Food Waste Friday | What?? That was only 24 hours!
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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So, I made pancakes, had some left over, and put them into a Pyrex container. Just a bit over 24 hours later, they were moldy.
What the what???
The only thing I can think is that maybe they weren't completely cool when I put them in, and the moisture from the condensation made them mold quickly.
Anyway, I feel slightly annoyed that they went bad so rapidly.
Now, the other two things I have? Totally my fault.
First up, here's some Asiago. It may have been aged 6 months before I bought it...
...but considering the expiration date was March 2011, I'm pretty sure it's now been aged for, um, about 18 months at least.
This was a case of me buying something with no plan in hand. I bought it on a whim and never got around to using it.
And this process cheese actually expired in 2010. Dear me.
That I don't mind throwing out so much, because I don't feel too badly about wasting cheese that's not even really cheese.
Hey, did you notice something? I have no produce in my pictures this week...sweet!
Oh, and since it's Friday, Lisey's got a new baking post up.
Go visit if you'd like to learn how to make these chewy sandwich cookies!
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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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Today's 365 post: Grilling in February
Joshua's 365 post: Coffee Maker!!
Freshly bought, but not that nice nachos ! Looks were very deceiving !
Awesome to have zero produce! Bizarre with the pancakes-all of the stars must have alligned.
Those cookies make everything better though :0)
that is weird with the pancakes... funny...
Those cookies look yummie!!
I did pretty good this week, I love those cookies, will be going over to see how they are prepared 🙂
Great job on not having any produce waste. That was all I had which is pretty typical for me.
I also bought a chunk of asiago cheese a while back. It sat in the fridge for a while but I finally used it after I asked my FB friends what the heck to do with it. I ended up just using it as if it were Parmesan. I was sooooo good!
I had just a little food waste this week after a whole bunch last week so I was glad about that. But I took a slightly different approach this week and took a picture of all of the food waste that can be composted that I had accumulated - would you believe my family of 6 produced 15 POUNDS of fruit peels, veggies skins, egg shells, etc? CRAZY.
Thanks for the linky and have a great week!
Wow, that's a great idea, to document how much you compost! We compost as well, I'd be curious to know how much waste we reuse in that way. Maybe I"ll do that this week. 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration!
I kept a majority of my veggie peels/skins and the carcass of a roasted chicken.....the fixings for an incredible broth are in a pot on the stove right now!!
Bummer about the Asiago. I love that stuff! I pretty much use it like it's Parmesan. But this is a great recipe if you want to try using it sometime: http://www.food.com/recipe/romanos-macaroni-grill-nachos-napoli-172719
I normally stick it under the broiler for a couple minutes to melt the cheese. Very yummy! Enjoy your blog even though I don't comment very often! Couldn't resist sharing this recipe though. 🙂
I had some pancakes go uneaten from our "breakfast for dinner" which I made to use up some milk that had gone bad this week!
I also bought some muenster at Aldi's this week that was blue when I went to open it! It is dated May, so I will take it back, though.
Hope I'm not posting again. My computer is acting weird today and the post I just posted disappeared.
I had some pancakes that went uneaten from when I made "breakfast for dinner" one night to use up sour milk!
I also have some "blue" Muenster cheese, but it's dated May so I know Aldi's will take it back.
I've had so much waste! We threw out a WHOLE TRASH BAG the other day full of stuff.
I lost a can of pie cherries.
Ok, so I'm the only one who would have opened the asiago and tried it? It looked still vacuum sealed, so I'm sure it was still good, although probably sharper than when you bought it. Hard cheeses are aged much longer than that, it just makes them more expensive! We eat it with fruit and crackers or use it like parmesan.
I actually thought the same thing but wasn't brave enough to say it... 😉
I thought about it, but the cheese had a suspicious-looking white film on it, and I was a little nervous it might be mold.
I totally cut the mold off parmesan. And if it's that filmy stuff, I just use a veggie peeler to shave it off. Unless it's all over. Then that's too gross to salvage.
