Nowhere but up from a trashed chicken, right??
Well.
As you all know, I had an epically bad start to my week, at least as food waste goes.
Throwing away a whole chicken = not exactly a fortuitous start.
But.
The rest of the week was as good as the start was bad, so, yay!
Remember the grapes I froze after throwing out the chicken?
Well, they're all used up now, thanks to multiple smoothies.
(The color of this one is due to a beet, not to the grapes. Ā Grapes don't provide much color to smoothies!)
I had a few too many sweet potatoes and regular potatoes hanging around, so this week I made mashed sweet potatoes, mashed regular potatoes, plus potato cubes. Ā So the potato situation is pretty under control.
Also, if you follow me on Instagram, you know I used random leftovers in scrambled eggs and salads over the course of the week.
So, my fridge is in pretty good shape right now. Ā It's not empty, but pretty much everything in there is new and fresh.
And my freezer is doing well too. I didn't use up a bunch of stuff from it this week, but I also didn't add things, which is a win in my book!
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How's the food waste scene at your house? Ā Share in the comments!
I started experimenting with beets for the first time this week. I must say that smoothies hadn't occurred to me. Right now I'm just trying to get the beet stains out of my table cloth!
Yeah...the color of them is really something. I put on an apron when I'm peeling those just because a teeny drop of beet juice on a white shirt is bad news.
Have you tried putting the tablecloth out in the sun? The sun does wonders for food-based stains like tomato sauce, so it might take care of the beet issue too!
I took some stale bread to my mother for her chickens. And I plan on eating leftovers for lunch the next five days - some will have to be frozen after I put them in containers, but they thaw in plenty of time for lunch. We haven't been too frugal around here lately, but it was a busy week!
Very little this week, which makes up for last week's sadness: half a chopped onion.
That's much less sad than my chicken. š
Just curious about your freezer situation. I always try to stock up so I can buy at the lowest prices, so your freezer state a few weeks ago wouldn't have bothered me. Do you try to stock up and have a full freezer, or do you not worry about it since you mostly shop at Aldi and their prices are stable?
Well, I do have a chest freezer in my laundry room, so that's where I can store things like applesauce when I make it in bulk, or beef I buy in bulk.
And it's true that when you shop at Aldi, you don't have to stock up as much! I love not being a slave to the sale cycles at regular grocery stores.
At any rate, though, the freezer by my fridge isn't good for long-term storage (things get freezer burnt in there), so it's best for me to only keep things in there short-term. When I let it get too full, things sit in there for way too long and get dried up/freezer burnt.
I'm afraid to do Food Waste Friday in a couple of weeks! I've put off really cleaning the fridge due to the new baby so I have no clue how we are doing. I still did FWF this week, but only documented the stuff I threw away. I have a feeling that things will look pretty bad in a couple of weeks!
Here's my post: http://wp.me/p4yT07-1rj
I think you should feel free to give yourself some grace...it's not every month that you have a new baby, you know? Just do what you can.
I'll second Kristen's response.... a new baby is one of the best reasons to have food waste. Means you're appreciating the moment right then and there...they don't stay small forever! š
You'll have the next 18 years to cook š
The only item we lost this week was a baked potato. It was hidden under our cheese/cold cut drawer and I unfortunately found it by the smell. On the good side, we did yield some great future sauce from the brisket I made last week. I chopped three huge onions, six shallots, some carrots, celery, and fresh parsley and covered the brisket with it along with a 1/2 cup red wine and a carton of crushed tomatoes. After removing the brisket to rest I used an immersion blender to puree everything and the sauce it made was great on the brisket, but then we realized that it would make a fabulous base for a meat or chunky mushroom-veggie sauce for pasta. We have enough for at least four more meals besides brisket leftovers.
I hate, hate, hate it when I lose something good because it got hidden out of sight. So frustrating!