(mini) oranges, meat, and stabbing plastic bags
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.
We love mini oranges around here...clementines or mandarin oranges; it doesn't matter. I bought a bag a little while back, and it seems it was a bit too early in the season, because they weren't nearly as juicy and sweet as we expected. So, three of them sat around too long and bit the dust.
Those can be composted, so no big deal.
But the other stuff bums me out more. I forgot about a lone chicken thigh, and I have no great excuse for why that happened.
The ham has upsides and downsides...on the one hand, I found leftover ham in the freezer and the kids and I made a meal of it one night when Mr. FG was out of town. So, yay for a meal using a once-forgotten freezer item. But then the last few bits ended up in the back of the fridge behind massive quantities of Romaine lettuce (which, I am pleased to say, I have nearly used up), and the ham was forgotten.
In other food waste news, I've been stabbing plastic bags for the cause. (Yup!) Click here to read all about it (and to find out why I'm wrapping banana stems).
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Those mini oranges don't look too bad. What I do in those circumstances is first cut them in half and taste to make sure they aren't bad tasting. If they are not and just a bit dried up I peel them and throw them into the Vita Mix with a little water for my morning juice. And if there is anything else around like an apple or a few leftover blueberries or whatever, they go in too. Most mornings we have fresh "Juice" from the Vita Mix. Usually it is an orange and a banana. But whatever is in season works and in the summer there is often something from the garden, even a few berries to add to the mix. And it doesn't have to be fruit, a vegetable juice is good too, A carrot or two along with the broccoli or asparagus stalks and whatever else I have, some water and in 10 seconds I have a healthy delicious juice - usually!
We had the same thing happen with the mandarins, I am sticking with the Cuties brand, they have always been fine, but when I bought a different brand that looked similar, they were not that good (and of course I bought them at Costco in a 5 lb bag!) LOVE your blog. You keep it real, not that all blogs don't..............bahahaha
Funny - I have more issues with Cuties than with other sources.
Congratulations on using up the Romaine. Lettuce just seems to get away from me sometimes. I didn't have any food waste this week, but our kitchen is being worked on, so not much cooking or food buying for that matter was done.
Our only victim this week was some iceburg lettuce. I simply kept forgetting it was there. It came to us from a friend (apparently she didn't want it either). We share 'extras' sometimes to prevent waste.
We had a house full of company and the only leftover that we had an issue with was fudge. I packaged it nicely and passed it on to a few of the neighbors because I knew we weren't going to eat it.
Talking of mini oranges - well satsumas here (do you use that term?) it reminded me of a conversation I had with the hubby this week. Ours have grown a green dust on the outside (you mentioned dust! This is going somewhere honestly). He wiped it off and peeled them. But he asked how and why it formed just in satsumas? I have no idea!
One egg for me wasted. It must have cracked enroute home but I didn't pick it up till a few days later. Wasnt sure whether to risk cooking and eating after all that time!
In my kitchen, questionable fruit gets examined for suitability for smoothies. If the citrus is dried or a bit sour, but not actually rotten or squishy, into the freezer it goes.
Sour citrus juice is great in marinades.
I had the same problem with the oranges! So many of them ripened too fast. Normally, I'd use them in this recipe (using three clementines instead of one orange):
http://www.food.com/recipe/fresh-orange-muffins-14325
I didn't end up using them this time because I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, and it wasn't close enough to grocery shopping day to go to the store early.
Has everyone heard the buzz regarding Aldi's and horse meat? If not, google it.
Yes. It dealt with Aldis in Europe (UK specifically in the news that broke). But it wasn't Aldi-specific. And it wasn't THEM that was doing it. Their suppliers had used horse meat.
Aldi has issued a ton of apologies and are fixing the problem on their end. I will continue to support Aldi. None of the stores in the US were affected, I should note.
I think clementines and mandarins are delicious when they get dry and shriveled like that. As long as they aren't rotten or moldy, the flavor gets more concentrated the more water they lose. In fact I let them dry out on purpose when they're not super good to begin with. MFK Fisher left tangerine sections them on the radiator of her Dijon apartment to dry in the winter. She liked the contrast of the dry, crackly skin with the sweet juice.
Unfortunately, these were moldy on the other side. I put the nicer looking side toward the camera, I guess!
I had more disastrous food waste this week, when my one of my homemade cider bottles exploded, sending the olive oil tin onto the floor and spilling olive oil all over the carpet. It was a mess, but I eventually managed to clean up all of the oil and the glass fragments. I'm hoping for a less exciting week this week!
Oof. Oil spilling is the WORST.
Considering that I cooked our Thanksgiving dinner this weekend, due to an upcoming surgery, our food waste was low.
We lost a 1/2 head of cabbage that got lost in the back of the fridge. We lost about a cup of chili that I forgot to put in the freezer.
Food Saves: I didn't cook for five days before the feast and we ate almost EVERYTHING that was in the icebox. I haven't seen it that barren in forever. Now we are stocked up on T-Day food to last us through my surgery