On yellow squash
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.
I found half a yellow squash in my fridge yesterday, with unfortunate spots of mold.
What happened?
Well.
I saw the Pioneer Woman's carb buster breakfast bowl and was all, "Oh, what a good idea! Why do I not eat zucchini and yellow squash at breakfast?"
I figured out why.
Despite valiant and repeated attempts to change my preferences, I just flat out do not like yellow summer squash.
Zucchini, I can hang with, though it's not my favorite. But yellow squash? I have to choke that down.
And considering that there are a lot of other nutritious foods that I don't have to choke down, I'm just going to give up and decide that I'm not going to buy yellow squash anymore.
So, off to the compost bin it went.
What else?
I cut open an avocado this week and it was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in an avocado. I think it was ripe, but somehow it was super chalky and dry and just not good. So, that got composted.
I also have some deli ham slices in the fridge that need to go. If I were smarter, I'd have frozen them before they got to this point, but I didn't.
And I need to remember to opt for a smaller package next time, even if the price per pound is worse (because sometimes, the price per pound isn't most important)
We did eat up a lot of leftovers this week, though. And as I shared the other I day, I used up some buttermilk this week and made a fajita bowl out of a number of random leftovers.
So, as usual, some wins and some losses.
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How did you do this week?
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Joshua's 365 post: Dangling
P.S. The Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle (which includes a great book on avoiding food waste) is only available through tomorrow, November 9th.
I found some meat sauce in the fridge that we didn't finish, which I could have frozen if I had found it several days before....sad.
A girl after my own taste buds. Yellow squash, blech.
This makes me feel better, I've been unsuccessfully trying to include more yellow squash and zucchini into my diet; I can occasionally make myself eat zucchini, but I just cannot eat yellow squash. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only one.
Fist bump!
Yum, that breakfast bowl looks good. I've never seen yellow squash here in Australia, but I have seen light green zucchinis in Europe.
I wasted some broccoli and some leftovers this week - it wasn't the best week! Things have just been so busy that I'm pretty sure the broccoli had been in the fridge for a month!
Oooo I love me some yellow squash!
I threw out a small container of brocolli last night. It got pushed to the back of the fridge & froze. 🙁 Also about a 1/4 head of lettuce that had turned reddish colored. And I will probably end up throwing out a quite a bit of taco salad. I made it on Tuesday for the youth group and I made way too much. I've eaten a couple of lunches out of it and so has my son but really it's not something that saves well and I certainly can't freeze it (it has crushed doritos and lettuce in it). So probably tomorrow night it'll get thrown out. Bummer.
I'd see if your son can have a few friends (or cousins) over for an indoor picnic. 🙂
A few years ago, I finally figured out the unit price is not always the most important one. For me, this was especially important with junk food. Even if the price/ounce was better for a larger bag of chips, perhaps we didn't need to all of them anyway.
I had some cole slaw that went bad this week. A friend gave me some and I kind of knew that it was too much, but I gave it valiant effort to finish it anyway. However, it really was too much.
I said a sad farewell to some uneaten ham also. Never checked the date when purchased, and am so hyper-cautious when it comes to ham and poultry.
Apart from that, not so bad this week. I have a half-full fridge photo (which is actually in focus this week - hurrah! Thanks to a day photo class I attended last Sunday). It has food in it because yesterday I did a top-up-shop and abandoned my usual Friday No Waste Tastes Great routine. There's a groovy weekend planned...with cupcakes to match!
Have a good one y'all!
No waste, two weeks in a row!!! At this rate I might makeup for my September ... if I can do it for another 6 months. :-{
Saves:
- There was some cooked chicken I wasn't eating, that I actually froze for later use rather than thinking, too late, "I should have frozen that."
- Added some of that chix to a Contessa bag o' dinner. I keep some easy frozen meals on hand for when I don't/can't/won't cook. Contessa is tasty and healthy, but there's always too much sauce so I add extra meat or veg to get an extra meal from the bag.
I don't like squash or zucchini much either, I don't like the squish factor. So I partially dehyrdate it before using, thus eliminating the squish.
William,
Could you please tell me how you partially dehydrate them? It sounds really cool. 🙂
My greatest issue lately is training myself to cook less. My husband was working several days at a time out of town so I always cooked enough so that he could bring a portion of several meals with him. He lost that job but (thankfully) found another in town. So now I need to learn to cook less at each meal but also to cook a real dinner every night (when he wasn't home we would eat simple, yet healthy, things).
We lost some tater tot casserole. The boys and I ate the rest of the leftovers for lunch.
My food waste includes: one roma tomato (completely forgotten on the counter), one avocado (similar situation beautiful on the outside and yucky on the inside, not just brown but dry and nasty), 1/2 lime (forgotten in the fridge because the hubs wrapped it in aluminum foil and pushed it to the back). I try to put all leftovers in clear containers so I can see what needs to be used/ eaten
Last Friday a couple that are friends of our came over for a mini potluck to help us all save money. They were in charge of the entrée and wine (enchiladas and prosecco) and we were in charge of dessert, movie, and sides (chips, guacamole, pico de gallo, & chocolate cake). The extra lime, tomatoes, and avocado were from that night. I tried to put pico on everything (hummus, scrambled eggs, etc) but I couldn't use up all the tomato in time.
On the food saving front, the girl was going to throw away the leftovers (BLASPHEMY) and I saved them all and we ate tons of enchiladas. I bought pomegranates 5/$5 and gave two away so they would be eaten before they went bad- you HAD to buy five to get the deal. Ive been putting bagged spinach in EVERYTHING and have managed to use 4/5 of a bag and I think I'll be able to actually finish it before it goes bad.
I love squash and zucchini. You can cut up and freeze it raw. I eat it raw. Sauté w Rosemary or thyme. I mix the squash and zucchini. You can also use squash in recipes like zucchini bread...mix part squash w part zucchini. You can also serve it sweet w brown sugar and cinnamon. Put in vegetable soup etc...
Just goona say buy the big pkg and freeze half in a zip lock bag right way when you get home from the store.
I really enjoyed getting yellow squash in my CSA shares over the summer. Cut it up into slices and fry it up in some butter. Delicious. Of course, butter can make many things delicious.
Tomorrow I will have to throw away approx. 4 clementine. I am disappointed that this was the first box I bought this season and 4 of them went moldy too quickly. I also have a cup of pumpkin to use in a muffin recipe tomorrow, so it doesn't end up as waste.
I feel exactly the same about yellow squash. A few weeks ago I made a vegetable lasagna with a mix of yellow squash and zucchini and I could tell every time I bit into some yellow squash. I froze the leftovers and even though the parts with zucchini were tasty, the thought of the yellow squash makes it unappetizing. I'm still deciding if I should keep it.
I love yellow squash and zucchini! I usually just sautee them and sprinkle with garlic salt. Or make zucchini cake.