Food Waste Friday | Plus Kitchen Canny
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.
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First, zee food waste:
This avocado was one of those that looked lovely on the outside but was fairly disgusting inside. Boo.
And inside that container is a bit of leftover chicken. I started to eat it, but it had a bit of an odd taste to it, and I didn't want to risk eating any more of it.
Second, Kitchen Canny:
Kitchen Canny is a UK organization dedicated to helping people reduce their food waste.
The UK is doing such a great job of addressing this issue in a very public way with their Love Food, Hate Waste campaign, so I'm not at all surprised that Kitchen Canny is in the UK.
(note to America: Let's get with the program here!)
Kitchen Canny's goal is help educate people about how to reduce food waste in their homes, and to that end, they sell kits with information and tools to fight food waste.
The kit contains a booklet with a step-by-step weekly program to help you identify causes of waste and prevent them in the future.
If you've been faithfully reading my blog for years, some of it will sound familiar to you!
Also included are several bags for measuring your food waste during the first few weeks of the program.
And there's a magnetized list you can stick on your fridge, which can help you keep track of what's in your fridge and what you need to buy (a proper shopping list helps you buy only what you need.)
That's probably my favorite feature of the kit, actually! And as you can see, my children have been having some fun with it...they've written all sorts of odd things on there like dinosaur teeth, engine oil, and the like. 😉
Now, since this kit consists mostly of information, there's not a lot in it that you couldn't get for free on the internet. But if you live in the UK (they do ship to other countries but it's a bit more expensive) and are having trouble tackling the food waste problems in your house, this kit might be helpful to you.
And if it helps you trim your food waste, it could pay for itself in pretty short order, considering that the average person throws away their weight in food each year.
That's a lot of money that's hitting the trash can (or the bin, as the Kitchen Canny kit would say!) The kit costs £10, which is probably a lot less than you're spending on trashed food each year.
Note: Kitchen Canny sent me a kit but did not otherwise compensate me. I'm blogging about them because I'm delighted to support a company with an anti-food waste mission!
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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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That's a really awesome idea! I'm really impressed with what the UK is trying to do about food waste (and of course I'm a die-hard fan of Jamie Oliver). I'm hoping that for me, my "Eat Me" bin in the fridge will be sufficient. So far, so good - but unfortunately it can't fix a cooking fail...
I can't believe I've never come across Kitchen Canny being the 'no waste gal' I am - and being from the UK! It ain't a big place over here! 😉
No waste for me - I've pulled it back. That may be due to my decision to eat meat once more, I'm not sure just yet. Won't get all pleased with myself until I've managed a few more weeks back on track. My photographed Friday fridge however is rather packed - but it's all accounted for and there's a No Waste Taste Great plan as always. I've some Aldi puff pastry to be used up after my ingenious (so modest aren't I? haha!) idea of making Salmon Starfish to try and increase the Kids oily fish consumption. That'll make a pastry pizza quite nicely later.
PS - @Jessie - I'm very proud Jamie's from our shores. The 'geezer' has grown on me over the years, and there's one thing for sure - his heart is in the right place!
That is just too, too neat. I can think of about half a dozen families that would live one.
The info in the kit may be available in other, free ways but having it assembled for you in one place is valuable. So too is paying for it: extensive research and experience shows that people value what they pay for more than what they get for free.
This week I wasted up to 4 citrus.
Two clementines for sure.
I can't tell if I'm responsible for the blood oranges - they were given to me so I don't know if they were bad when bought or if they went bad after I got them.
The info in the kit may be available in other, free ways but having it assembled for you in one place is valuable. So too is paying for it: extensive research and experience shows that people value what they pay for more than what they get for free.
This week I wasted up to 4 citrus.
Two clementines for sure.
I can't tell if I'm responsible for the blood oranges - they were given to me so I don't know if they were bad when bought or if they went bad after I got them.
My fridge was full of good intentions this week. But being so busy in March made it really difficult to keep up with it. I feel like I might just be at a point where I need to clear it all out and start from scratch. And keep my culinary experiments to a minimum for a while.
Sounds like a great service - sure would be nice to have it here in the States.
My food waste is almost non-existent this week though it may still happen because of the 10 day old egg yolks sitting in the fridge. I've been dealing with sick kids and now a sick dh so not much cooking going on.
I would love one of those kits - I'll have to check them out. There might be ways of getting all the info online, but honestly, sitting in front of the computer trying to read through and assemble it all into a single handy piece of info doesn't sound like much fun. Although I haven't been doing fabulously lately, knowing I'm going to post about it on Friday does help me at least attempt to stay on top of it each week.
Lovely to see you plugging something British. Thanks, Kristin! ;0)
J x
Lovely to see you plugging something British. Thanks, Kristen! ;0)
J x
I think my father and I are getting better at this, but you know what, i'm still not taking photos of food waste, and I should!! I've been documenting what I spend on food each week.
