Food Waste Friday... Three Days Late

It's Food Waste Friday (err, Monday, see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post a picture of all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). View my first post on this topic to learn why this is important to me.

Turns out, I don't actually like the Cascadian Farms brand of raisin bran. I much prefer the good ol' fashioned Kellogg's Raisin Bran (two scoops!). I don't remember why- it was too bran-ny, not enough sugar on the raisins, or something like that, probably. All I know is, I got it, I tried one bowl, and I had a hard time making myself eat it again. I tried to pass it along to Chris, but even he didn't really want to eat it. So, it sat and it sat and it sat. And nobody ate it. And then Chris just tried a bite tonight and declared it inedible- soft, stale. Time to go! The good news, though, is that we did get through several other boxes of cereal without having to throw them out. We're now down to one box of granola with chocolate- what's not to like?

Food Waste Friday... Almost Perfect

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post a picture of all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). View my first post on this topic to learn why this is important to me.

I was all set this morning to post about what a terrific job I did this week managing to have zero food waste, two weeks in a row! And I did do a terrific job using up the leftovers, celery, parsley, kalamata olives, and I've already forgotten what else, but it turns out it wasn't zero waste. But then I opened up the cabinet where we store Brody's baby food (which I actually don't use much since at 16-months old he eats almost anything now. Nice to have at least one kid who's not a super picky eater.). And I found tons of little black ants crawling everywhere. Ants, yuck! (You can kinda see them in the picture if you look closely and maybe squint.) So, I threw out all of the open snack-type foods. There really wasn't much, just banana crackers, some rice cereal (which he hasn't eaten in so long that he probably wasn't going to finish it anyhow), some teething biscuits, mini freeze dried fruits. Most everything was close to being finished already, so I am sorry to have to waste it, but it wasn't a lot, and not things that he's excited about eating anymore. But the good news is, finding the ants reminded me that I do still have some jars of baby food in the cabinet (sealed, of course, so totally ant-free). I guess I'll feed them to Brody, even though he hasn't had any baby food in quite a long time. But he does like feeding himself with a spoon, so I'm sure he'll enjoy them. Or at least have fun making a mess while trying.

Food Waste Friday... The Very First Perfect Week!!!

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). View my first post on this topic to learn why this is important.

Finally! No picture this week because no food waste! I don't think we did anything amazing this week to achieve this, but I have been packing some oddities in Chris's lunch lately to make sure that we get through everything. A not-so-fresh nectarine (I told Chris those should have been stored in the fridge), a big container of yogurt, a whole lot of celery (with peanut butter for dipping). The other day involved a small side of peas, which he initally considered rejecting. Instead, he ate them (cold) and reported they were actually quite tasty, to his surprise. Which makes me happy, because now I have a story to tell my five-year old Jake, the next time he tells me he doesn't like something before even taking a bite. "You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say." Okay, even that might not convince Jake to try green eggs and ham, but maybe a hotdog?

Just to be fair, packing things in Chris's lunch is not my only strategy for avoiding food waste. I also personally ate some strawberries that were starting to wither (not moldy, though), and tried to eat up other stuff. But mostly, I'm doing a better job of figuring out how to menu plan, be creative with foods, use up stuff that we have, and be flexible about meals. For example, I realized that I could hold off on cooking the pork chops with green apples, since those would keep a bit longer, and instead used up the red grapes and some of the celery in a yummy chicken salad.

Meanwhile, we have some serious work to do in order to get through everything else. Lots of parsley, celery, green grapes. (Perhaps the green stuff is less likely to get eaten? Or we just buy a lot of green foods?) I need to start menu planning for next week...

Food Waste Friday- How Do You Use Up Your Condiments?

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). See my first post on this topic to learn why this is important.

I could have had a perfect week, if I had chosen to ignore the condiments. But, as I spent last weekend helping to clear out my parents' fridge and pantry, and noticing how very long ago some of their stuff had expired, of course I had to check my own fridge. The worst offender: mustard that expired in 2008. Is it really bad? I don't know, but that was two years ago, so I think it's time to get rid of it. My problem is that we don't use a lot of condiments, so when I need a little something for a recipe, I'll buy the smallest/cheapest package, but we still can't get through them in time.

How do you use up all of your condiments before they've gone bad? Do you continue to use things that are past their expiration date? How far past?

Food Waste Friday... But I'm Not Taking the Blame for the Milk

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). See my first post on this topic to learn why this is important.

