leftovers - 1 serving gnocchi with a cream sauce, 1 chicken thigh in a mushroom sauce, about 2 T sausage (which I forgot about and should have added to spaghetti sauce earlier this week), and some diced onions that had gotten lost in the back of the fridge.
We ate a lot of leftovers this week, but just couldn't quite get through the last ends. It really bummed me out to toss all that cabbage, but I'm the primary cook, and I'm not going to argue with a queasy stomach!