Vera's Food Waste Fight Thread

Maybe serve the bean and corn salad on a bed of lettuce?

Or try grilled or broiled romaine wedges with olive oil, garlic and lemon, or with some kind of mayonnaise sauce.

Potatoes can be used to stretch just about anything by making it into a cottage pie type thing. Leftover soup, curry, casserole can all go in a baking dish with mashed potato spread on top and baked. Most people would top it with cheese, but I always caramelized onions and zucchini, mixed them with toasted nuts or seeds and used that as a topping.

If you have some wilty vegetables, but not quite enough to make something with - cottage pie. Cook them up in some broth or tomatoes, throw in a few lentils to bulk it up, top with potato.

A lot of the leftovers you've been describing could get the same treatment.

Another thing you can do with leftover bread is make seasoned bread crumbs to sprinkle on pasta, vegetables,or eat with a spoon. You can season them with pretty much anything - lemon zest and garlic are pretty common. Fry them in a bit of olive oil until they're nice and brown, then put them on everything.

If you trim a bit of the bottom off the romaine heart and set it in water, you might be able to extend its life, depending on how far gone it is.

I am restarting my waste-free-day count.

I was able to use most of the lettuce (I still have most of one heart, but it’s actually lasting a lot longer and in better condition than I expected it to) but while focusing on the lettuce – not only testing the recipe I purchased it for, but also using it as a “base layer” for another supper and shoving unusual amounts of it into sandwiches – I forgot about some beans I had in the back of the fridge.
I know that you can eat some sprouting beans, but I was not feeling brave enough to try it, and I’m not sure it would be a good idea to eat some that have accidentally sprouted, anyway.
I did think about putting them in the garden, but I couldn’t think of where to put them. So they ended up thrown out.

Since I was throwing out, I also threw out some frosting that I’d purchased as back-up in case of homemade frosting failure last month for a birthday. I didn’t need it, and I’m not sure it’s really food anyway. Being there as back up, it had served its purpose.

During next week’s grocery/meal cycle, I hope to continue to shop frugally and use up what’s already in the pantry and freezer – I have my eye out for a number of staples when they next go on sale, but so far no luck, and I suspect I won’t really have a stock-up opportunity until September, now. There is a sale on maple syrup this week that I’ll probably take advantage of!

I have continued to harvest a handful or so of currant berries every other day from the bush in my backyard, and there are still fresh onions waiting to be harvested as well. I pulled up a baby potato plant yesterday because it was shading out some of my other plants and it was an “extra – just shove it in anywhere” planting – the result was two small very small but very perfect and very fresh potatoes eaten last night.
Soon-ish I’ll be going on a holiday, and it will be interesting to see if I can manage to be food-waste-less away from home.

My experiment recipe next week will be “eggplant caviar” – I’m hoping it will go well as an alternative to hummus. It should be fairly warm for the next week or so here, so I’m glad that I finished off the last of the homemade soup a few days ago – I can’t stand hot soup in hot weather – although this might be a good time to make another batch of sorrel soup!

Hesitated but ultimately decided to buy some chicken quarters the other day at the grocery store, and was able to find a delicious pressure cooker recipe to cook them up as the 'special' weekend meal. This was only the second time I've used the pressure cooker -  I certainly appreciated it's lesser-energy-use way on the hot day. I can understand now why I've heard wise ladies talking about putting something in their cookers and placing it out on the patio to cook on summer days like the ones we're having now! I can see myself doing that in the future.

The eggplant caviar recipe worked out well, although it made a lot of eggplant mix and even though I put about half into the freezer I still have something of an excess that I need to eat over the next few days. My housemate is doing their picnic thing again this week so I will have excess sandwich material all around.  Hopefully I'll be able to have some easy lunch-is-also-supper meals.

I finished the romaine hearts, my currant bush is now mostly "out of stock" for the season, but the saskatoons are still ripening by the tiny handful each day, just enough to go with breakfast - which was bread pudding from the freezer this morning.

When it's hot I tend not to want to eat too much, so the next little while will be slower than my average in the kitchen, although I do want to harvest my sage and still want to make some up some sorrel soup. Mostly, however, I'll be eating sandwiches and left-overs from the freezer for the immediate future!

All right, so I fell off the wagon again...

I threw out some more food in the past couple of days. I had to ditch some of the left-over lunch meat, and I decided that at the same time I would throw out some frozen beet slices that I'd purchased from the store over the winter, only to discover that I didn't like them, my housemate didn't like them, and we were really not eating them. They came from a very long way away (something I didn't realize until after I'd brought them home) and I suspect they were quite elderly even before I put them in the freezer. Also, I tossed a few condiments that we getting elderly and tasteless, including some homemade horseradish that had lost it's potency and was constantly spilling out and making a mess of the shelves.

The good news is that last month's shopping budget was back in line with the average I'm trying to maintain, despite the continual news about how inflation is the highest now that it has ever been since I've been alive. And despite the fact that I've been throwing out food!

I think that at this point I'll take the rest of July "off" from keeping track of food waste, since I'm going to be travelling for part of it and it's not starting out too well anyway. I am making a note in my calendar to be back at it in August, and of course although I won't be "reporting in" on how I do for the rest of this month, I will be trying to remain conscious of eating what I have and not over-buying.

Happy fourth to those celebrating!

And I'm back!

Over my holiday, I did pretty well, only wasting a few fries at restaurants and half a bag of premade salad which froze on me, and perhaps a few other small bits of things. Now that I've been back at home for a few days, I'm starting to keep track again of what I spend and what I throw out for the kitchen. I'm planning on sitting down sometime this week to write out a bit of a plan for the month's meals for myself.
We're having people over this evening and I've made a big potato salad from the potatoes grown in my garden - perfect hot weather food, to go with rolls and cold cuts and I'm not sure what else exactly yet. Maybe I'll make a green salad too, although I don't think the people coming over are really salad people.
Later this week my housemate is doing one of their picnics and I'm hoping that'll use some of the left overs we'll probably create tonight.
This is day one - I wonder if I can make it to fifty days free of food waste?

