Food Waste Friday | Oh, lonely chicken.
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.
Today's waste really should have gone out last week, because it probably was bad even then. I had hopes of salvaging it, though, so I left it alone.
It's a bit of leftover roasted chicken. I know there are 60,001 things you can do with leftover chicken, but I did none of them.
Definitely a leftover chicken fail on my part.
But, I have no other waste to report, and I don't think there's even anything in my fridge that's on the food waste precipice. Yay!
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Today's 365 post: Potato Head (in which I say very little)
The only thing I wasted was some food I gave my brother which he then left out overnight and then pitched.
>.< Grr.
Other than that I didn't waste anything, hurray!
If any leftover chicken gets to 3 days, I throw it in a freezer bag and freeze it. Our favorite pot pie recipie needs 5 cups and sometimes it's hard to get that much without cooking chicken just for the 'leftover' meal.
That is a really good idea.
Ever had one the those weeks? Not the food waste just everything else! I am very pleased with my result of having to dispose of half a bag of spaghetti and 2 slices of ham considering (I know this doesn't sound great but it's better than expected) ... All the other items bode well as a hearty chicken stew which I am just off to prep and pop in 'Lil' Bill' the slow cooker. Have a lovely weekend y'all
Something that certainly hasn't gone to waste and actually has been eaten prematurely is some chocolate I was saving for Christmas - desperate times call for desperate measures
Too funny--I sympathize about the chocolate!
The 1 litre bottle of Baileys coffee cream liqueur has gone also - note to self - do not make pre-Christmas food purchases (or any other holiday for that matter!)
After three dismal weeks where the food waste was out of our control, a no waste week! Yeah!
We had a bit of roast chicken leftover too, but I used small pieces of it to tuck medication into for two of our dogs! It worked better than any of the commercial products for hiding pet pills.
You did good this week!
The big dig this week! This would have been a zero waste week (my first one) but I found the motivation to clean out the condiments and stuff lurking at the edges of the fridge. Haven't done that since I started doing FWF.
The big dig unearthed: 2 half full jars of green olives, a half full jar of pepperoncini, and a msotly full jar of ploughman's pickle. All sporting slight bits of mold or looking very old and dried out. Also (and this kills me) most of a bag of sun-dried tomato strips. These were the soft kind, not the ones in oil, and when I opened them I thought they were shelf stable so they went back in the pantry. The next time that got cleaned out I read the bag, which says "for best quality, refrigerate after opening." They weren't spoiled, but were musty tasting. Used them a couple of times for pasta dishes but they don't taste great anymore. Now at least they're gone and I won't feel guilty every time I see them in the back corner. And my fridge is less crowded, always a joy when opening the door. Ready for all that extra food next week!
A lot of times I have so many great ideas about what I'm going to do with the leftover bits of chicken, or cheese, or pasta, or whatever that it feels as though I've actually done something with them, then the end of the week rolls around and the darn food is still in there. *sigh* Can't be too careful with chicken though. Have a great weekend!
Kristen, I really like your effort to not waste food. I'm trying to do my part. Sometimes, I don't do so well. Sometimes, I do pretty good.
Right now, in my fridge I think there's some leftover (wasted) pizza, chicken & corn chowder, and some fried rice (I think that's what it is).
I donate to various food agencies, and I got some information in the mail that stated approx. 96 BILLION TONS of food is wasted every year! That really bothers me.
We wasted leftover spaghetti and something called beans,potatoes and ham.We simply made too much and neither freezes well.
Absolutely disasterous week. Ate out more than expected, lower appetite in the house than usual, topped off with 2-3 days of my gut going on strike during which I didn't eat and barely drank.
- 2 c. leftover yummy chix stir fry which I forgot was in my briefcase and so left out all day.
- 2 c. roasted potatoes that weren't all that good so (how can roast taters with oil and salt be not so good? I don't know but I managed. So much for my vaunted cooking skills.)
- about 2 c. total of Salvadorian restaurant leftovers: chix strips, beef strips, dried-out pupusa, french fry-like fried potatoes, sauteed onions.
- a cut up apple.
- 1.5 c. leftover restaurant rice.
- toasted bagel that I forgot about, left overnight in the toaster = very stale.
Sigh.
I had a bad beet week but otherwise did well.
This week I didn't have anything to throw away. I almost had two tomatoes and a cucumber but I cut them up and threw some dressing on them to have with Grilled Cheese and Chicken Noodle soup tonight. However next week I think we are going to have cilantro to toss..I have no idea what I am going to do with it.
I'm not a big expert on cilantro/coriander (still trying to acquire the taste so at the moment just buy it a couple of times a year to make salsa with) but it seems to me like the kind of herb that would be fine with that old standby trick of freezing in ice-cubes. Just put a few leaves in each section of an ice-cube tray, fill up with water and freeze. Once frozen, you can tip the ice-cubes into a ziploc bag or freezer container to use as and when you need. Herbs frozen like this tend to not be great for using as fresh but as great for using in cooking.
(All of the above obviously assumes you have a freezer and an ice-cube tray.)