You can cut mold off hard cheese without worry, because the mold is (to make a long explanation much shorter) only where you see it. And some hard cheeses have mold on their rinds as part of the making process.
If a soft cheese (such as cottage or cream) or semi-soft chees (such as brie) has mold, get rid of it. Again simplifying, it seems that the softer texture/whatever of these cheeses allow the mold to propagate invisibly, or maybe it allows for more worrysome molds.
I would add to William's excellent guide, white, blue, green mold is ok to cut off but red mold throw it out. I would have eaten it for sure. I'm not really sure but that is what cheese makers say & I figure, who better to ask?
You are definitely not the only one, especially as it was a vacuum-sealed hard cheese. I'd probably use it like parmesan.
That was my exact thought - it was vacuum sealed, no obvious mold, and the mold that flavors Asiago would tend to make the cheese inhospitable to the "bad" molds and bacteria that could potentially make you sick. Cheese is, after all, a method our ancestors came up with to PRESERVE otherwise very spoil-friendly milk!
Asiago naturally has a fairly strong smell, so even if it smelled a bit pungent, it was probably fine.
I'm with everyone else on the asiago. A soft cheese, maybe not, but a hard cheese, yes. I've done that since we bought cheddar with waxed cheesecloth cut from the wheel when I was a kid.
I'm sorry about the pancakes. 🙁 I bet the squirrels and birds would be ok with the mold! As far as food waste goes, I'm doing better this week. It's still bad, though. I like the system of having one day a week to go through the fridge and freezer. It makes things much more efficient. Thanks again for sharing this opportunity! I can't get the button to show up on my page, but I'll get my husband to help me add it later. He's good like that. 😉
I didn't get the button to work either but I am so computer illiterate that I don't know what html is but I guess I must be in it.
I'd have at least tried to eat he Asiago too.
Hi Kristen! Do you think you could add a link to Lisey's page at the top of your site, like you have for Joshua's 365 project?
I had NO WASTE this week, for the first time ever!! I'm SO happy!! 🙂
Congratulations Becca! It really feels good, doesn't it?!
Lots and lots of waste but not because I was neglectful. There were two dishes this week that didn't turn out well.
#1: A dish that no one liked.
I tried a recipe for chicken in a cheesy version of yorkshire pudding. The YP wasn't to anyone's taste. I could have eaten it, but cheesy YP is high fat and if I'm going to eat all that fat, it's going to be for something I love. The chix was fine so I fished it out of the YP and we had it for another meal.
#2: A dish that didn't turn out well, which didn't become yogurt.
My roommate tried a recipe Banana-Butternut Squash Smoothie. It wasn't much good: too much milk in the recipe, it was vaguely banana-flavored milk. I decided to see if I could make yogurt from it - hey it was mostly milk, right? Heating the smoothie I accidentally boiled it, and the texture changed to something more like thinned out box mashed potatoes. I tried to make yogurt anyway. Total failure! At the end of the process I had "milk that is liked thinned out mashed potatoes with a bit of fruit yogurt stirred in."
A bit late to the comments today as I had to leave to do my Aldi shop before it went up. Did pop the FWF button on my post however! Very odd about the pancakes...never experienced mold in that short space of time before?
There was no waste in my fridge this week hurrah! However I grabbed a juice drink from Aldi whilst shopping (as really thirsty - have some weird bug that's affecting me at the mo) and as I left the store whilst drinking it looked down and it was out of date. Okay only by 2 days so I finished it before hot-footing back to the sales girl, who replaced it (it was a 3 pack of cartons). So there may be waste? But it's not mine! Let's hope it gets 'ethically' disposed of in some way?...
We'll definitely be heading on over to Lisey's!
After last week's heartbreaking disappointment I had Zero Food Waste this week. Doesn't it feel good when that happens?
Bizarre about the pancakes. Too bad.