So far so good!
I'm working on putting complete meals into the freezer for later by making double or more than I need right away when I attempt a recipe. So I've made the pressure-cooked chicken again, this time doubled up, and have three servings of soup made in part from the left-over broth that made, as well as I'm planning to eat the other half of the chicken pieces tomorrow. I also made a double batch of brown rice while putting together the chicken supper, and have frozen some of it and used some of it in a crustless quiche which absorbed some spare veggies as well.
And I made another bowl full of potato salad today and popped most of it into the freezer (after helping myself to some for lunch.) I would like to cook up some rhubarb and sorrel from the garden again, it looks like they can spare me a second harvest this yearm but I'm not sure if I'll have time to do that later this week or not.
I bought some apricots from a farm stand on the weekend, unfortunately they're going a bit funny, so I will try and convince myself to have them as part of dessert tonight.

I haven't been as on top of the food this week as last week, but thanks to earlier preparation, I still haven't wasted anything!

I did cook up more rhubarb compote --- just now I did a complete survey of what is in my freezer, and about 30% of the space is taken up with rhubarb in one form or another now, including part of a rhubarb bread (which was a banana bread recipe, only with rhubarb compote instead of the banana.) The bread is good but it's quite dense and I've had to freeze some so it won't go completely stale before I can eat it...

I 'solved' some of The Rhubarb Problem for the future by yanking out one of my plants, but I still have so much rhubarb to eat through!

At the moment there is very little space in the freezer and it's a bit of a problem. It requires some effort to pull out the top freezer shelf, it's so loaded!

Complicating matters is that we're at the height of the local fruit season, and I've been buying fresh plums, apricots, nectarines to eat and not eating from the freezer. I deliberately bought some nectarines which were marked down at a local fruit stand because they were "imperfect" --- the stems were missing. They still seem fine to eat to me, although they are perhaps not ripening fully. (?) I also found some really lovely sweet red onions, have to fight off the urge to buy a whole big box of them --- I still have chopped up onion in the freezer from the last bag of onions I bought!

I have thought about buying a stand-alone freezer, but I worry that a) I'll just fill it up with things I only get to eventually or not at all and b) it's not a great option if the power goes out. also c) I'm not sure where I would put it. It would d) save time over canning.

In an ideal world I would make and can some tomato sauce from the lovely local tomatoes that are on sale along the roadside now, using some of my garden basil, (and those red onions) but this week has been busy with appointments and events and next week may be a bit busy as well. (Also, most of my canning jars are currently in the freezer, holding things in there!) And I have a work deadline on the 25th.

I would still like to do something to preserve the second crop of sorrel that's available now.

Tomorrow is a big "shop in the city" day, this month so far I've been able to stick within my budget, but tomorrow's shop will likely put a big hole in it!

Managed to stay on budget while in the city, more or less.

This past week I've been working on eating from the freezer --- and working on not adding anything to the freezer! However, someone gave us a GIGANTIC zucchini which I'd like to use to re-test one of the recipes for my cookbook project, but that needs to be made in the oven, and I haven't wanted to turn that on... maybe I could on the weekend, if it still looks in good shape by then, but I might have to chop it up and freeze it to preserve it first.
I bought cauliflower in the city because it was a good deal but I haven't used any of it yet - I keep forgetting that I don't actually like working with cauliflower super-much. Tried out a new-to-me recipe a few days ago that used some sauerkraut, carrot, celery, green pepper and nasturtium for a salad. The celery in the fridge is looking quite sad, if I remember later today I might have to chop that up and freeze it so I don't lose it.
I was able to pull an already-made meal out of the freezer for supper, allowing me to attend an evening meeting without too much meal-stress. Had the left-overs for breakfast and I'm very full right now!

Ugh...so after my earlier post the universe was like take her down a peg

Had some asparagus go bad...I don't even know how I missed that in the fridge. I'm blaming my COVID nose as in sometimes it doesn't work. Then some mushrooms hid under a cabbage.

Anyway, wanted to point out that it happens. I'm curious why your onions are chopped up in the freezer already? I mean good onions last awhile...

A local food pantry would totally have taken your excess rhubarb or a foodnet kind of group.

We just had a freezer clean out kind of month where we weren't buying much but some staple ingredients and veg to go with the randomness of the end of the bags stuff. Turned a couple old roasts into enchiladas and fancy tot casserole instead of ground beef from the cow we got in '20.

With the frozen fruit it might be wise to turn some of it into jam? I found some old blackberries in the freezer and turned it into just a quick fridge jam. Made some scones with it and my partner liked it on pancakes.

Also might be helpful if the quick bread you're making and not eating the whole loaf within a week is to make smaller loaves or a cupcake tin. Getting one of those out the night before for breakfast or to have with tea is nice and portion control (sorry my partner would probably walk around just eating the loaf like a burrito if I let him lol).

