Waste Not

As I've mentioned before, I waste food.  It's not something I'm proud of and I've consciously tried to cut down on the amount of food wasted at the Swans' nest.  But it seems that we always have something in the fridge that goes bad before we get around to eating it.  So when I ran across an article on http://www.slate.com/ this morning about 10 Tips to Reduce Your Food Waste, I was intrigued.

The article had these ten suggestions (followed by my commentary and thoughts):

1. Create—and then stick to—a shopping list.   I have a hard time with this one.  I even created a convenient little shopping list organization sheet (found here), and I used it  for a while but then fell off the wagon.  I think the real tip behind this tip is - PLAN AHEAD.  You can't create a grocery list if you don't know what you'll be eating for the week.

2. Shop a few times a week.  I think this can be a good tip, especially if you have a grocery store on your way home from work. By shopping a few times a week (as opposed to one massive shopping trip), you only shop for a few things at once and can reevaluate your grocery stock more often.  Thus, you're less likely to overbuy and can take your actual eating for the week into account. (i.e. if you plan to cook on Tuesday but end up going out for pizza, your whole week isn't totally derailed, whereas if you had bought 7 nights of meals at your one weekly shopping trip, you'll end up with extra food after that one night out.) The problem with this tip is actually taking the extra time to go to the store a few times a week.

3. Stick to a single cuisine, to maximize efficiency.  This would never have occurred to me, but I think its a fabulous idea.  For instance, I made stir fry last week and bought some water chestnuts to throw in for some added crunch.  But I only used half of the can.  A week later, the chestnuts are still sitting in the fridge.  But if I'd planned another pan-Asian meal the next night, less food would've been wasted.  This would also help my pasta sauce dilemma.  With two people, we always have leftover pasta sauce and the jar ends up sitting in the fridge for days/weeks and then I forget if we have any, buy more and before long we end up with three half empty jars in the back of the fridge.  But if we had pasta Monday night, Tuesday we could make pizza and then our whole can of pasta sauce might actually get used.  I think I'll try this tip out next week.  Italian week here we come!

4. Buy food with cash.  Sound tip, but for us, its never going to happen.  The Swans are not a cash based family and I don't see that changing any time soon.  I understand the rationale behind the tip - if you actually see your money in hand, you're more likely to make conscious decisions about spending it and won't overbuy at the store. 

5. Hit the supermarket salad bar.  This sounds ridiculous to me.  The thought behind this tip was that two people have a difficult time getting through a bag of celery or carrots before the food goes bad, so just buy what you need off the salad bar.  I guess it could work, but I don't trust supermarket salad bars, so I think I'll just stick with big bags and hope for the best.

6. Rein it in at the farmers market.  I'm guilty here.  I am easily lured in by kiwis and strawberries and exotic vegetables and never eat them all before they go bad.  Or I buy them and think I'll find a recipe to make using my fun new ingredient and never do.  So for me, this tip could read: just be realistic.

 

7. Wash and prep fruit and vegetables right away.  This is a great idea and one I've occasionally followed myself.  Especially good for carrots and other snacks that you can cut and divide into individual portions for easy grab and go access.  The only concern here is that veggies and fruit spoil quicker once they're cut, so you may not want to cut everything right away - instead maybe cut what you need for the next three days and then have another prep session on the fourth day.

8. Keep track of what's in your fridge and pantry, with expiration dates.  Again this is not something I would ever think of, but its a brilliant idea.  Do you know what you actually have in your fridge and freezer?  I don't.  The other day Mr. Cob found some frozen chicken that I'd planned to use to make chicken stock months ago.  And we honestly have about 7 different kinds of mustard, but realized we were out of ketchup Saturday night when friends were over for burgers.  Inventorying would initially take some time to put together, but once completed, it'd be easy to keep up with on a white board, chalk board or computer.

9. Use the freezer—and use it wisely.  I try to use the freezer wisely, but often I fail.  Lately I've been good about throwing browning bananas in the freezer to use at some later date for banana bread.  And if I buy too much chicken or meat at the grocery store I tend to throw half of it in the freezer.  What I'm not good about is packing up the leftovers from a big meal and freezing them - instead they're more likely to end up at the back of our fridge, lost forever.

10. Schedule in your leftovers.  If I've planned my weekly meals, I am pretty good about scheduling in leftover nights.  Or we'll scheduled to eat them for lunches during the week.  Sometimes I just forget what we have though.  But this is a great tip, especially if you're just a family of two and always have leftovers after cooking.

So those were some great tips!  And in an effort to put them into action, I'm going to start using my grocery chart lists again and here's my plan for the rest of this week.

Wednesday - use leftover grilled pork loin (from Sunday's dinner) and extra slider buns (from Saturday night's chicken sliders) to make pork sliders with a side of leftover grilled veggies. (tip #10)

Thursday  - pasta with grilled chicken (that is currently frozen in the freezer - TIP #9) and frozen veggies (TIP #9)

Friday - omelets (with eggs that are set to expire June 30th - tip#8) with leftover chicken from Thursday's meal (TIP #10) - side note, am I stretching here?  Is a chicken omelet just gross?  Can you really cook these two together considering the egg comes from the chicken?  Ok, now I've grossed myself out.  Maybe we'll rethink Friday's meal and just have egg and cheese sandwiches.

And we will not go back to the grocery store until we use the food in the fridge!  I'll let you know how it goes...