Oh dear. It's Friday.
 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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It's been a little bit of a crazy week here. I had to take my van in for some work, I spent an afternoon at the dentist's office (when you have four kids, checkups take pretty much half a day!), I ordered almost all of our schoolbooks for the year, and I started and finished the job of painting Lisey's new room.
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I also took on the gargantuan task of moving Lisey into her new room and Zoe into the room she now shares with Sonia. That was a much bigger job than I'd anticipated. On the upside, we pretty much decluttered both rooms during the process, and that's a happy thing.
Anyway, I haven't spent a whole lot of time in the kitchen this week and I certainly haven't poked through my fridge to see if there's anything in there that needs to be thrown out or composted.
I'm guessing there are some unhappy surprises in there, though, because that's typically what happens when I get super busy.
Happily, I think I'm done with painting projects for a while now, except for some small accessory things I'm going to spray paint for Lisey's room. I am soooo ready for a break from sandpaper, primer, caulk, spackle, and paint.
Oh, and the winner of the Third Day Naturals giveaway is Cindy. Congrats, Cindy!
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Joshua's 365 post: Symmetry
I hear you on the effects of 'busy' on food waste. It seems there are so many plates to juggle and when my workload increases I know it's the fridge that misses out on my attention.
There's always next week 🙂
OTOH when you're so busy that the fridge is mostly empty, there's just not that much that can go to waste. But I don't think I should continue to have tater tots as my dinner.
I am very impressed with all of the painting, decluttering, and moving you have gotten done this summer. It must feel almost like a new house. On the waste front, I had to dispose of some lettuce and tomatoes, but not too bad considering that I had a lot of them.
I always neglect my fridge when I'm busy too 🙂 You're going to need another summer to recover from all of the painting this summer! I really like the colour of Lisey's room - I love combinations of greys and blues.
I wasted a lot of milk this week, which was annoying because it was expensive organic milk. I buy it in 2L bottles because it's cheaper per litre than 1L bottles but I may have to start making yogurt again, since I don't seem to be able to drink it all.
There are times when we all get busy and we neglect our fridges...that is life.
My only waste this week was at a restaurant. I wasted 1/2 serving of a garden salad and 1/2 serving of sweet potato fries. I could not take it with me, since I was not coming directly home. On the positive front, my fridge had no waste this week.
Dumped many "Science experiments" yesterday. Going to wash out the fridge before I go shopping again. Crazy busy this summer. Almost looking forward to school starting and going back to work. We do so much better with a schedule.
We are, unfortunately, in the process of eating everything in our extra freezer. Thankfully it wasn't full. I asked my daughter to put some chicken I got on sale and divided up in the freezer. Apparently she just stuck it in and didnt check to make sure the freezer door closed all the way (as children are apt to do). Consequently this morning I found a lot of half defrosted food. We're getting creative in order to prevent a lot of waste. On the plus side, we're cleaning out the freezer
Just curious what you use for your homeschool curriculum. 🙂
No waste at home!
Went out to eat with my parents, who - mirablu dictu! - brought a cooler bag and freezer pack to take food home. We split the pickings. There was one dish neither of us wanted - the restaurant had changed an old favorite in ways we didn't like - and as always, some rice left over.
We'll see what happens next week, when I actually have fresh food in the house.
ooo I tossed a cup of cauliflower dip, 1/2 cup of alfredo chicken pasta, maybe some 2c. sauted veggies (we shall see after we do a taste test) lol.
Hasn't been too bad, but not a great week either. We are doing a half share CSA where we pick up whatever produce the farm has to give us every two weeks. I think sometimes, I just don't want more experimental food and just want the old standbys. I had to throw out three small cucumbers today, some grape tomatoes, and I believe I threw out an eggplant or two earlier in the week. No matter how I have made eggplant so far, I have not liked it. My husband hasn't minded it though, so he has eaten the left overs. Been using the left over rice in a burrito at lunch, so managed to salvage that. Also had to throw out a left over yogurt salad dish. Seems if we don't eat a yogurt salad on the day of, the yogurt separates almost immediately after being put in the refrigerator and no one will eat it then. ABout to have to throw out some too hard bagels. I sometimes bring home some day old Panera bread when the food pantry I volunteer at has unexpected extra and after it is in the refrigerator a week or so, it can get rather hard. My son will just cut the bagel anyway and toast it, but I can't stand that sound of him cutting it. Tried to convince him to cut it for me, when I wasn't in the room, he didn't take the hint.
Ooh, hard bagels are really difficult to cut! I've nicked myself with a knife before trying to do that.
Do you normally store your bread in the fridge? Storing bread products in the fridge encourages starch retrogradation, which will make your bread dry out more quickly.
Yes, I store my bread in the refrigerator. Seems to take less time to get mold on the bread if I store it on a counter than how long it takes to get hard in the refrigerator. A few weeks ago, I left some of the panera bread out, as my refrigerator was a bit full and about 4 days later, it had mold on it and all went in the trash. For the bagels to get hard, it takes about 2 weeks.
We try to counter that problem with "buffet night". I will pull all leftovers out and reheated want needs to be and everything gets put on the counter. Everyone can then pick and choose what they want to eat. This gets done once a week and helps take care of that extra food and all those plastic containers get washed and put back into the cupboard !!