Food Waste Friday | The new plan!
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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We'll get to the new thing in a minute, but first, I wanted to tell you that Lisey and I made some crazy-easy, very delicious, gluten-free, four-ingredient cookies. You should make a batch!
In less delightful news, here's my food waste.
The avocado was a sad, forgotten one, too wrinkled and squishy to be saved. The egg white was lefover from....something. I don't remember what. And the sad thing is, I made some French bread recently, and I totally could have used the egg white as a glaze. Oops.
And then there are a few pieces of leftover grilled chicken. Drat.
Ok! The new thing:
Since I'm paring down my blogging a bit, I'd like to do Food Waste Fridays every other week (I'll still post on Fridays...just not about food waste.)
But some of you really want to be able to confess your food waste every week. So, I asked Jo of Simply Being Mum (a faithful FWF participant if there ever was one!) if she would host Food Waste Friday every other week. And she graciously said yes.
She will host FWF on alternating weeks, and there will be a link and a FWF graphic code and all the usual stuff up over at her blog. And I'll put up a little link to her blog next week so that you're reminded about where to go for all things food waste.
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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.
Those of you who participate in Food Waste Friday can now grab a fancy-schmancy button to perk up your posts. If you copy and paste the following code into your Food Waste Friday post, this little graphic will appear.
If you blog on WordPress, just make sure you're in html mode when you copy and paste the code, or it won't work properly.
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Joshua's 365 post: York
I hate it when I find something that has gone bad that I could have used. That happened to me last week with some milk. This week, I found molded cranberry sauce. It turns out that no one likes it that well, so they weren't eating it. Luckily, I only bought a small can.
I'm so glad we will still be able to report our food waste every week 🙂
In other news, I wasted salad greens this week 🙁 I have a lot of other veggies in the fridge to use up this week, so will have to stay on top of that.
Firstly, Kristen, thank you once again for thinking of me with regard hosting FWF. It's an honour and will motivate me further to reduce potential food waste.
Secondly I cracked a bad egg this week. My first ever and taught me a vital lesson. Shortcuts rarely pay off in the end. Over-confidence in the kitchen catches up with me every time. Halfway through a celebration cake I was baking, I was cracking eggs merrily straight into my mixture. Third egg released a pungent black goo. I did photograph it, but not close up. I'd had enough of a whiff first time round not to go back for seconds. Apart from that salad and cuke got me again. Will I ever learn?
Humidity is driving me nuts...and it's wasteful, darn mold! Also, does anyone know how to store meringue so it won't just go bad?
I'm pretty sure meringue freezes well, as you can buy pablova as a frozen desert - it thaws nicely and stays intact... in my experience anyway!
I was wondering if you'd still be doing Food Waste Friday every week. Good to hear that we'll still be able to report it 🙂
I found an iffy peach on my counter top this morning. Besides that, I was waste free!
Kristen,
Did I see correctly? Did you take a day off from blogging this week, after all? Good for you! I hope you did something that you enjoyed and helped to refuel yourself. Women don't take nearly enough time to themselves.
On other fronts, threw out some bones that had been chewed on? Does that count as waste? Don't seem to have much food waste around here. Maybe we're eating foodss way past their prime, I don't know. No one complains of stomach aches.
I totally did take a day off! And it was very helpful. 🙂
Thanks, Kristen. I like FWF but with you posting less, I appreciate it being only a couple of times a month. Great that Jo will host other weeks. Have a great weekend!
I wasted some frozen corn from Aldi. Their frozen sweet corn is delicious so I am very sad that it didn't get used. 🙁 I do have an onion that is about to expire so I had a light bulb moment. I am going to saute and freeze so I have them on hand for a delightful creole chicken & sausage crockpot recipe that I discovered online. Genius!
I like the look of the crazy-easy cookies! Not too bad here this week, but I need help in working out what to do with 3 jars of mustard I've discovered in the fridge!
Most important thing to know is that mustard lasts about forever so unless it has fancy perishable ingredients (real raspberries?), it won't go bad on you.
You can use a lot by using it as a marinade or wet rub for meat you're going to grill or broil. You can use a spoon at a time in eggs, salad dressing, savory puddings/custards/stratas, to pep up tomato sauce. These are the ideas that occurred to me, there are probably a lot others.
Glad that we'll still have a place to post our FWF! By linking up, it's motivated and helped me reduce the food waste in our home 🙂
Kristen, if you aren't going to use an egg white right away do what I do. Put it in an ice cube tray and freeze it solid, then move it to a zip top bag. I wouldn't make a whole angel food cake out of frozen egg whites but you can certainly use at half of each.
Yay!! You and Jo keep me aware of food waste. At 63, I tend to forget about things if I'm not reminded often. I was a little concerned about not being reminded each Friday. 🙂
I'm so glad that FWF will continue to be weekly!!
The hurricane caused us to have some food waste, but it wasn't as bad as most everyone else here in New Orleans and the surrounding areas.
I made a batch of about 10 salmon patties. We ate them all but one - it fell on the floor. And that was it for my food waste. I have half a head of lettuce and a wrinkly tomato that I need to use up asap, though.
Did boil a ham bone and throw away the bone. Made banana bread and banana cookies to use up some bananas. Peeled some mold off cheese before using it. But don't think I threw anything out this week. Do have some thawed ground beef that needs to be used and probably will be a meatloaf tomorrow. Need to still use up my mole sauce. Still looks fine and been eating some. A little heavy right now in left overs, but I think we will manage to use them.
Ugg. Who wastes raspberries? They are my favorite.
But, I am thankful for this as it has completely raised my consciousness of waste!
Thanks.
I know it's not Friday, but I just pulled out the 2 eggplants I bought this past Wednesday so that I can use them today (Tuesday) Well, they have gone bad! I don't normally buy eggplants, so I really didn't know how long they would last in the drawer in the fridge. Anyway, that's $4.00 down the drain! It really aggravates me since I was going to make a nice recipe of eggplant "meat"balls that I found online. How totally dissapointing!
Hello! I am Amber and I'm thirteen and this is my first blog post ever. I thought it would be good to show what you can do with left over potatoes. My seriously yummy potato salad!