Oh, and I would have used the cheese too. I'm used to buying large blocks of really good parmesan cheese and this happens sometimes, even when in date. I just shave it off like Jen. In these situations I love thinking of Maya Angelou's words:
"You do what you know how to do and when you know better you do better."
Until next week...
I found a really old, really hard Cliff bar in the pantry that went in the trash. On a bright note, I found a couple of soup mixes that were just past their best by date, so now I am making an effort to use them up.
I cut mold off cheese all the time unless it is really bad.
About the pancakes - check your fridge temperature where you stored them. If they molded that fast, your fridge might be too warm in that area. Also, did you put away anything underneath them that wasn't cooled to room temperature like a pot of soup? Pancakes in a moist cold environment shouldn't mold, but pancakes in a moist environment that's warmer than 40-45F would be prime breeding ground.
I'm wasting some "southern greens" that I cooked two weekends ago. I couldn't quite make it through all of them, was intending to dump them into soup, and never made the soup.
I'm also wasting a bit of applesauce. I pulled out a large almost-gone jar to serve C for lunch and discovered it was moldy! Oh, well.
Other than that and a single egg that got broken somehow in the carton, it's been a pretty good week. Too bad my compost bin is no longer functional (UV radiation destroyed the plastic, and now it's a big cracked mess)!
I feel like an angel, no food waste this week what so ever. All leftovers eaten and the rest of the veg will be consumed tonight.
I must admit we do rather buy only what we need each week but even then there are times that something gets missed in the fridge and goes off. Not this week though 🙂
A kiwi and half a carton of take-out soup that was terrible. Kiwis are in line to be the new cilantro, I'm afraid. And I've been trying really hard to take my lunch to work to avoid eating out--but forgot it one day--and then the soup I bought instead was awful. Double bad! Oh well, today I have lovely leftover curry for lunch.
Hard cheeses that need ageing don't go bad if they're vaccum-sealed. That white stuff you saw is actually the GOOD bacteria in the cheese the enables it to age. It has to do with being a stirred-curd cheese verses a knitted-curd variety. Cheeses that need ageing are usually heat shocked rather than pasteurized. This enables the enzymes in the milk to continue to work at ageing the cheese.
You can age true cheddar (not the imitation stuff) and several other types such as parmesan, for as long as you want. I realize you are on the East Coast, Kristen, but here on the West Coast, we have Tillamook Cheddar--that my family has proudly produced for 5 generations as a member of the farmer-owned cooperative here. My grandfather used to age his cheddar in his refrigerator for YEARS. It was unbelievable--so delicious I can't even describe it. I hope you didn't throw that cheese out yet.
We love Tillamook Cheddar! And for really special occasions we splurge and buy 5 year old white cheddar. It's our favorite. I'm not brave enough or patient enough to try to age my own though.
This cheese info is really interesting. Cheese is SCIENCE, for sure!
now, that processed American "stuff," that's a different story. Throw it out. 🙂
Were the pancakes stored in the refrigerator? I'm not sure why, but I always put our leftover pancakes in there.
Those cookies look delicious! I had an ok food waste week. Although, I'm trying to use up a bottle of fish sauce. Fish sauce recipe suggestions anyone??
Lots of Vietnamese food uses fish sauce by the teaspoon or tablespoon. Practically speaking, it doesn't go bad on the shelf.
This week was an okay food waste week. I threw out a half to 1/4 filled container of sour cream that was dated 1/2010. The amazing thing was it looked fine. That scared me a tad. I had bought it nearly free at one time with a coupon, and gave all but one away to people who would use it. Never used all of the one I kept. My hubby likes sour cream occasionally on a baked potato, but that is about it. Threw out a tiny bit of roast beef, seems the sliced stuff started to smell bad, but the hunk seemed fine. So we tossed the slices, and rinsed off the hunk and put it in another container. Threw out a bit of spinach, I buy prebagged, as the fresh isn't much better, I always have to toss some spinach while I make salads. How do you keep that stuff from going bad so fast? One more item... I buy ricotta cheese bowls when on sale. The first one I opened to make some lasagna was about 2 weeks past the sale by date and had some green mold in one corner. I have used unopened ricotta cheese up to a month or two passed the sell by date, so wonder if the plastic film was loose in the one corner. Oh, well, I had two more containers, but dated about 2 weeks from now.