Exciting news! I bought a stand-alone freezer. This was done a bit on the spur-of-the-moment, but I have been wondering if I should get one on and off since moving to the valley, and there was a sale…
So now I have extra freezer space. It’s a small one, because I don’t want to be the person who has food that has been frozen at the back of their freezer for decades. I’ve installed it in my basement. Once I have something to put in it, I will plug it in and get it running! Earlier, I made a test batch of pasta sauce from some local/cheap tomatoes and it worked out well, perhaps the first thing to go into the new freezer will be more pasta sauce if I buy a box of tomatoes the next time I pass a fruit stand.
I am hoping that having this extra freezer space will result in my being better able to take advantage of sales, particularly on seasonal produce. (And that it’ll help me take better advantage of what I manage to grow myself, of course!)
Of course, I am aware that the extra freezer won’t do me much good should the electricity go out.
Despite going into the city twice this month for shopping and despite a birthday, I have very nearly managed to keep within the grocery budget for the month of August – if we don’t count the cost of the freezer!
And I’ve gone the full month without throwing out any food – excepting a glass jar of pasta sauce which broke in the fridge freezer recently. I had stored it in a bottle which had initially held some store-bought curry sauce, and although I’d used it once or twice before in the freezer, this was the first time I’d tried freezing liquid-y food in it, and I guess it wasn’t designed to resist, it quite impressively shattered. I’m not counting this against my streak, sometimes accidents just happen.
I will have to remember to use proven containers should I make up that big batch of tomato sauce I’m thinking about.
Updated my list of everything in the fridge and fridge-freezer, and that has me trying to eat up the last of a celery which is getting very droopy. I could buy celery by the stalk and I would have less problems managing it in the house – however, that would really only transfer the celery-waste further up the food chain, not eliminate it. I’m getting better about serving left-overs for suppers with other people, instead of feeling obligated to eat them alone for breakfast or lunch, which was starting to make me a bit resentful of being the “garbage can.”
Challenges for the next week include that I will be eating out a couple of times, that I need to finish off that celery, and as a result of birthday celebrations, I have a lot of expensive cheese (and some cake) to take care of in the next little bit. I also have four egg roll sheets in the fridge, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. I think I need to bake them with something so that they’re edible, but having just made egg rolls a few days ago, I’m not sure I’m up to more egg-rolling just for the sake of four sheets. Maybe I can put some of the fancy cheese on them and broil them up in the oven?

S Ydok wrote:
Anyway, wanted to point out that it happens. I'm curious why your onions are chopped up in the freezer already? I mean good onions last awhile...

A local food pantry would totally have taken your excess rhubarb or a foodnet kind of group.


With the frozen fruit it might be wise to turn some of it into jam? I found some old blackberries in the freezer and turned it into just a quick fridge jam. Made some scones with it and my partner liked it on pancakes.

Also might be helpful if the quick bread you're making and not eating the whole loaf within a week is to make smaller loaves or a cupcake tin. Getting one of those out the night before for breakfast or to have with tea is nice and portion control (sorry my partner would probably walk around just eating the loaf like a burrito if I let him lol).

Hi! With the onions, I find that they'll start sprouting in my kitchen cupboard if I buy a net bag full, so that's why I sometimes freeze them.

You're right that I could have taken the rhubarb to a share-place. That's one of the things that I meant to get around to doing this season and still haven't done - there's a Monday night food-share in town, and someday I'll actually go.

I shall have to try making muffins instead of quick bread the next time!

I went ahead and bought a box of tomatoes from a farm stand. There was a special deal on forty pounds of romas at the stand we pulled up at, and it seemed like the universe was saying "do it!" to my plan for tomato sauce. So I did it!
I just finished up processing the tomatoes this morning. The kitchen was a huge mess, and I still have some pots to clean out.
I actually got closer to forty-three pounds of tomatoes as the farmer filled the box as I was waiting and kept throwing more into the box even after the scale had registered forty pounds. I almost wanted to say, "stop, stop, I don't know if I can deal with even forty pounds!" but I held my tongue.

I now have enough tomato/pasta sauce to see me through the winter. I pre-mixed some with cooked chicken, ground beef, or canned sardines, and some I kept vegetarian. I was able to use basil and carrots fresh from my garden, and used up some frozen veggies, too. Some I made chunky, some I mashed by hand, and some I blended with my immersion blender. (that got... messy at times.) (Non-pro tip: Don't let your blender cord melt against the stove top element while you're merrily blending away in your big pot! Fortunately I noticed the danger before any damage was done.)
I also made a tiny batch of tomato juice (just to see if that was fun) (yes, but not as fun as other things;) some tomato soup, which I don't usually like all that much but I generally want some a couple of times a winter;  and some salsa.

Next time, I will make more salsa. I was making (and tasting) it yesterday, and it was absolutely delicious, especially that which I made with red onion. I had to switch to white onion as some of the red onions I'd bought were funky, but the red onion that was good was so good!

I have to confess that in order to store/freeze all the tomato product, after exhausting my glass container supply and re-purposing two milk cartons, I bought some plastic freezer bags. I am hoping that they will prove to be reusable as the packaging claims, at least. Ideally I would have enough glass jars and enough energy to can those that you can, instead of freezing everything and some in plastic, but I am still quite happy that I got done what I got done.

There is still room in the freezer!
Perhaps when the local apple harvest really gets rolling I will have another couple of days of playing in the kitchen...

Tonight we're having home-grown potato salad, pressure-cooked chicken thigh-meat, and corn on the cob for supper. And perhaps a salad.

The streak of no-waste continues - to no one's surprise, I was able to "dispose of" the birthday cake - I brought home a carton of food from a fancyish restaurant and enjoyed it the next day... interestingly, I got the impression that if I hadn't asked for a carton to take my left-overs with me, no one was going to offer one. I'm used to being offered a "doggie bag" at restaurants if there's food left on my plate, but maybe that's falling out of favour due to staffing shortages or something? Or maybe the restaurant was so fancy it was gauche of me to ask? I'm not supposed to care that I'm leaving expensive food behind? I did note that the table next to us left behind a lot of bread which seemed untouched. (I was tempted to take it, too, but I didn't want to be seen as too eccentric at that moment.)

I made thigh-meat today instead of chicken quarters, because unfortunately the last time I made chicken quarters, I found it very difficult to get rid of all the little bones, and as I'm often sharing my food with older people, the last thing I want is someone choking on a chicken bone. I will probably buy bone-in chicken thigh from now on instead of the chicken quarters as they come with only one big bone each, easy to remove! And they are about the same price at my local store as the chicken quarters.

There are three egg roll sheets left in my fridge now.
I still have sorrel in the garden waiting to be used, and there is basil that is now "left-over" from tomato-sauce needs, as well as a bit of cilantro from the salsa.

