Saturday, September 20, 2014

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday I join in with The Frugal Girl and Simply Being Mum to confess any food I have wasted during the week, in the hope of reducing my food waste through increased awareness of what is in my fridge (and public accountability!)










First off, after having spent the last few years snooping around SimplyBeingMum's fridge, I thought it was only fair to do the grand tour of mine :)


Top Shelf: Flax seeds, the much coveted chocolate and M&M's boxes (though I have noticed the chocolate box is nearly empty! Must.not.hyperventilate!), hummus, yogurts (a small container with cheese in it that  my daughter forgot to take to school)

Middle Shelf: this is my 'leftovers' shelf housing: tomato soup, vegetables for lunch, tofu for my Husband's dinner, half an orange ready to go for my daughter's lunch tomorrow and a container that will soon house half a lemon.

Bottom shelf: This shelf is reserved for eggs and meat (either fresh or defrosting, like these pork medallions are).

Drawers: vegetables on the left, fruit on the right, all still in good condition

Door: Spreads, cheese, condiments, water, rice milk, milk, all still in good condition.

Now onto the food waste and some saves!

I really though I was going to do brilliantly this week, what with my renewed enthusiasm for sharing my waste online! I am somewhat of an 'achiever' and I was determined to have no waste!
Then I cleaned out my fridge...

Waste Item 1:


I was so annoyed about this one! I am usually so careful about checking the dates when I buy something, but I was doing the grocery shop in a hurry and I only glanced at the date, thought 'that looks ok' then realised when I got home that I only had one week to use them all up! Needless to say it didn't happen and half the box ended up being disposed of after the best before date.

Waste Item 2: half a lemon that got forgotten about. (but I didn't photograph that)

But I did have some good saves!

Save Item 1: Being mindful of my food waste, and noticing a tub of hummus that was about to expire led to an extra condiment being dished up on my children's dinner plates. Chicken, with tomato sauce AND hummus :) Both being hummus fans, this was a big hit and it looks to become a regular addition to their dinner plates!

I have also started writing when I need to use it up by on the lid with a sharpie so if I see it's time is nearly up, I can use it up in a hurry.


Save Item 2: No photo of this one, but I managed a save with some stale bread. Again, knowing I was going to have to own up to my food waste made me more mindful of it during the week. I make my own bread every day and when slicing it up I had made the crusts at the end a bit large. My husband is the only one who likes eating the crusts and he was away, so I decided to use them to make a crumb topping for our vegetables for dinner.  Rather than getting out the food processor from the bottom cupboard, I just made 'rustic' crumbs by crumbling them up with my fingers. The bonus of stale home-made bread is that it crumbles easily and they went very crispy in the oven, topped with a little cheese :)

So, not the perfect week I was hoping for, but much better than I would have done without the motivation of accountability! Here's hoping for another almost (or completely!) waste free week next week!

Clare

3 comments:

  1. You can't beat sharpies! But I was once reminded not to write on actual egg with the pen. So glad to see you back. have added you link over at The Frugal Girl as it was taking me to sign in page again. Here's to a great week!
    Oh and I'll share on FB today x

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    1. Thanks Jo! It's nice to have the time and energy to be back again :) And thanks for the heads-up on my link! :)

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    2. Haha! I figured out the problem - not a Google fail, a Google-operator fail! Had the preview window open at the same time and copied the wrong one! Doh! ;)

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