The bad news first...
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 had a veddy bad avocado.
I also bought a large pack of kiwi and one at the bottom of the container was overripe. It had that kind of boozy taste, and I know from experience that a kiwi at that stage of ripeness is no good even in a smoothie.
I kind of think that wasn't my fault, though, because it was overripe when I brought it home.
So, I'm excusing myself.
In happier news, I rescued some wrinkly tomatoes by peeling them (this is easy if you boil them for a minute) and turning them into tomato sauce, which will be used on some pizza.
Also, this head of Romaine got shoved into the cold part of the fridge and the top froze. However, I just hacked that part off with a chef's knife and used the rest of the lettuce to make a Strawberry Pear salad.
Isn't it lovely when you can make something delicious out of food that could easily be thrown out?
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That kiwi definitely looks past its prime. Too bad because kiwis are so good. This week I had some slimy cucumbers and moldy cheese. 🙁
Or maybe that's a picture of the avocado. Whatever it is, I wouldn't eat it.
That's a pretty bad avocado - too bad because they're so tasty. I had zero waste this week for the first time in a long time, so I'm happy 🙂
I also used some tomatoes up making tomato sauce, but mine was for pasta, and I also have some greens that froze in the fridge, which I will freeze and use for soups or curries. I tend to buy greens rather than lettuce because it's difficult for a single person to eat a whole head of lettuce!
I do love making food out of something I could have thrown away 🙂
this is genius! i cant wait to start doing this. im really curious as to how i would do. right now i live a few days at my house with my also vegetarian roomate but come june ill be moving in with my fella (where i spend the other days of my week and who is not a vegetarian) for now hardly a scrap gets wasted because i know ill only be there for a few days so we cook and shop for only that amount of time. i never cook meat and my room mate is free to eat whatevers left over. we are also both broke so were good at using everything up. he however isnt as concerned with waste and i imagine there will be a learning curve when it come to shoping and cooking to two people with different eating styles. also i just found your blog and i really enjoy it! keep up the good work :0)
Great idea on the tomato sauce! I had too many greens to be able to use up in salad this week, so I made a spinach and strawberry smoothie that was very yummy! I also got my worms in this for a worm compost I'm starting, so I don't feel quite so bad when something goes bad before I eat it, since they'll still like it. 🙂
I try to 'recycle' food as best I can to reduce waste around here, but I find myself throwing cooked food out that has sat uneaten in the fridge too long...hubby doesn't take lunch and the boys eat sandwiches for theirs, so guess who gets to eat leftover sketti three times in one week? Me. Yuck. I'm trying really hard to make just enough food for dinner so I can wash the cooking dishes and call it done. I'm getting better, but it's tricky!
I can so relate to this....My husband used to work from home every day (now it's two days per week), and both he and my son need a fully transportable lunch (no need for microwaves), so there are times when the chili I love gets to be somewhat unappealing by lunch #3. It's great when I have enough leftovers to freeze for another dinner, but it gets tricky when it's little bits of this and that. With leftover spaghetti, I sometimes freeze portions of about 1 1/2 to 2 cups to make spaghetti frittata with later.
I find it helpful to freeze leftovers in meal-sized portions, because I might get really sick of spaghetti if I had to eat it for lunch every day, but I LOVE being able to open the freezer and find something quick for lunch. It works great for work too because you can just grab something on the way out the door. And once you get a good variety built up there are lots of choices! 🙂
We're reaching that time of year, in the No. Hemisphere, where I think of avocados as iffy. I've had good ones in late March/early April and I've had ones that I cut open right after getting home from the market to find that they're already bad. I did buy 4 small avocados yesterday (they were $1 total) and am hoping they're okay.
The lettuce was a very good save. I know most folks would throw it out, when it was just frost-burned on the tip like that.
My fridge is looking scary at this point. No one seems to like my cooking this week, and it's full to the brim with leftovers! At least I know what's on the menu for tonight's dinner, tomorrow's lunch, and tomorrow's dinner (and maybe a snack or two in between).
Wow. that is one bad-looking avocado. it looks like something was seriously wrong with it to begin with!
I had a ton of food waste last week. UGH!