My test recipe of this weekend or early next week will be cooking up some black-eyed peas and a quick cheese bread recipe that dates from 1949.

I don't want to gloat,.. well maybe just a little.
My neighbor lady recently declared me her leftovers guy.

She hates leftovers.
Boom today she brought me cornbread, chili, and beef stew.

I don't take the time I should to cook a good meal for myself.

I have let a lot of garden produce get away this year.
But I give away as much as I can.

I have scrounged a bunch of wild elderberries and grapes that would have gone to waste.
Overall I should be going into winter with a good food supply.

As I set down to write this week's update I saw that this thread has had 1500 views! Wow!

We had to throw out some sandwiches the other day, but this was not our fault - my house mate took some with him to his usual picnic and because he was leaving early he left them behind in a cooler to be eaten by the other people --- but they came back to the house in the cooler, several hot days later!! My housemate offered to try eating them anyway but I told him not to worry, I wouldn't count it against us, no sense in going begging for food poisoning. Really the people he left them with at the picnic should have taken them home and had them for supper if they couldn't have eaten them all at the picnic.

I enjoyed the bacon-and-black-eyed peas recipe that I tested last week, and I have a number of servings frozen for later. The quick bread didn't work out quite so well, as it was quite salty and also it came out of the bread pan in pieces, but it wasn't wasted.

Yesterday I went through our cupboards a bit as it is a food bank drive here today and I wanted to see what I could put out at the front of the house to be picked up. One of the things I discovered was that we have some (gross and disgusting tasting) potato chips which are also intended for the housemate's picnics - only one bag was already past it's best-by date and the second is rapidly approaching it.
I very nearly just threw the already-past-date bag out, but then I decided to look for recipes that could use them up.
I ended up making some cookies with crushed potato chips in them. They are not fantastic, but they do taste a lot better then the potato chips by themselves, and it meant I didn't throw a full bag of potato chips into the garbage. It's gotten cooler here in the last couple of days so it's okay to bake again.
While I was going through the cupboard I also pulled out some chickpeas and mixed beans in cans and I mashed them up into a "hummus," added some chili powder that's been hanging around for awhile. I've frozen about two-thirds of the bean paste for later but I did have some for lunch today as well.

Yesterday I tested a recipe for croque madame which turned out quite yummy (although the making of it was quite intense, you have to get everything done in order, quickly!) and this morning I tested a recipe for oatmeal-molasses cookies, both of these will be going towards my cookbook project.
The oatmeal-molasses cookies were good for finishing up a bag of almond slices which was both two years past the best before date and not being stored in the fridge, even though I discovered this morning that it said right on the bag to put them in the fridge once opened. Oh well. These cookies taste great (and most of them have gone into the freezer for the future.)

Oh, I finally used up the spring roll wrappers, so I don't need to worry about them anymore!
My budget is not looking all that great for this month, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to do a very light shop next week to pull it back towards where it should be.
I have some kale in the garden that is getting quite big and I should try and remember to use their leaves soon.

craig howard wrote:I don't want to gloat,.. well maybe just a little.
My neighbor lady recently declared me her leftovers guy.

She hates leftovers.
Boom today she brought me cornbread, chili, and beef stew.

I don't take the time I should to cook a good meal for myself.

I have let a lot of garden produce get away this year.
But I give away as much as I can.

I have scrounged a bunch of wild elderberries and grapes that would have gone to waste.
Overall I should be going into winter with a good food supply.

I love the idea of being "the leftovers guy" for the neighbors! Congratulations!

I finally had time to read through this thread and I just want to say I love what you are doing!  It is very much in line with our family's goal of ungarbaging our lives in about a year.  This month we started in the kitchen.  So it's great to have my motivation re-upped!

Keep doing the good work!

I don't want to jinx it, but I think I've past 50 days without throwing out food now!

I'm trying to get into the habit of doing food prep on Fridays, the day after grocery shopping day. Today I slow-cooked some chicken thighs (in a bath made in part of the last three-quarters of a cup of a big tomato soup jar I ate last week) and that should give me about six servings worth of meat in the future, plus I'm holding onto a lot of the soup-liquid from the pot and threw in the last of a bag of mini-wontons so that I'll have more tomato soup from this adventure later - and as an extra bonus from the slow cooking, I have about a cup of the liquid that I'm planning to use when I next make some rice, to add extra flavour.

I also made a cheesy pasta casserole into which I added the last of the frozen brussel sprouts I picked up at the store to try and determine if part of my aversion to brussel sprouts is because of the preparation involved in eating fresh sprouts - the frozen ones only need to be boiled five minutes, according to the package.
Turns out, the preparation was not the problem, I just don't like brussel sprouts that much. Good thing it was a small bag I bought. Mixing them into cheesy pasta does help hide the taste.
I topped the casserole with some more crushed potato chips. I thought that this recipe could count towards my cookbook project, but now that I've done it, when I look over my cookbook plan, I no longer see where I was going to fit it in!

I have a lot of "food for the future" now and I should try and make most of the next week a "eat from the freezer" week. The shopping yesterday was back on budget - unfortunately it needed to be significantly below the weekly budget to help fix the monthly budget problem. Next week is a big city shopping week as we have appointments and errands to run there - I think this month's shopping budget is probably doomed again.

Still need to write up the molasses-oatmeal cookie recipe from last week, I should really do that this evening. I want to bake a chocolate Aladdin cake for my cookbook project and for this week's dessert -- ran out of time for it today, so maybe I'll get that done tomorrow. I've been trying to buy fewer sweets and baked goods from the grocery shops this month, but... I'm not sure substituting homemade baking is really an advancement in terms of healthy habits.