This is bad... I thought we had a close-to-perfect week. And then I found these three steaks in the back of the freezer. They're from Dream Dinners, which is a place where you can go and do your meal prep, and take home some delicious, easy to put together meals. The problem is, I haven't been there in a very long time. If you look closely, the label says May 2007. Yes, those steaks have been in my freezer for MORE THAN THREE YEARS. They're well-sealed, but that just seems waaaaay to old. (Actually, this reminds me of an argument with a former roommate about when meat goes bad in the freezer. I don't remember how long it takes, but I know it was far less than three years.)

We almost wasted an avocado. Despite the fact that I am mildly allergic to them, and Jake refuses to eat them, and Brody only likes to mush them between his fingers, I bought one to serve with chicken tacos last week. I thought we were going to have guests in town, and it would be a nice addition. When I turned out to be just us, I honestly forgot about the avocado. Until I noticed it a couple of days later, and realized that it was extra, extra ripe. At that point, I was going to give it away, and had put it next to Jake's lunchbox so that we could bring it to school and ask which family wanted it. But then Jake noticed the avocado, and decided to play catch with it. Which I noticed after he dropped it (loudly) onto the floor. Figuring a slightly bruised avocado would still be okay to give away, I told him to put it back where he found it. Which I don't think he did, because a little while later, I found the same avocado in Brody's hands, along with some holes where he poked his fingers through the skin. That, I figured, would not be okay to give away, so instead it got packed in Chris's lunch to take with him to work. Yep, plain avocado, scooped out with a spoon. At least it didn't get wasted.

I did however dump some 2% milk down the drain. It still had three days left before the "Use By" date, but it was starting to look curdled and I am told that it didn't smell good. (Not being a big fan of milk myself, the idea of smelling possibly sour milk makes me nauseous, so I made Chris smell it instead. If Chris says it's bad, then it's definitely bad.) So, I wasted some milk. Sorry, cows, but I'm blaming the people stamping the "Use By" dates on the cartons.

Food Waste Friday... It Could Have Been Worse

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post all of the food that I am throwing away this week. It's an effort to hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). See my first post on this topic to learn why this is important.

This week, not so bad. Sorry that the picture's not great- I know some people are able to take fantastic high-quality pictures with their iPhone, but I am not one of them. (In related news, I have some photography books on hold at the library that I need to pick up- maybe I'll finally teach myself something about how to take a decent picture.) Anyhow, there's some green leafy stuff from the Farmer's Market that we just weren't able to use up before it wilted. In my defense, it's not as much as it looks like. And, I was totally planning to use those green onions but when I went to do so, they were soggy and floppy. Yuck. Oh, and I didn't get a picture of the two slices of moldy Swiss cheese. I don't even like Swiss cheese- double yuck.

But I am proud of myself because it could have been much worse. I used up all the basil we got from the Farmer's Market last week and made fresh pesto, and I used the stale sourdough bread (also from the Farmer's Market) to make seasoned croutons. I almost feel like a real chef. :)

Turning Food Waste Into Cupcakes (Tastes Better Than It Sounds)

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for my inspiration), which means that it's time to post all of the food that I am tossing for the week, in an effort to document and hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment).

This week: 1) a small box of animal crackers that I found in the back of the cabinet (which is why they didn't get eaten; they were lost in there). I don't know how long they were there, but they were so soft that they fell apart when touched, so I'm guessing quite awhile; and 2) a half of a container of deli-style sliced chicken that I found in the back of the cheese drawer, which is why it didn't get eaten. And how I didn't notice before it became this moldy is kind of surprising since I have been clearing out my fridge weekly. I guess chicken doesn't last as long as I thought.

As for the impending frosting disaster? Crisis averted. I tried, as suggested, to use up the large amount of leftover frosting by spreading it on graham crackers for dessert. It was yummy, but we don't really have dessert that often, so we kind of forgot about it after eating it once. So, instead I decided to use Frugal Girl's chocolate cake recipe, once again, but made them into cupcakes this time (and a few mini-cupcakes, too). My thought was that we would save some for Father's Day, and Chris could bring the rest to work so that they would get eaten. However, I decided to make them without cupcake liners because a) we didn't have any, and b) I figured it was better for the environment, anyhow instead of wasting the (what I thought would be) unneccessary paper. So I greased up the muffin tins, baked them at a slightly lower temperature for a much shorter cooking time, and then let them sit in the pan after removing from the oven. But, the cupcakes still stuck to the bottom of the tin. So I pried as much of them as I could out of the muffin tins, and realized that the bottoms were so crumbly that they would fall apart if decorated as regular cupcakes. Instead, I turned them upside down and put the frosting on the bottom of each cupcake. And sprinkled a few chocolate chips on top. Not a pretty sight, but still very yummy.