That Kitchen Canny site sounds really interesting. Thanks for telling us about that!! Love and hugs from the ocean shores of California, Heather 🙂 🙂
A much better week then last week. Last week was bad. This week was parts of a red pepper. Our grocery store had $.99 a pound red pepper a few weeks ago and I did use some last night, but had to cut away some parts of it. I have two more of these peppers left and can use some to make jambalaya a day or two after easter, as I don't think my son will be comfortable eating them overly raw, but will see Sunday when we make salads too. But suspect that some will be tossed. Can't come up with anything else I tossed this week. Did use an old orange for juice. That is what I tend to do with older oranges. I had a recipe that needed 2 tablespoons of juice and one orange seemed to do almost 2 tablespoons of juice, so managed to use that and I love using the peel to run down the garbage disposal on occasion. Yes, I know, probably should compost that, but really haven't gotten into that one.
Can't think of anything in the endanger of being tossed catagory, but we are a bit heavy on left overs at the moment. We usually do fend for self on Saturday evening, so we shall see what disappears today for lunch and tomorrow evening. May have to have another planned lazy day to use those up. I do have some cranberries that I need to use up too. I had made a cranberry bread that people did like, but wanted to chop the cranberry a bit smaller and never got to it. IF I don't do so soon, they will probably be wasted.
I tossed a bag of rice cake snacks, but I had a very good reason - there was a mouse in my pantry a few days ago, and it chewed open a corner of the bag. Apparently, it didn't like Ranch flavor rice cakes, because there was only one piece chewed, and left. I tossed the whole bag, though. It makes me really glad that most of my other food is in Tupperware and Rubbermaid.
This was not a very good week for me. I threw out four shriveled mushrooms, about a tablespoon of really old cream cheese that was hiding in the back of the fridge, and an entire package of 5 pitas. The pitas were only a couple of days old and were covered in mold, which surprised and disapointed me.
I had quite a bit of waste this week, in all honesty. And I blogged about the Kitchen Canny last week! They sent me one too. I love the heavy duty bags! 🙂
Thanks for hosting and have a lovely Easter.
Today was a first day in a long, long time that I actually had food waste. Bummer. It was because I let my organization skills slack.
No more!
Cleaned out and up both my fridge and freezer and am back on track.
Kristen,
I pasted the wrong link on #20 and had to do it again, #21. Sorry. I posted a link back to you by mistake instead of my own blog. Ugh. Can you correct it?
This post really hit home for me today! Every Friday (payday) I do my grocery shopping for the week. I thought I was doing super well on my budget and not wasting and such but when I got home to put the new food away I found that I had to throw soooo much out that went bad or was taking up too much room in the fridge. Shame, shame shame.
It was a pretty good week for me. my only wast was when I cut into a potatoe and found unusable parts in the center. I often see this with home grown potatoes but this is a first for store bought. I cut away the unusable part and put the rest in my pot roast.
I'd rather toss something out that one of us get sick so I don't blame you for tossing the chicken. I'm glad I'm not the only one wasting avocados, there for a few weeks it seemed like I always had one go bad. This week I didn't want to chance it so I bought store bought avocado. None went bad but it was not as tasty.
I had three containers of waste but I have a whole fridge full of leftovers. I need to put some of them in the freezer so they don't appear on my blog next week.
This was not a good waste week. I lost several oranges and tangerines and all my shake n bake mixes. The mixes were tossed due to wanting to cut back on the amount at which we use them and with the 90's weather approaching we don't want to use the oven as much
We did a really good job this week, we had no wasted food! Next week might be a different situation though...we have a lot of leftovers that aren't bad yet, so its going to take a concentrated effort this week! Happy Easter everyone!
I love this feature! How am I just now coming across it? I am a huge proponent of using up food rather than wasting it, and I HATE throwing away food. I too have noticed that the UK is leading the way on the food waste front. Good for them! I also discovered a neat blog recently http://www.wastedfood.com. I will have to remember this feature and join up on Fridays!
Great post Kristen, thank you for the coverage of our kits! Sounds like you have a lot of followers interested in food waste and it is good to hear that those in the U.S. are just as concerned with the issue as we are.
Hi I found a sure way to eliminate waste and prosper from my method. I have 5 chickens that eat all vegetables and fruits that may be a little wilted. They give me fresh eggs that I either sell or eat and the keep me from wasting produce.
That's a great idea Mayra...we also love to make soup out of nearly gone veggies, like this yummy Carrot, Coriander and Honey Soup that we posted about on our blog: http://kitchencanny.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/carrot-coriander-and-honey-soup-serves-2-16-2/
It's so nice to hear people getting more frugal about their waste! 🙂