We all make food purchases that were perhaps unwise. Maybe we didn't like what we bought, or didn't use as much as we thought we would, or never even opened it because our cooking aspirations didn't match up with reality.
So, I hosted a party where people brought all the unexpired but unwanted food from their kitchens to swap out for food they'll actually eat. ​Here's what they brought:
That's a lot of food that was headed for a landfill!
As I was gathering my contribution, I was shocked at how much expired food I still had. Back in April when I vowed to stop wasting food, I threw out everything in my cupboard that was expired so I could start with a clean slate. At least, I thought I had. Turns out, I still had this much food that was too old to eat. The oldest expired in 2009.
In my defense, some of this was left in our house by the previous owners - like the crab boil and the tapioca - and some of it was gifted to me when I didn't want it, like the WIC baby food from a friend who had way more than she needed, even though I made all my own baby food. Your tax dollars hard at work.
Getting rid of expired food is essential to reducing food waste. The #1 Easiest Way to Reduce Food Waste is to not have very much of it so you can keep track of everything before it goes bad. It's impossible to keep track of all your edible food if your pantry is crammed with inedible food. A word about expiration dates: People act like an expiration date is code for "the day in which this food will kill you." That isn't the case. Dried goods do not become unsafe after their expiration dates, but they do become less fresh, and often they get a gross old preservative smell. Back to the party: My friends came over, set their kids down in front of my toy bins, and hung out for a while until everyone arrived. Then I arranged all the food on the table and said, "Take what you want." Since I'd like to make this an annual thing, I need to figure out a better way divvy up the food. They all just sort of stood there for a while, not wanting to take an item that someone else might want. I finally grabbed a carton of couscous just to get the ball rolling (and because I really wanted that carton of couscous). Then people started to pick things up here and there. I thought about making it into a game somehow, like Dirty Santa where you can take what you want but someone else can steal it, or a version of Planet Hollywood where you hit the timer every time you take a food item and go around until the timer runs out. Despite the hesitation, the party was fun and successful. We chatted while sharing a donated box of what ended up being the worst soda pop in the entire universe: chocolate sea salt caramel soda. Ugh. That flavor is ingrained in my memory, stored in the section of my brain label Sensations I Hope to Never Feel Again. The nice thing about being the host: I didn't have to feel self-conscious about taking the most food, since I just kept what was left. While people were walking out the door, they looked at the table still laden with goods and said, "I hate to leave you with so much food. Is there a homeless shelter somewhere you can take it all to?" I looked at the ten cans of green beans and twenty cans of tuna fish, among other things, and said, "Yeah, I'm totally going to take this to a homeless shelter" and not keep all of it for myself... I like tuna. When everyone was done making their selections (including me), this is what we had leftover:
(The V8 juice was spicy. People on my Facebook group asked me why no one wanted the V8 juice, and it's because some fool bought the spicy kind.)
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I will never waste food againI've been tired of throwing out food for years - not to mention tired of our huge grocery bill! I decided to make a change and vowed never to waste food again. In this blog, I'll show you how I do it. RECIPESArchives
January 2020
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