Food Waste Friday | Sometimes crap happens...

Well my lovely readers, it has been a rough week for Mandy. I spent some of it recuperating from my out of town work trip and most of it contemplating the purpose of life.

The stress of everything made me clean instead of cook (not necessarily a bad thing). So now I have a nice clean apartment, but didn't cook a thing. Literally. The week isn't over yet, so we'll see what happens. The most I can hope for is a cook and freeze marathon on Sunday to keep more stuff from going bad.

Needless to say, I have a lot of food waste.

1.5 lbs of catfish fillets
6 cups of lime cilantro slaw
1 small head of lettuce (I can't seem to make myself eat it! I love salad!!)
An egg (cracked open but never used)
Okra and Rice
1 Lemon

And probably some other things.

Just so you know, the blog may be a little slower the next couple of months as I recoup. But I do not plan to give up on the blog just yet. I want to at least cook for a complete year before I throw in the blogging towel.

Food Waste Friday

For this Food Waste Friday I thought I would address the other side of Food Waste (besides the nastiness below). The one that doesn't include letting a peach rot on you counter.

Gluttony.

Gluttony is a serious issue in the United States. We eat when we know we are full or not hungry at all. That's pure waste. The money spent on food we eat when we aren't hungry could have been saved for a great trip out of town or compounded on a good quality cheese. Instead we look for the cheapest we can find so we can get more food to snack on during reruns on TV. I was watching a small snippet of a weight loss TV show and it claimed that in the overweight community there are more obese people that just overweight people! This is truly amazing to me. I solely put the blame on large scale farming.

Modern Americans actually spend less of their income on food than they did 50 or so years ago. However, they eat about quadruple the amount of meat and cheese. We also have tons of cheap junk food readily available in cute colorful packaging that everyone loves to pop open (remember the Pringles commercials from the 90s).


I could go on, but the doom and gloom of it all you've heard a million times. Instead I am going to focus on what we can strive to do.

1. Eat in season: Preferably with produce from your local farms, but if that's not an option learn what vegetables are in season. Tip: I cook in season! So just about any of the produce I am currently writing about is good to go!

2. Eat just what you need: Cook and eat just what you need for one meal. This will eliminate the temptation for seconds or thirds when you aren't really hungry. Lucky for you, most of the recipes featured on this blog are either perfectly portions or can easily be scaled down!

3. Support Local Farms: In order to rebuild a food system that sustains our bodies health, we have got to quit contributing to large scale productions of food. Even if you can't afford to eat a complete local diet, find one way you can support a local farmer. Perhaps you buy local meat once or two a week/month. Or maybe you could buy farm fresh eggs. Heck, fall is a great time to support local farms by checking out pumpkin patches and apple orchards!


Ok really... here is my actual food waste. No so great!

One head of butter lettuce
2 tiny eggplants (they were each smaller than my fist)
1 single stalk of green onion
1/4 package of fresh basil (it wasn't so fresh anymore)
Leftover sushi
1 Tomato
leftover heavy whipping cream
Spoiled milk

Food Waste Friday - Mother Load

So this week I have managed throw away:

Quart of Fruit
1/2 a Quart of Soup
Quart of Cut Vegetables
Spinach & Chicken Quesadilla
Bag of apples
More peaches
4 Slices of uncooked bacon
One whole cucumber


The first four items were given to me and most likely would have been thrown away regardless. But I could have refused and maybe they would have gotten eat. But not likely. I did manage to salvage one of the cucumbers. Half was used on a salad the other was thrown into a jar with some vinegar and seasonings... maybe my pickles will taste good. I did unearth some strange variety of yellow squash that went into a frittata.

Overall, this week was the mother load of my reported food waste. Yuck!

Food Waste Friday - Peach Fuzz Edition

I love peaches.

They make summer worth it. There is just something about that delicate fruit that calls to me. Sure, canned peaches don't taste bad. But they don't really taste that good (trust me, I try to convince myself otherwise with every can).

I can bite into that fuzzy flesh with no problem at all.

And let's not forget the peaches best quality... it kind of looks like a butt. And something about fuzzy butts leads to lots of off color jokes that I enjoy so much.

But in all their glories, they have one downfall. They like to rot and they like to rot fast.