I actually don't think the picture does the cupcakes justice for just how unattractive they are. You'll just have to trust me on this, I guess. Enough so that I would have been embarrassed to send them to work with Chris, so instead we will have to eat them all ourselves. Oh, the sacrafices which must be made to avoid food waste. I should note, however, that the mini-cupcakes all came out of their nonstick mini muffin pan pretty easily, and were especially cute when frosted and chocolate chipped. However, I don't have a picture of those because we already ate them all up.

The One with the Impending Frosting Disaster

It's Food Waste Friday (see The Frugal Girl for what inspired me to show you pictures of this), which is something I've been keeping track of for the last couple of weeks. This is my third post of all the food that I am tossing for the week, in an effort to keep track and hold myself accountable for the food that I have wasted (while attempting to save money and do something better for the environment). I'm actually a little sad that I haven't made much improvement so far, but I'll keep trying.

The bean burrito and fries are Jake's meal from Paco's Tacos. As you probably know by now, Jake hates leftovers, but I saved them because I thought Brody would eventually eat the burrito, at least. But after a few attempts at reheating it for him, I realized perhaps my 15-month old is not such a fan of leftovers, either. The cauliflower and broccoli really should have gotten finished off, but they suddenly had black spots on them, so I wasn't risking it. And I seem to have burned out on salads because I couldn't force myself to finish off the big bag of spinach, even though it has been my favorite (actually, my real favorite is the ET TU Caesar Salad kit with red leaf lettuce, but that's not exactly healthy. Maybe I should try the light version). Oh, and that bag of peas. I hate peas; they're disgusting. Chris is not so fond of them, either. Jake will ONLY eat them if they're freeze dried. And Brody apparently only likes them if they're in processed baby food, and even then, not so much. I thought I could just keep presenting them and eventually they would get eaten. Instead, I mostly ended up with peas on the floor.

Now, before I end up with a ton of what was once-delicious Whipped Cream / Cream Cheese Frosting being thrown out next week, can someone please tell me, what do you do with leftover frosting? I made a really fantastic Chocolate Cake (not from a box) (thanks again, Frugal Girl), and it was the perfect icing. But now I have a ton left over. The only thing I can think of is to spread some on saltines for a sweet snack. Which sounds yummy, but slightly white-trashy (no offense to anyone who does this). And not exactly healthy or helpful when you're calorie-counting. Any ideas?

Food Waste Friday and Updates

Here's my food waste from this week. Actually, I don't think it's quite as bad as it looks. About a quarter of container of raspberries- it makes me a little sad that we couldn't get to all of them before they got really mushy and then moldy. I learned that I should not buy fresh fruit right before the weekend (at least nothing that will spoil quickly), because we don't eat enough snacks and meals at home to use it up before it goes bad (seriously, they were gross by Monday). A small scoop of mashed potatoes- I meant to feed those to Brody since I thought he would like them, but apparently forgot about them in the back of the fridge. A slice of pizza- I blame Jake for that since it was his pizza, and he refuses to eat leftovers. He says, "Leftovers make my head hurt."

All of the other little containers were ones that I just recently pulled out of the freezer. As I was packing lunches for Jake and Chris this week, I started to wonder what had happened to all of our little plastic bowls. Then I remembered that a few months ago, I decided to make homemade baby food for Brody. Which he refused to eat. I tried feeding them to him again this week, and when he refused, I tried to get our friend Delaney (who's 17-months old) to eat them. No luck there, either. I guess I am just not a good baby food maker. So, those are the containers of pureed carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, white beans and bananas which the babies would not eat.

We did manage to eat up a lot of other leftovers, though, so I am happy for that. Well, mostly happy- there were a couple more things that maybe should have made it into the food waste picture. Trying out a new recipe, I cooked way too much pasta salad with chicken and veggies at the beginning of last week, right before Chris went to Canada for a few days. (I swear it was really yummy, though- check out the recipe at the end of this post). I just couldn't eat that all myself and grew tired of pasta salad everyday. When Chris returned, I sent the rest of it to work with him in a to-go container, with instructions to find a homeless person to donate it to (he works on Hollywood Boulevard, I'm pretty sure that would be an easy task). I haven't asked him about it yet, but I really doubt he did it. My guess is that it's currently going bad in the refrigerator at his work. (Edit: Chris read this post and was offended. Although I meant to imply that I probably did a poor job by making too much food, and likely wasted more food than I was accounting for, he took it to mean that I thought he did a poor job and wasted the food by not giving it away. Actually, he gave the pasta salad to the janitor (custodian? does that sound better?) at work.)