Not a great week for me, but needed to clean out the refrigerator some for that Easter ham that will be in there soon. Tossed out some peanut butter chicken stew, which was quite good, but I should have figured out the nutrition information before I made it. It was so high calorie with all that peanut butter in it, that I couldn't eat a reasonable amount and not be over calorie. So I didn't let myself eat it, and my family only ate a small amount of those left overs. 🙁
Also tossed some rather old panera bread bagels. Panera bread gives day old bread to the church I attend to be used for their food pantry and sometimes we have very few clients for no known reason and then volunteers take home bread. I find the bagels rather high calorie, so don't eat them. My son and husband do, but didn't eat all of them before they became rock solid. Watching my son slice a cold, rock solid bagel was excrutiating, even if he did toast and eat it. The rubber like sound was awful. Ideas on how to soften a very old bagel so one can cut it and toast it?
Did buy a pack of 3 orange peppers for $1 in the marked down produce section, so need to make an orange pepper dish and we signed up for our first half share CSA box. I am a bit nervous on how to avoid waste when I am getting produce that I won't know what to expect exactly, etc. Will be a learning experience.
One possibility for that bagel: wrap it in a damp paper towel and microwave on very low power.
I know what you mean about a CSA - they're practically a recipe for waste. The CSA itself can likely help. See if you can get a list in advance of what's in the week's box, and ask the CSA or other members for recipe ideas.
ouch, that avocado has seen better times.. I`m away on easter break so I haven`t thrown out anything from the fridge this week.. but I think I forgot about some vegetables that probably won`t look as delish on monday... Ooops!
Not my best week nor my worst. Finished off post with cake, so that always brightens a Friday!
I found some moldy cheese curds in the cheese drawer that were thrown out. This next week is going to be very challenging though. We had a houseguest, which was lovely, but she bought and made a lot of food and I am going to have to focus to get through it all. At least I can take some of it to work since I certainly don't need to be eating two batches of homemade cookies even if they are delicious.
I lost a whole bag of avocados a few weeks ago... but I'm sorta wondering if they were bad to begin with. Seriously, they went straight from rock hard to brown and yucky without ever getting ripe. I even cut open one before it was even soft, and it was still brown and yucky inside, even though it was still rock hard. What's up with that? I'm wondering if they got dropped and bruised, or if they were diseased or what... anybody know how I can avoid that syndrome in the future?
Do you think you could post the recipe for the tomato sauce you make that you use on pizza? We're coming to the end of the harvest season here in the south of New Zealand, and I have a bunch of tomatoes I need to use up from my garden. I think I've made enough pasta sauce and tomato soup to last me a good long while, so something easy like pizza sauce would be great! 🙂
I still love your blog and read every single post, I just haven't commented in eons!
I've found that the key to making it taste right is to add extra oregano, and some tomato paste so it's really nice and thick.
A few weeks ago I made pasta sauce with tomatoes that were just about to go sour. Then a week later I added the excess spinach to it. This week it'll go on the spaghetti squash I finally cooked (in the oven at the same time as the blueberry muffins that used some slightly-sour blueberries). In between times the sauce was in the freezer. Repeatedly defrosting and refreezing foods generally does bad things for its texture but think about it: what kind of texture does tomato sauce have?
BTW, my secret ingredient for tomato sauce is: vinegar. Either red wine vinegar or, if I want extra zip, green tabasco. Not much - a few splashes per pot adds brightness without being identifiable as vinegar.
And now on to the waste:
Until literally half hour ago I had none. But I think I just messed up cooking chickpeas for hummus. We'll see after they cool down but I didn't add enough water to the pot and I suspect they'll taste scortched. It's $0.35 worth of dried beans and it'll go into the compost pile. But no matter how you phrase it, it's an own goal and wasn't necessary.
Official Report on Chickpeas:
They weren't scortched. So ... no waste this week!
No waste here: my 18 year old son and his girlfriend had lunch and ate every single leftover! lol
Good save on the lettuce! It's not too bad here, but I hope it warms up soon so we can use salad rather than cake and puddings to use up our food waste!
Happy Easter, Frugal Girl and family!
Thank you, and the same to you!
No waste here. Very sad to hear about unhappy avocado's.
What a fantastic idea! This would work even better for the family who came shopping for me and BEGGED for certain items (that ended up going to waste in the fridge).