The expression one bad apple ruins the bunch should change. I've had apples in a bowl that will last longer than a month and never rot like a peach. However, you put peaches in a bowl together and in less than a week you'll have a bowl full of muck with fruit flies taking over your small South Side apartment.


Now I am sure you are all wondering why I just don't eat them all, make cobbler for two, or make that peach ice cream I promised my room mate? The answer is... I don't know.

So for this long overdue Food Waste Friday, I can proudly report that I haven't thrown anything away but a few stray peaches over the last few weeks. But I am going to gobble up every peach in site. Because this is most likely the last week I'll see fresh peaches until next June.

So long my fuzzy friends.

Food Waste Friday | Week Three

So.... last week I didn't really feel like blogging. Somehow posting pictures of my wasted food couldn't pry me off my couch. There was waste last week, you just didn't see it. But fortunately I don't have anything more to add this week. So the picture from last week will be sufficient.

Wasted: Leftover cucumber salad, half a can of crushed pineapple, and some very stale bread. Over at Fridge de Dennis there was some slaw that no longer looked anything like slaw. It didn't even have the decency to turn into sauerkraut for my hot dogs.

Thanks to Kristen at The Frugal Girl for helping me reduce my waste by being mindful of what is in my frdige.

Food Waste Friday | Week Two

So today's episode of Food Waste was brought to you by mere accidents. For example, Tuesday morning I wake up and see half a package of opened cream cheese on the floor. It must have fallen out of the door when I was putting things away and I just didn't notice it.

I currently work at a restaurant which gives me great free food perks. For example, I get to take the hummus when it has "gone bad" according to store policy. However, it is usually good for at least another week. I have had so many cucumbers lately, that hummus really helps use them up. However, I noticed the other day the top of it was bulging (from the gas it emits, I guess?). So it is no more. Compost it becomes!

There is also a scoop of slaw that I put aside on the coffee table while I ate something else. I totally forgot about it, and woke up to find the wilted salad. No picture, it just went straight to the trash.

The orange juice is not mine. It really should have been in last weeks post, but I completely over looked it because it's not my property. My lovely roommate purchased it back in May (yeah.... gross) and didn't finish it before leaving for Fiji.

P.S. If you use Juicy Rewards, I'll totally give the code to whoever asks about it first in the comment section. I'm just a coke points girl here. We won't discuss my Diet Coke addiction just yet, it ain't a pretty picture.

Thanks to Kristen at The Frugal Girl for turning me on to this love... I mean... grossly adventure.

Food Waste Friday

Yeah... I know it's Saturday.

Yesterday I was too busy laying around on the sofa with Dennis, working, and then going out for wine to be bothered blogging. Life>Blogging. On a completely unrelated note... I tried a wine called Jazz Jam Sweet Shiraz, from South Africa - so yummy! I told Dennis I was celebrating the World Cup the only way I knew how.

So I have joined Kristen from The Frugal Girl and other bloggers in Food Waste Friday. Every Friday I will post pictures of the food that has to be thrown away because it has gone bad. This is to bring consciousness to the amount of money we throw away every week. The point of the picture is to shame the blogger into reducing their food waste so that they have nothing to report. In a Tim James kind of fashion, "It makes sense..... does it to you?".

I think this is terribly important for singles and doubles who cook. Sometimes when cutting a recipe, you only need half a can of something (it's usually tomato paste at my house) and you never seem to finish it off before it turns fuzzy.

This week, there is quite a bit of waste. And since I cook at two houses... I am not really sure what's under my jurisdiction. I will claim Dennis' food waste for him, but there are no pictures of that ugliness. I know you guys hate that!

From my house there are leftover grits from brunch party last week, some braised white beans from work, and lots of cold cuts. Two out of the four cold cuts aren't mine. They are my room mate's who left for Fiji a few weeks ago. I don't really eat much sandwich stuff, so this was bound to happen.

From Dennis' house, there was a whole pineapple that we go to too late. We thought very briefly about salvaging it, but there were so many brown spots to cut around that it wasn't going to happen. And there is some chicken broth that I don't know how long has been in there. I am not sure when chicken broth goes bad, but I am not going to find out by trial and error.