Despite my adamant efforts not to waste food, one or two scraps will inevitably become inedible in my household. I dropped a whole sippy cup of milk on the floor, for instance.
I keep a list on the refrigerator of the small amounts of food I do waste; this helps keep me focused and encourages me to do whatever it takes to keep the list from growing.
When I first started saving all my scraps, I found five strawberries in the back of my refrigerator. They weren't good even when I bought them, and by this time they were wrinkly and had changed to a dark maroon.
Not to mention everything in the back of my fridge freezes, so my mushy dark strawberries were also fruit ice cubes. (Now that I've learned how to eat waste-free, I can't imagine letting five strawberries go bad! Why didn't I just throw them in the freezer and make a smoothie later?)
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I read an article about a guy who paid off $52,000 in credit card debt in seven months. “Wait, wait, wait,” you’re probably saying. “There’s a person who charged $52,000 to a credit card?”
In his story, he explains that he and his wife felt like they deserved a certain lifestyle because they had worked so hard. That meant cruises, designer clothes, a sports car, etc.
I can’t be too critical because we’re all guilty of this mentality. We have this idea that a certain amount of work equals a certain amount of luxury, but the math doesn’t always add up. More often than not, we think we should have to do half as much work as we actually need to.
Reader Question:
The other day I found a tomato in my fridge that had mold on it. I cut the mold off but ate the rest of the tomato. Is that okay? Too often, people rely on Best By, Sell By, and Expiration dates to know when to throw away food. This is a flawed way of thinking for so many reasons. The Wasted Food Dude says it better than I could: “Food doesn’t expire. It doesn’t die at midnight on the date stamped on its package. Instead, it slowly passes from optimal to inedible. And that date stamped on the package — no matter what words precede it — tends to fall much closer to edible.”
When it comes to using up your food before it goes bad, the best advice I can give you is this: SHOP YOUR KITCHEN.
Treat your kitchen like a grocery store whenever you plan meals. Often you'll already have everything you need, except maybe one or two ingredients. I’ve always planned my meals around what I already have, but now that I’m trying so hard not to waste, I really push myself to use up everything. Even the random stuff that gets pushed into cupboard corners. The last time I made a grocery list, I planned seventeen meals and three desserts… and only needed eight ingredients to make them.
When I first went on a hunt for affiliate partners, I assumed using them would be a chore. I had no idea how excited I would be about the great products I can now offer my readers.
Already, I have Home Chef and Plated - for both, you order the meals and they bring all the ingredients to your door; Valley Food Storage - food with a shelf life of 25 years; Peapod - a grocery delivery service; and the company I want to tell you about today: $5 Meal Plan $5 Meal Plan Do you struggle with meal planning? Do you ever go to the grocery store and not know what to buy, or look in the fridge and not know what to make? Is your grocery bill astronomically high and you want to lower it? Five Dollar Meal Plan offers weekly plans to cook meals that generally cost only $5 per meal to make. It's only $5 a month and the first two weeks are free; considering how much money you can save planning cheap meals, that's a great price. When I first heard about this company, I thought they just gave you a list of recipes each week and that's it. Even if that were true, it's well-worth the purchase; I believe proper meal planning is not only the key to food management, but also the key to happiness. But this company has an entire social network with exciting features:
Sorry that list got pretty long, but there was just so much stuff about $5 Meal Plan that I like! You're probably thinking, "Fine, but do the meals actually taste good?" The Facebook followers certainly seem to like them, but of course that isn't enough for me. When I get back from vacation, I plan on testing an entire weekly meal plan. Not only will I tell you how the cooking went; I will also price out the recipes to see if they really pass the $5 test. Stay tuned! When I'm done, I'll post links to my articles on this page. Have you tried $5 Meal Plans? What did you think?
From the start, my husband has been 100% supportive of my quest to stop wasting food.
A few days ago, I saw in the fridge that he had actually saved two bites of oatmeal that one of the girls didn't finish. I would have either eaten it myself or given it to the dog, but he put plastic wrap on those two bites and put the bowl in the fridge. Yesterday, my husband and I got shrimp po-boy sandwiches and we ran out of shrimp long before we ran out of bread. He saw me eyeing the ends of his sandwich and asked, “So, what are you going to do about restaurant food?” He's still getting used to my commitment to never waste food, so I often hear him ask "what are you going to do" questions. Today is the LAST DAY to bid on an item for my auction to benefit famine victims in Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, and South Sudan.
Be sure to check in on the auction before it's too late!
My whole life changed once I started keeping a family cookbook. I actually can’t remember what life was like before I had one. Surely, it was a bleak time for me. Meal planning must have been a nightmare!
Did I seriously used to have recipes strewn all over the house and the internet? When I planned meals, did I actually rely on my faulty memory? Was there really a time when I would make something delicious and then forget where I found it, or worse, that I had ever made it? I don’t know how on earth I went grocery shopping! The reasons for keeping a cookbook are manifold, but here’s a few of them:
I love all kinds of pie, but those pastries have a ton of food in them.
That can be a problem when everyone has had two or three slices and they don’t want any more. In my house, we struggle to finish dessert pies, specifically fruit ones.
Betty Crocker gave me the answer!
Since it was African famine victims who set me on the course to end food waste, I feel compelled to do what I can to help those suffering from hunger.
From June 1 to June 10, I'll be auctioning off items that I made or my friends donated. ALL the proceeds will go toward a charity that sends supplies to disaster survivors, including the millions of people dying from famine in Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia. According to Unicef USA, 1.4 million children are likely to die of starvation in the four-country famine crisis. Not 1.4 million people; 1.4 million children. Families are walking for days in search of food; some communities have lost all their toddlers. We can do something! And in return for your generosity, you'll get to take home one of the items from my auction. *wink wink* So please, check out the items, share if you feel so inspired, maybe let a friend know if you see anything he or she might want to bid on. This is my first fundraiser so it's going to be small, but I hope that as my online presence and influence grows, I'll be able to raise large funds in the future. For now, every bit of your support helps. Thank you! |
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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