I have to say I sympathize on the pancakes. That would have bugged me. Ours was homemade hummus. We made a batch, a full canning jar of it, and barely used any and it molded within a couple of days. Going to have to find better preservation methods, or make smaller batches. But since you are using a can of chickpeas, you have to use the whole can, right? Or will a bit of lemon juice help it to not mold or something?
Freezer?
The only thing we wasted this week was a package of sandwhich rounds that have been in the frig so long you could have used them for frisbee's.
I like the idea of the Food Waste pictures. But I worry sometimes about the incentive it creates for myself when I view food going bad as a really awful thing. For one, I buy fewer groceries, so they won't rot in the fridge or cupboard. But a year or two ago I realized I had a pretty bad habit of ordering pizza on the nights there were no good groceries in the house. That wasn't a win from a financial or health standpoint. I also made a conscious decision about a year ago to overbuy produce, even though we do see some of it go bad. This is because I want us to eat more fruits and vegetables. I'd rather have us all eating an extra serving because there's so much of it, even if some goes bad, then have the kids wander by the counter, feel a vague urge for a banana or apple, and then not have one there.
I totally agree with you, actually! My idea of preventing produce waste runs along the lines of making sure to eat what I buy as opposed to simply not buying produce (that would be an easy and unhealthy way to avoid waste). We actually eat more produce now than we did in my food waste days because I'm really vigilant about us eating our produce instead of just letting it go bad in the fridge.
I've blogged about this before, but you know, it's probably time to touch on it again. Thanks for the reminder!
I have been employing the food waste practice for the past few weeks, but this is the first time I am actually posting about my weekly waste. It was a very good week for me (which might have something to do with why I am posting about it ;). So my waste consists of some really old pita bread and store-bought chicken broth. I don't have much to offer by way of explanation, other than these are things I really don't use regularly. But more importantly, since following food waste Fridays, I have continually reduced the amount of food I waste each week (menu planning and grocery lists have also helped big time). I hope to waste even less this week!
I'll bet the rent that your pancakes weren't sufficiently cooled when you put them in the fridge. I make big batches and freeze them, but they do have to been cooled to room temp. I have a set of three wire racks with legs that fold up/down (from Target), and I put the pancakes on the racks while I eat my meal. When I'm finished eating, the pancakes are usually cool.
My food waste includes chicken noodle soup that I doctored up, and I just could not bear to eat more than one serving. I should have left well enough alone. I also had some rice and stir fry veggies that didn't get eaten as planned.
This week was not too bad for me. I had one apple that looked a little rubbery, but not too bad, but then it turned out to be one of those that has turned brown from the middle out... ew.
Continuing my slow-motion freezer cleanout, this week we have a bag of edamame with date 8/28/2010 (yeesh). This is a thaw-and-eat item, and I love edemame! Damn. I also tossed a quarter-package of shredded taco cheese with date of Oct. 2011.
I've been doing good eating what I have. I made pudding tonight with some milk that I probably wouldn't have used otherwise, AND I threw 3/4 cup of half & half in there, too (had bought it for a soup). It's going to be extra creamy pudding, yum! Chopped some veggies I bought to make veggie wraps, ate one for dinner. Twas a time when I let veggies go bad just because I never got up the gumption to chop them!
Ate soup from the freezer for lunch today, will have tomato sauce from there tomorrow (thus avoiding food waste and $6 purchased lunch). My freezer is pretty lousy and freezer burns things really fast, so I'm trying to be more aware of what I put in there, and bring them back out to eat before too long.