Food Waste Friday | Pizza Dough and a Mango
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.
First off, thanks to all of you that weighed in on the e-book topic question! I wouldn't say there was an overwhelming topic winner, although the grocery topic and Christmas topic were probably mentioned the most, so I'll likely make those two a priority.
On to food waste!
This week, I let a portion of pizza dough go to waste. I'd made enough dough for 4 pizzas, ended up needed to make only 3 and then I put the dough in the fridge with grand intentions of baking up another fresh pizza for lunch the next day.
But that didn't happen and didn't happen and ultimately a whole week went by. At that point, the yeast was sort of exhausted, and if I'd made pizza with the dough, it wouldn't have risen right or tasted right, and then I'd probably have wasted tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings along with the pizza.
I also wasted a mango. I thought it was ripe, but it was way past ripe...it was brown and icky inside. I don't buy mangoes all that often, so I'm not super skilled at figuring out when they're ready to eat.
Unfortunately, I have no photos to share of these two items because I threw them out in a hurry earlier in the week. My apologies!
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Today's 365 post: My goodness, I love fall!
This was not such a good week for us, but it wasn't just terrible. It's hard to find creative ways to use food that didn't turn out so well and "re-make" it into something better. I wound up putting some squash puree soup that was rather bland into a pot of chili I made. It used up some of the food that wasn't so good while adding a lot of nutrition to the chili from all the veggies it added.
I had an extra pizza dough and I froze it. I should probably use that up sometime in the next few weeks.
This was not such a good week for us, but it wasn't just terrible. It's hard to find creative ways to use food that didn't turn out so well and "re-make" it into something better. I wound up putting some squash puree soup that was rather bland into a pot of chili I made. It used up some of the food that wasn't so good while adding a lot of nutrition to the chili from all the veggies it added.
I had an extra pizza dough and I froze it. I should probably use that up sometime in the next few weeks.
I decided to start linking up on a particularly woeful week. I wasted half a piece of chicken schnitzel (in kosher-meat land, when chicken cutlets are $5.99/lb, that is *painful*)
Thanks for your inspiration. You are awesome!
Hmm, mangos and pizza dough...there is an awesome recipe in there somewhere!
I often make double or triple batches of pizza dough, and while our dinner is cooking, I roll out the other pizzas on some parchment paper to the right size for our stone, then roll the crust up and freeze them in the freezer for later meals. Then when I am in a rush, I pop one out, and it defrosts in minutes on the counter, add cheese and sauce and bake. If you like extra crispy crust, you can pre bake the crust a bit after defrosting, before adding sauce.
I had to throw out half of a loaf of bread this week because of mold, yet the other loaf sitting next to it, bought at the same time, is just fine. ???? It was maddening, to say the least (and I think everyone had to comment, "Did you know there's a loaf of bread in the trash?"). I know I could have put it in the compost, but the bucket outside the back door is full, and it's been raining all week and I didn't feel like hiking all the way out to the composter. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!
We have ups and downs with mangoes as well, but usually a good mango gives a little under a light touch, sort of like an avocado. What can make things difficult though is that a good mango can still be green!
This was just a weird week all around for us, food wise. I must be cooking smaller portions without realizing (I know no one is eating more!) because we keep ending up with very few leftovers. We actually had to have takeout on Wednesday (oh darn 🙂 ) because there wasn't enough leftovers to make an entire meal from.
I did have to choke down an overripe banana to save it from the trash. I knew if I froze it to make banana bread in the future, it would get lost in the black cave of our freezer. Better to eat it now then lose it later!
Fantastic effort once again! I have followed your endeavours for some time and I am amazed at what little you throw away. As an advocate of baking much from scratch myself I waste hardly anything and put that down to meal and grocery shopping planning in advance and ensuring that ingredients for the week can be used in a multitude of ways. For me slow-cooking was an amazing discovery, and nobody let me into the secret until I was in my mid-thirties. Nutritious and frugal home cooked meals for busy life styles - and as the week draws to an end should I have any leftovers - then mixed with a few store cupboard ingredients I can always conjure something up! There's very little that lentils or bread can't accompany! I feel so passionate about it that I have started blogging my recipes as a means of collating them in one place and hopefully helping other busy families...
Great idea! I have been on a very tight budget for over a year now and I am getting pretty good at not wasting food. Planning and managing my resources have become a full time job! lol Also, just letting food get old before you eat it, is depleting it from nutrients, kind of a "side waste" as you are eating something that has lost it energy...
Before a food would go bad I quickly prepare it into a mouse or sauce and freeze it to prevent wasting. I picked up 2 pounds of tomatoes for $1.30 yesterday in the section of the grocery where they put the produce that is too ripe...prevented them from wasting it and I have an awesome tomato sauce!
Nothing got tossed here this week 🙂 BUT -- our refrigerator is stuffed to the gills with lefrovers, so we have some work to do!
A pound of frozen shrimp and the last tortilla in the bag. The shrimp tasted fishy when I first bought it--and it was expensive wild-caught stuff. Should have taken it back to the store but I didn't, so it sat in the freezer for a while and finally hit the trash. Decided not to try using it and have to throw out a whole pot of gumbo that tasted fishy.
Due to two dinners out this week and the gift of some fresh crab from a friend our fridge it still stuffed. I'm going to put off grocery shopping for a few days and see if we can conquer some of the backlog--otherwise next week will be an ugly waste week.
You should have made garlic knots with the pizza dough! I recently made the recipe you posted and my husband and I loooooved them! =)
Your website really lit the fire in me to finally start my blog. I of course had to do a Food Waste Friday too (with props and links to you). Thank you so much for your blog. I love reading it and have many projects planned based off of your posts.
This is not really about wasted food, but rather about brilliant results. Earlier this week, I tried out a new soup recipe that turned out not-so-great. Well... we had leftovers and I ate some for lunch one day. My dear husband decided to make himself spaghetti for lunch, so we still had PLENTY of leftover soup. I didn't really want to eat it again, so today.... we decided to throw it in the blender, re-heat it on the stove, and throw in a few extra ingredients. The results were quite delicious and our NEW leftovers will be eaten with no problem! Woohoo for avoiding foodwaste!
Read in one of Julia Child's cookbooks that if the dough fails to rise, add fresh yeast. If memory serves, she adds yeast that's been proofed in a little warm water. With a too-long refrigerated dough, I believe I'd have given it a try (once the dough was room temp.).
I have done that exact same thing and it worked! I was making bread and for whatever silly reason it just didn't rise (yes I added yeast the first time around, lol). So rather than throw it away, I thought,what the heck, and decided to experiment. I mixed yeast in with warm water and a dash of sugar and let it rest a bit to activate and then I mixed it into the dough. My bread rose and all was well.
Not so good a week... Our roommate has a new girlfriend that he met on tuesday, and so far the only night she didn't eat dinner with us was thursday. Really annoying that I made some spagehtti that she decided to leave a ton on her plate, and over half a burger tonight.
There is one plate of spaghetti the roommate says he will eat tomorrow, I hope so.
I had to throw out a few dinner rolls that were hard from last week, and a bit of leftover stuffing and turkey gravy.
But I am happy to say that I used the loaves of wheat bread I messed up (didn't rise right? Or maybe too much wheat flour. Eitherway way way too dense) to make breadcrumbs for my burgers.
I wasted spaghetti and meatballs and pasta salad this week.They were left overs from late last week and I was on staycation this week and ate out more than home
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One more lesson from the book of 'saving it for a treat' this week - try saving the apple tart for too long and it'll go mouldy and that last piece you were sooooo looking forward to won't be quite as edible as you'd wish!