I've been enjoying fresh carrots from my garden - still haven't used the kale, and I should probably harvest the basil that's left over from my sauce-making frenzy. I might give up on the idea of harvesting anymore sorrel this year as I still have a lot dried in my cupboard which I haven't used in anything yet. The sage really looks nice and I should definitely harvest it again this coming week.

Well, as I predicted, the food budget for this month was horribly compromised. We spent about a third more than I aim to. This was in part because yesterday during our big city shop, I had an appointment and was absent from the grocery shopping for about an hour - when I returned I discovered that there had been purchasing of a significant amount of pastries, including two boxes of croissants.
I asked "are we doing the picnic tomorrow?" because sometimes croissants are turned into sandwiches, and that would sort of make sense of what I saw, that perhaps this was for a year-end party of some kind.
Apparently not.
So anyway,

We did get our (Canadian) Thanksgiving turkey during this past shop.
It fits in our new extra freezer, which is good, because it would not fit in the fridge-freezer.

I haven't done much prep work today even though it's Friday and I want to try and do food prep on Fridays - I did finish processing some extra cilantro and then most of the basil from my garden today. I have a bit of an ankle/foot problem at the moment which is cramping my style. There are several items in the fridge that I'd like to sort out and use up by the end of the weekend.

Earlier this week I dried the second sage harvest of the year, picked beans, and brought in a squash. I also started on making "fake capers" from nasturtium seeds.

I am looking into how to cook red amaranth leaves as a deer cropped off the flowers/seed buds again, but left the leaves. I think I will cook them up with some onion and put them in an omelette.

The same deer ate my kale - I rescued one meal's worth on an emergency basis.

I still haven't thrown out any food.

On Sunday, I'm participating in a vintage recipe cookbook event and have promised to make a Jello "cheese fluff."
I might end up throwing that out.

I have a new best of 63 days without food waste.

I had to throw out a couple of red onions yesterday, which were going moldy and also I threw out the cheese fluff I made over the weekend. It was technically edible, but it tasted terrible.
The onions I could probably have saved if I'd gone over the bag of onions as soon as I brought it home, but I didn't.

So I will start again on a new streak today!

My nasturtium "capers" have worked out well so far.

Congratulations on your journey! More people should be aware of food waste and how to avoid it.

When reading through the thread I was unsure if some of your challenges lie in the cookbook project or in your usual habits?
When you risk going over budget and struggle to fit in all those leftovers it looks like you buy a little too much for your usual "turnover".
I would aim at buying a little "too little" so that you are even a bit anxious if it is enough for the week / month (not sure if this is clear?).

So if you really have to think about what you could pull out of fridge, freezer and pantry and how you could incorporate leftovers and get creative you will both save money and avoid food going bad. To me it sounds like you get attracted by sales, seasonal offers and such and a lot of that wanders into the freezer. You mentioned that you make "eat from the freezer" weeks but this should become a habit.

I am not a 100% consequent with this - still have to deal with some cherries and sweet corn - both my own - but for the rest I have a decent rotation. Throwing away food almost never happens. I incorporate all leftovers into new meals, or husband takes it to the office for lunch, or if I really cooked too much pasta on a day when the kids are very picky I only reheat it once and then it goes to the chickens - the best thing against wasting food!

I get inspired by meal prepping videos on YouTube, especially ProHome Cooks, Rainbow Plant Life and Pick up Limes. Combining batch cooking and modular meals have been a great addition to my cooking routine.

Ahem, so I will be starting again on a new streak... tomorrow.

Thank you for your comments, Anita.

You're right that I tend to buy a little too much rather than just enough or even a little too little. There are a couple of reasons, I think.

1) One is that my housemate's groceries are included in my budget, and they have a very strong feeling that if the fridge or cupboard is looking a bit bare it's a failing. They will go out and buy stuff if they think I haven't bought enough. I think this is related to their childhood when sometimes food was a bit scarce, for them they feel much more secure when they know there's enough to eat. Unfortunately "enough" often translates to too much. They also tend to buy sweets and pastries like the world will end if a day goes by without dessert, which is a bit of a constant challenge.

2) I grew up in a household where grocery shopping trips were built around the weekly sales flyers, so I am definitely vulnerable to buying things on sale even if I don't really need it!

3) The cookbook project does add an extra dimension at times, as does testing recipes for a friend's projects

4) I am trying to slowly build up a bit of a stockpile of canned and shelf-stable foods again, as we used to have one for emergencies but used all of it during the covid lockdown and transport disruption days and haven't been able to build it up properly again. I have lots of food in the fridge and freezer, and if the only problem that comes up in the near future is that I can't get to the store, we will be fine for probably several weeks, but if the electricity goes out AND we can't get to a store (or the store is empty) we would not be in a great position.

My first grocery shop this month was under budget, hurray!

I am currently making a loaf of no-knead bread.

At least I hope I am. I will have to wait until tomorrow to see if it bakes up properly.

Vera, thanks for the background info and great news for the next round!
Yeah for homemade bread, let us know how it turned out.

Once you have made bread it is less likely you will just throw out leftovers. I saw a video the other day from an American living in Germany who considered it a German life-hack that they don't throw away stale bread but make dumplings out of it ;-) (or crumbs for breading fried food or bread pudding or croutons...). Maybe the dumplings are typically German, but I am confident that permies from other countries also avoid throwing away leftover bread.

