Food Waste Friday | You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to...
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.
Either way, I found these in the back of my fridge. I had NO idea they were there.
Why?
Because they were in an opaque black bowl, topped with an opaque black plate.
Opacity is a recipe for food waste, as I'm sure you know if you've been trying to reduce the amount of food you throw away.
Clear containers make it SO much easier to keep track of what's in the fridge. Pyrex glass containers
are my VERY favorite...the lids hold up better than any other brand I've tried.
I composted the tomatoes, but on the bright side, I used up some oranges, pears, and carrots by making some juice (that is a handy way to use up produce that's lost its crunch), and I made pancakes for dinner last night to use up the last of the buttermilk.
I also froze some very brown bananas for future baking purposes, and I plan to slice up some yellowing ones for smoothies.
So, I'd say there are more bright sides this week than not.
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Today's 365 post: Easter egg storage, repurposed-style
Joshua's 365 post: Azalea
For the first time I can remember I lost some meat. Half of a chicken thigh. I also threw out some freezer burnt cheese croutons.
I hope everyone else had a better week.
Mine was just a plain ol', run of the mill fail. At least it wasn't that much - and a compostible item.
I almost had a perfect week. Just threw out a little sour cream.
Fail. Small fail, and smaller than I thought when I was cleaning the fridge, but fail just the same.
I think I'm on the verge of wasting an entire bag of pre-cut lettuce, which tells me I've been relying too much on convenience and not enough on cooking/making my own food. I think I MAY be able to eat it before it officially has to be tossed, but I'm not 100% sure.
so far i think I am having an ok week....
Small fail here - some cooked carrots from mid-March went bad.
I love that even though your tomatoes went bad, you were able to compost them rather than throw them out.
Hey Kristen how about something different for your Friday posts? I would love to see another topic -- maybe gardening, book club, sewing, etc. God Bless.
A punnet of cherry tomatoes (gosh dang it!!) and half a glass of flat cola, BUT I did use the cola to clean the loo. So does that class as food waste?
Abigail
x
My vote is that that's definitely not waste.
I only had one little strawberry and a few baggies of herbs - but since ther herbs were free from my hubs green thumb, I feel pretty successful this week!
I did a lot better than I thought I would this week, mainly through canning freezing a good amount of stuff. But I really need to do a full cleaning of my fridge, so I'm certain next week is going to more than make up for it.
I had some pesky tomatoes go bad too, also a banana, lime, and some faux sausage.
Nothing.
This is unusual enough for me - usually have a bit of this and a bit of that - but I had a big pot luck of 20+ people last week and still had no waste. I took care to serve food that I could repurpose later, such as veggies for dip. I have some conundrums (conundra? FG's mom would know) but they're all other people's offerings:
- several dozen choc chip cookies, which I'll probably bring to work
- 1 qt cheese soup; tasty as soup or dip but too rich to eat much of, I'll probably try freezing it
- 1 large piece chocolate cake w/ caramel icing; no clue what to do with this. I don't want to eat it, there's not enough to give away. Maybe I can arrange it nicely with the cookies at work?
Drat - spoke too soon. One sliced sweet pepper went bad between yesterday and today.
Just one thing today, although it was about two servings of chickpea curry. I made it last week just as we were about to go away for the weekend and should've frozen the extra instead of letting it sit in the fridge for a week.
Moneywise, it's not too much of a loss since I probably spent only $2 on the entire meal, over half of which we did eat.
I've returned from my Jolly Hols to a non-fully-functioning blog. Maybe a blessing in disguise as I've spent the last few days in Wales (intermittent phone/internet signal, hence no idea blog still not playing ball) and did accumulate a little bit of waste in my Welsh Fridge - which I photographed - and which I can't upload onto my post!! Not happy! Posted it on Facebook instead. If anyone has any idea why WordPress won't move on from 'crunching' when I try and upload please put me out of my misery...
PS - I say "to-mah-to" being a Brit 😉
I am joining in for the first time. 🙂
This is only semi-related. The other day we "harvested" our compost (we have a worm bin) and it was AMAZING. I couldn't get over the fact that the rich, black dirt used to be our wasted food. Well, wasted and food scraps. It was just amazing! It's currently in a bucket, waiting for when we plant our garden, then it's going right back into the ground!
I found this photo slide show through a story on NPR--it's a slide show all about food waste. I thought you would find it interesting.
http://www.kpic.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=45&Itemid=88
I had about a cup of homemade salsa that was way past it's prime. I suppose it could have been composted, except I seem to be incapable of composting.