And then there were some chicken wings from Fresh Brothers, which Chris ate even though they were more than a week old, and had sat out on his desk at work when he didn't eat the lunch that I packed for him one day. That night, he was vomiting and didn't make it to work the next day. I still don't think it was food poisoning since Jake had the same issue a few days before (and threw up on Chris in the middle of the night), and I just had the same problem a few days later. But still, it's making me a little wary of leftovers past their prime.

Along with clearing out leftovers, I've also been cleaning out other clutter lately, namely in my email inbox. I get a ridiculous amount of email each day, and a lot of it is just junk. Which I can quickly delete, but it still takes up time, especially since I compulsively check my email just about every time my phone notifies me of a new message. So, it's been taking far more time than just deleting it, but I've been unsubscribing from all of the lists that I should never have gotten on in the first place. Even the ones that go directly to my "spam" folder, since I also spend time checking that, just to make sure that an important email didn't accidentally get directed there. Hopefully, this will eventually save me time in the long run. But, I'm even more proud of the fact that I have cleaned out the non-junk from my inbox, too! I try to respond to emails pretty quickly, but I have a habit of saving tons of emails- things I want to remember to check into, things that I have found interesting, things that I think I may need to refer back to. And then they just sit there in my inbox forever, and I have to scan through them each time to figure out which ones are ones that I still need to respond to. So, instead I created a few sub folders for emails that I really do need to save, and deleted the rest. Now, I have only three emails in my inbox- two which are work-related things that I need to take care of, and one about plans for this weekend. And I can just open my email and see in a glance what's new and what I need to complete.

Also, an update about my attempt to stop checking email in the car- I have finally made some progress there. I have made it a habit to check my email right before I leave the house, so that I won't be as tempted to do so in the car. And then, if I find myself still tempted, I borrowed a Learn Spanish CD from the library, so I just turn that on to distract me. Honestly, I don't think I'm learning much, but it's keeping me safer.  :)

As for my 10 Personal Commandments, my anal-retentive self decided that I needed more of a reminder, and a way to hold myself accountable for actually following them. So I made a checklist with all 10 of them in columns across the top of the page, and then a row for each day of the month. I checked off 70% of them yesterday. I hope to do better today.

In case you're interested, here's that pasta salad recipe from my friend Debi, with a couple of little things that I altered. I wish I had taken a picture to share with you- it's quite colorful and pretty. It makes A LOT, so feel free to cut the recipe in half to avoid food waste.  ;)

Pasta Salad with Chicken and Veggies
(8 servings, 6 WW points each)

• 1 ½ cups broccoli, florets, steamed
• 1 ½ cups cauliflower florets, steamed
• 1 cup asparagus, steamed
• 1 package (12 oz) vegetable radiatore (spiral) pasta from Trader Joe's, cooked per package instructions (or any other spiral pasta will do, but this three-color one is fun!)
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• ½ cup sweet red pepper (if desired, I may leave this out next time)
• ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 cloves garlic
• ½ tsp black pepper, or to taste
• 2 cups cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast, chopped
• ½ cup Newman’s Own Salad Dressing, Balsamic Vinaigrette

Steam cauliflower, broccoli, and asparagus. Cook pasta per package instructions. Toss all ingredients together and refrigerate. Makes about 8 servings (1 ½ cups each).

Flat Cookies and Food Waste. Yum?

Jake decided that he wanted to bake something this afternoon. (Yes, I realize that the above picture is not the most appetizing if we're talking about baking, but bear with me, I'll eventually get to the explanation.) If you know me, you know that I don't often bake. Not until the end of the year, that is, because the holidays are baking time, in my mind at least. It's not that I don't like to do it year-round. It's just that I don't want to eat too much of a not-so-healthy food (and that's the only stuff worth baking), and then we don't often finish off whatever it is before it's gone bad/stale, and then I feel bad about eventually throwing it out. So, I feel guilty if I do eat it, and I feel guilty if I don't. But Jake is really into baking (I think at least partially because they do it so often at preschool), so we pulled out a cookbook this afternoon and sat down to decide what we should make together. After a little deliberation, we settled on chocolate chip cookies. I didn't actually go with the recipe in Jake's Betty Crocker Kid's Cook!, but instead went with my all-time favorite cookies, Martha Stewart's recipe for Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (2 Weight Watchers points per cookie).