I still haven't reestablished my disposal method for left over bread from the shop. We've been doing very well recently (autumn is a difficult time as we adjust to fewer visitors)  and have easily dealt with any out of date by freezing it if necessary. In our climate it will last a few days past the date and still be fine.
My go-to recipe if we have more than we need is luxury bread and butter pudding. It works best in my opinion with crusts saved from a mixture of normal white and brown bread, but you can use whole loafs as well. I've seen recipes online using brioche and croissants, so if you have pastries going stale it may be worth a try with those.
Basic method is layer the bread slices (crusts and all) with dried fruit (we use raisins, currants, sultanas, cherries) in a deep rectangular oven dish. Push down the bread with your hands as you go to compact it slightly. A layer of sliced marzipan is great towards the top if you have some. sprinkle some mixed ground spice in a middle layer, and some caster sugar (as you would use for cake baking) on the top quite thickly as this is the only extra sweetener the pudding gets. Then mix up liquid: one egg per pint (UK) milk and pour over the top carefully until the basin is full. The leave it in a cool place, either overnight or for a few hours for the liquid to soak up into the bread. Bake in a moderate oven, probably 160 deg C, 300 deg F until risen, cooked through, and slightly brown on top, probably about 90 minutes. This is good with custard or cream. It freezes well so would be an easy pudding to satisfy your flatmate.

Hooray YOU for bringing personal accountability to the tool box, when it comes to reducing food waste!

The common culture teaches us not to even see waste in our own homes and on our plates.  Why?
Could it be because that works so well to drive consumption of processed, packaged, over-priced, poor quality food products?

When your mindset around food shifts to include waste reduction as a working concept, you'll stop spending money, time and labor on food that fills you up but leaves you empty.
Because you'll find the real "Joy of Eating".  

Think about the difference between eating a snack-pack of cheddar fishies (... or two, or three) and eating a delicious toasted cheese sandwich like those described by other contributors in this thread.

When you think about it, food always tastes BETTER when you think about it!

Thanks for creating this thread.  I'll put my method for freezing (and using) frozen milk in a separate post.

Old Milk - Freeze it!

This method will give you milk that's just fine for cooking:  Making sauces, puddings, soups and baked goods.

It does require keeping an eye on what's going on with what's in your jug, and being honest about whether it will be consumed before it will be fully spoiled.  For example, if you know you're going to travel and that the half-quart in the fridge won't last until you return, this method will keep it from going to waste.

Here's the fast and simple version:
Pour your milk into a low, flat baking dish.  The kind you would bake brownies in.  Ideally, one with a fitted cover to reduce risk of spillage.  
Otherwise, don't bother with plastic wrap.  The dish is just for purposes of getting the milk to freeze into a block.
You're not going to store the milk long-term in this dish and plastic wrap won't stop a serious spill.

Put the dish in the freezer on a level, stable rack - especially if your dish doesn't have a fitted cover.

After a couple of hours, you should have a solid block of frozen milk in which the cream has been distributed evenly over the top layer.

Turn the block out of the dish and break it up into chunks. They don't all have to be the same size.
Every chunk will have the same proportion of milk to cream.  
Drop the chunks into a zip top freezer bag and return them to the freezer for long term storage.

When your recipe calls for milk, choose a chunk that approximates what you need.
You can let your chunk thaw at room temperature in a container on the counter, or microwave it if you're in a hurry.
Give the defrosted milk just a quick whisk with a fork to re-distribute the proteins and fat more evenly before using it as directed in your recipe.

Here's the precision, picture-perfect version:  Instead of using an open dish, use ice-cube trays or silicon molds to freeze the milk into small, uniform blocks.

Conclusions and Caveats:

I've used this method for all kinds of dairy milk. cream sour cream and yogurt - and have even mixed them together before freezing.  
Just make a note on the bag about what kind of milk product it is, and the date.

I've not used this for nut or seed milks, but my sense is that these products would not necessarily take well to freezing.  

Please note that this technique will not restore truly spoiled milk to a safe, useable product.  
It's a way to avoid having your milk products deteriorate to that point by taking proactive steps to preserve value in advance.
If in doubt, you really do need to throw it out.  Or maybe others in this discussion have ideas for use other than human consumption.

Hello all : )

What I have been doing for a long time with milk that is on its way out is to put it into a glass jar and add white vinegar to it - shake it up to mix well.

And in no time at all I now have homemade buttermilk that I use for making buttermilk biscuits: )

I use what I need to for a recipe and then add more milk to the jar.

In the recipe that I created it uses 2Tbs vinegar added to 1 3/4 cups buttermilk mixture for the wet ingredients.

They rise beautifully.

Hi everyone -

So far I'm so good on the new streak. Just came back from a very nice small shop which will hopefully do for the week.

The bread turned out quite satisfactory. The rest of the month, I'm only planning one more test recipe, and I'm hoping that I'll make a good dent on the superload of food in the fridge-freezer.

Thank you for the tips about freezing milk!

Made it to November!

Think I'm going to junk our microwave. It keeps tripping the breakers and when I picked it up to move it to a different plug in this afternoon it felt hot underneath. That doesn't seem right.

I can just plan a little better and reheat things on the stove.

Vera Stewart wrote:
Think I'm going to junk our microwave. It keeps tripping the breakers and when I picked it up to move it to a different plug in this afternoon it felt hot underneath. That doesn't seem right.

I can just plan a little better and reheat things on the stove.

That sounds like a good plan. I wouldn't want to go without my electric kettle and a food processor, but a microwave is totally unnecessary in my kitchen. The kids sometimes use the one we still have in the basement for reheating food but I prefer stovetop/oven for that.

I have also found a microwave to be much less necessary than I used to think. I could totally do without one, but my oven is also a microwave... so I end up using the microwave feature on occasion out of convenience.

Storing food in the pans we cooked it in makes reheating on the stovetop easier.

Also mixing with rice out of the rice cooker (which keeps things at about 80 deg celsius) tends to get stuff at just about the right eating temperature.

Surviving okay so far without a microwave, although I have three wraps designed for microwave in the freezer.
They also have instructions for heating them up with an oven --- over an hour! So much for a fast emergency lunch wrap option there!
For today's lunch I reheated some bean and rice stew - on the stove.

I did a light grocery shop this past Thursday - seemingly good for the budget - however, I made some choices that are sort of worrying me - primarily, I bought a five pound bag of potatoes because it was so much cheaper per potato to buy that much at once, but I know that I will struggle to use them all up before they start going soft.

Especially since I've learned that freezing potato salad doesn't work all that well - when I take it out of the freezer, it's very, very soggy!

I'm low on chicken, which is our default protein, and I'm hoping that there will be a sale on it soon. My housemate and I had a discussion about vegetarianism over the weekend that did not go all that well. (I was hoping to do some more vegetarian meals, but... to keep the peace I'll stick with focusing on breakfast and lunches as times where I can cut back a bit on the meat for myself. I love eating meat, but I'd rather not eat it at every meal! I'd also like to eat more fish, rather than chicken, beef, or pork, and it seems like I might have more support for doing that.)

I've promised to make cookies today because I only bought a small amount of dessert from the shops and now we're out. I've put some previously-made-and-frozen rhubarb and berry crisp out, but my housemate won't eat it.
I'm debating trying brownies-baked-in-ice-cream-cones to use up some ice cream cones, instead of making cookies.

I am contemplating making a fish pie in the near future, although I have never made fish pie before.

RE sorrel;  I threw a handful in my solar dehydrator to test, and they dried super fast and very dry without getting too brown.    Next year I'm going to try drying and powdering a few jars of mine, to sprinkle into soups etc.   I love it, but I never use it fresh as much as I think I will.  

Heat up and ate two of the designed-for-the-microwave wraps this past week.

I've just been shopping for groceries and am going to have go again in a few days to get eggs and that will tip me over into the "uh oh" zone but right now I'm just within the budget for the month so far.

I need eggs. I also need to buy more speciality dog food, which also goes into the grocery budget, uh-oh indeed!

I haven't been doing any test cooking this past little while, at least not for my cookbook - but I have made a chicken pie for the first time that I can remember and also I made some pretty great soup out of a squash I grew for myself this summer. (I still have a lot of that soup, frozen now.)

I tried baking cupcakes in ice cream cones. It did not work very well. I ended up throwing out about half of the cupcake-cones, because they were somewhat burnt and didn't taste very good - also, they made a big mess as they baked - I guess I overfilled the cones because the cupcake mix glooped out overtop. Because this was a try-it-and-see recipe experiment that failed, I'm not counting it against my food-waste-free streak - I don't think I'd survive very long in the kitchen if I couldn't try things out that are new to me, and sometimes that means it fails.

Last weekend my housemate (HM) offered to roast a chicken (we have re-supplied ourselves with chicken more or less successfully.) HM's roast chickens are usually quite good, and it's nice to have leftover chicken afterwards, too -- however, this time, the chicken shrunk considerably and also made a ginormous greasy mess of the oven.
We've decided we're going to blame the chicken, which was purchased from a different source from the usual source we use.
I spent a number of hours last week listening to the oven do it's self-cleaning thing with the fans on and the windows open and fortunately it wasn't too cold here that day.

I am still contemplating making fish pie - perhaps tomorrow, after I take out a package from the bottom of the freezer which is mysteriously marked as "mystery fish."

I don't know what we're having for supper tonight. Perhaps I will make a mac-and-cheese type casserole. I have a fair amount of cheese at the moment, again.

And maybe I'll serve some tortilla chips and home-made salsa alongside it, if I run down to the basement freezer right now and get the salsa out. I like this idea, it's making me feel hungry!

Don’t want to waste food? Get chickens and pigs. Not only do I never waste food, but I spend a fair amount of time and energy gathering others would be food waste for my critters. The schools and restaurants in my nearby town save food waste for me (lots of nearly expired milk from schools), and I dumpster dive the few corporate restaurants that can’t/won’t save because of corporate excuses. I do this every day, so it’s relatively fresh, and I sort through everything so nothing moldy or any “trash” goes to my animals. And no pork for the pigs, because that’s just wrong..

Elva Alice Hunter wrote:Old Milk - Freeze it!

This method will give you milk that's just fine for cooking:  Making sauces, puddings, soups and baked goods.

It does require keeping an eye on what's going on with what's in your jug, and being honest about whether it will be consumed before it will be fully spoiled.  For example, if you know you're going to travel and that the half-quart in the fridge won't last until you return, this method will keep it from going to waste.

Here's the fast and simple version:
Pour your milk into a low, flat baking dish.  The kind you would bake brownies in.  Ideally, one with a fitted cover to reduce risk of spillage.  
Otherwise, don't bother with plastic wrap.  The dish is just for purposes of getting the milk to freeze into a block.
You're not going to store the milk long-term in this dish and plastic wrap won't stop a serious spill.

Put the dish in the freezer on a level, stable rack - especially if your dish doesn't have a fitted cover.

After a couple of hours, you should have a solid block of frozen milk in which the cream has been distributed evenly over the top layer.

Turn the block out of the dish and break it up into chunks. They don't all have to be the same size.
Every chunk will have the same proportion of milk to cream.  
Drop the chunks into a zip top freezer bag and return them to the freezer for long term storage.

When your recipe calls for milk, choose a chunk that approximates what you need.
You can let your chunk thaw at room temperature in a container on the counter, or microwave it if you're in a hurry.
Give the defrosted milk just a quick whisk with a fork to re-distribute the proteins and fat more evenly before using it as directed in your recipe.

Here's the precision, picture-perfect version:  Instead of using an open dish, use ice-cube trays or silicon molds to freeze the milk into small, uniform blocks.

Conclusions and Caveats:

I've used this method for all kinds of dairy milk. cream sour cream and yogurt - and have even mixed them together before freezing.  
Just make a note on the bag about what kind of milk product it is, and the date.

I've not used this for nut or seed milks, but my sense is that these products would not necessarily take well to freezing.  

Please note that this technique will not restore truly spoiled milk to a safe, useable product.  
It's a way to avoid having your milk products deteriorate to that point by taking proactive steps to preserve value in advance.
If in doubt, you really do need to throw it out.  Or maybe others in this discussion have ideas for use other than human consumption.