Now, since I don't often bake, I needed to check the list of ingredients to figure out what we had on hand, and what I needed to pick up from the store. I picked up the flour container, and it felt heavy enough that I knew we had plenty for cookies. But on a whim, I decided to actually open it up and check on the flour inside (since last time I baked anything was probably before Christmas). Sure enough, I opened up the bag to see hundreds of tiny black dots moving around. Apparently, these little bugs are known as flour weevils and are usually present as larvae inside the bag of flour even before you get it home, so that's how they manage to grow and multiply inside a sealed container. Gross. A trip to the grocery store was a definite necessity before the baking would commence.

Anyhow, this discovery reminded me of one of my new favorite blogs, The Frugal Girl. Every Friday, she posts her Food Waste Friday blog, which includes a picture of the food that she throws out each week, in an effort to hold herself accountable for reducing the amount of waste. If you look back at the earlier blogs, you can see that she was wasting what was probably less than the average household, but still a lot compared to what gets wasted now (she often has weeks with no waste at all).

Okay, so you guessed it. The picture at the top is my own Food Waste Friday, er, make that Saturday.

-About a quarter of the bag of flour.

-A relatively small amount of salt. I know, you're probably wondering how salt goes bad. Well, when you've had it so long that it clumps up, and even when you beat the container against the counter, you can't seem to break it down enough to get the salt to pour out the top, then it's gone bad. That's my definition, at least. The only way that I could have gotten the last big chunk out would have been to somehow tear the top off of the container to access it, and that just seemed like way too much work, especially considering that I already had another unopened container in the pantry. (It's actually a small cabinet where we keep the food, but I like to think of it as a pantry. It feels fancier. But, I digress.) 

-Most of a very small can of tomato paste. (What do you do with the rest of it when the recipe only calls for a tablespoon or two? No, those aren't marshmallows in there, it's mold. Yes, that one had been in the fridge for awhile.)

-Half of a container of grape tomatoes (I'm not a big tomato fan, so I find it hard to finish those off before they become wrinkly and gross).

-The rest of a can of enchilada sauce.

-About a dozen pepperoni.

-Most of a jar of pizza sauce. I guess I should freeze the tomato-based products in smaller, usable quantities after I open them, huh?

Anyhow, I don't even think this was that bad of a week for me, but I am wondering if I already threw out other stuff earlier in the week that I didn't document. Hmm, I think I should try to do this regularly and see what comes of this little experiment.

But maybe I need to take a step back for a minute to tell you why I even care. Recent studies have shown that the average U.S. household wastes approximately 14% of their food purchases, or that a family of four throws out $590 per year in just meats, fruits, vegetables and grain products. This is a waste of the water, energy and oil that went into producing, packaging, transporting and selling the food, even if it does get composted. If not, it goes into the landfill, where yes, it decomposes, but that's part of the problem because it causes a release of methane, which is about 23 times more damaging than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in our atmosphere. Every bit of food wasted contributes significantly to increasing our overall carbon footprint.

So, I may not be saving the world by taking a picture of our household's food waste from this week, but at least I'm trying to hold myself accountable. I could do a better job of planning meals around foods that we already have in the pantry or fridge, and at least cleaning out my fridge weekly will help me to see what's lurking in there that should be used up soon before it goes bad. Now, I really should check the freezer...

But again, I digress, because I started out this post talking about cookies.

So, Jake and I spent the afternoon baking chocolate chip cookies, and we had fun doing it. But, every time I have baked cookies in the last six months (which is probably a grand total of four times), they have turned out totally flat. And this time was no exception. Here, see for yourself:

I really don't understand what the problem is that causes my cookies to go flat. They seem fine until the start to bake, and then they just spread. And these last four batches of cookies were made by me in three different kitchens (in three different states, for that matter), with different recipes, different ingredients, different tools and different baking sheets. The only thing they had in common was me. Apparently, I bake flat cookies. But this didn't used to be a problem, so what about me, or my technique, has changed? I honestly don't know. I don’t let the butter melt; in fact I usually have a hard time waiting until it’s room temperature, so if anything, it’s over-chilled. I put the dough in the fridge in between batches, so that it stays chilled. I let the cookie sheet cool completely between batches. The only thing that I can think of is that maybe I over mix the dough? Because the butter is too cold, I have to work harder to mix it with the sugar, which adds more air into the dough, which causes it to spread more and flatten in the oven? I don’t know, but it’s the only theory that I could come up with. I may have to make another batch just to test my theory.

But, I should say, I think I might actually like the flat cookies even better- chewy in the middle and a little crispy around the edges. YUM!