Dude, nice tip! I haven't thought about this even tho I freeze buttermilk in the portions I use it. Thank you!

48 Days and counting on this new streak without food waste...

Found a nice rhubarb cake recipe I was able to adapt to take compote the other day. I hope I'll be able to share some of it with neighbours as part of my Christmas goodies platters. I also hope I'll be able to do the adaption again, because I didn't write down my adjustments...

Yesterday we went into the city and bought a whole lot of everything, including ingredients for baking, chocolate/candy trays for those we don't give baking, and last week I needed to buy the specialty dog food (almost $40) - all this combined means that the budget for "groceries" for the month is busted once again...

and I forgot to pick up some fresh veggies, and housemate wants to try roasting a chicken again, so I still need to do some shopping for this week! Ack!

Well, I did get most of my stockpile rebuilt, that's good! And after I get some veggies and pick up a few more baking ingredients, I don't think I'll need to buy much at all for the next couple of weeks.

Some time this week I'd like to try baking pineapple buns for the first time.

Life without a microwave continues to go well. ;)

I have reached 55 days.

It is exciting.

I've continued to accelerate on the Christmas baking frenzy, and did a very inexpensive grocery shop visit to start off December.

And I did the last of my cookbook testing for the year today - which turned out very delicious, but it seemed like it took most of the day so I don't think I'll be doing it that often - I made Hong Kong style "pineapple" buns (no pineapple involved) and paired it with a modified version of a "Cantonese Winter Melon Soup" recipe I found - I used youtube videos to guide me through both recipes, so I have a lot of recipe-typing-up to do, probably tomorrow.

Also this last week, I made some yogurt using a yogurt-starter package that officially expired sometime this past spring - it still worked and I've been using yogurt in several recipes this week - I made some cheesy noodle dishes with yogurt in place of some of the cheese (and used some left over cranberry sauce that has been frozen since Canadian Thanksgiving in one of them) and I also made a nice cake with yogurt and some of the frozen "naturally imperfect" berries I purchases ages ago intending to use in smoothies (I have not made that many smoothies.)

I have even made a bit of progress on the past-best-by-date mayonnaise jar (it still tastes fine, put some on my sandwhich at lunchtime) --- but I don't know what I'm going to do with about a third of a jar of French dressing. I purchased it to use in a recipe I was testing for a friend, and ever since I've been wondering how to use it up. It is now "past due" (although it still tastes the same. I won't say it tastes good, because I'm not a huge French dressing fan.)

This coming week, I'm hoping to get much of the Christmas baking done, and to make in roads on the stash of food in the freezer (I'll need to make space for cookies!)

I believe I have now matched my old personal best of 63 days without throwing out food. This is another day 63~!

Thanks to the first week of the month's very light shop, despite buying a turkey for Christmas, more butter and eggs for baking, and topping up my just-in-case shelf on top of a city-grocery-shop this week, I am also still on track budget wise.

Yesterday I did a survey of everything in my cupboards and fridge and have concentrated the ingredients I need to use up soon on a couple of shelves to make remembering easier.

Over the past week I've finished up the jar of mayo that has been haunting my fridge, and I used a lot of the homemade yogurt, although I still have some of that left. (I had a pretty big batch since I didn't really know how much a packet of yogurt-starter would make)
I know that I can theoretically make more yogurt if I use some of the old yogurt to start it. That's pretty cool.

I have a plan to use the rest of the French dressing as a chicken marinade some time over the next few days.

For the first time in a long time, I was able to get 50% off organic salad greens at my local store - with most conventionally grown lettuce/salad type ingredients costing close to $5 from that shop at the moment, I was really happy - (it was $2.50 instead, and organic)  A middle-class looking dude was also buying the 50% off salad and even stopped to let me know that the mix with the kale lasts longer than the other mix available - very cool to have that brief conversation, and in line with my own observations. The mix we both bought yesterday was "best before" yesterday, but we know we're going to enjoy a couple of good salads with it over the next few days! People are starting to clue in on using these ingredients -- probably trying it out because a regular head of lettuce costs $5 so why not try something different?
It increases my interest in expanding the audience of these little updates and ponderings about food waste - I think people are especially receptive to the idea of paying attention to what they do with their food these days - unfortunately I don't feel I have time to start a series of blogs or podcasts (I've been thinking of podcasting lately) this winter, but I would really like to do it! Or to at least support someone else who is doing it, ideally within a Canadian context for maximum relevance to me. Do you have any recommendations? The permies forum is great, and I really appreciate all the support here, I'm just thinking of expanding a bit beyond, as well, when time allows.

On wards, to a new personal best! (Fingers crossed.)

Made an excellently-within-budget shop today. At the door to the shop met a guy asking for spare change to buy food for his cat. (He said.)
It's a bit unusual to encounter beggars in my small town, but my old city instincts kicked in and I said no.
A few minutes later, I saw a woman who didn't look like she had much more money than he did taking him around the store, presumably buying him (and his cat) food.
I'm glad there are nicer people in the world than me.

I'm also glad that I bought the salad mix a few days ago, because today we were back to nothing but $5 sad lettuce being available, and the tomatoes are winter-pathetic. So I didn't buy either. This is probably my most local-seasonal winter eating in a very long time, due to the prices.
I did buy some mandarin oranges from California, which were not inexpensive. But they're part of Christmas-time tradition for me.

Still need to finish up the Christmas baking this week, and use up the French dressing. I am now working on a bar of mozzarella cheese that I bought on a whim several weeks ago - I'm not sure what I had in mind, but fortunately it tastes okay on sandwiches even if that's not really "what it's for."

I'm thinking of using in combination with the french dressing in a "taco salad" tonight. I wish I had some salad greens to add to it.

I'm starting to make serious inroads on the freezer-food again, which is great.

Still no food waste! (Excepting one mandarin orange that proved to be all squished and gross when I opened the oranges bag as I got home.)