Vera's Food Waste Fight Thread

I made it to 70 days, but this is the end.

Today I discovered that one of the cheese blocks in the fridge was covered in mold.

I think it had gotten moisture inside the wrapping and... disastrous things resulted.
I'm wondering if it's because I put it into the freezer in it's store packaging and then took it back out and put it into the fridge without doing any packaging adjustment. I can not remember if I did that or not.

But despite being still good according to the "best before" dates... it was... clearly not. I don't mind cutting off a bit of fuzz from cheese but this was excessive and unlikely to be healthy.

I take a little comfort from knowing that it was inexpensive cheese and not really anything spectacular taste wise (even before it got moldy.)

Think I'll just take a break from posting updates here for a few weeks, due to Christmas and life plans.

I will of course still try to not waste food, and I hope to return to these posts in the new year!

Great job Vera! I've been watching your progress from the beginning.

Vera Stewart wrote:I made it to 70 days, but this is the end.

If counting days helps you, go for it. But maybe you get overly disappointed when you have to reset to zero because of one incident? I would not overdramatize the cheese failure, it happens to the best. In fact I personally might just cut off slices round the block to get to the good cheese because in my fridge the cheese usually gets normal cheese bacteria cultures which might develop strong flavours but are harmless. But if you don't feel good about eating any remainders then that's ok.

As to buying seasonally: Yeah, what a great approach! I do not buy any tomatoes in winter. And usually no lettuce either. There are other varieties more suitable for winter which are not what a traditional "salad" looks like to some people but which are more healthy, filling and economic (and local) than those lettuce heads: beets, carrots, different sorts of kale, chicory, celery mixed with apples, oranges, boiled eggs, potato cubes, cheese etc.
Have fun experimenting!

Well done everyone who is minimising waste.

I'm a Scot, born and brought up there. And not well-off. I waste NOTHING food-wise. Trimmings go to my compost, eggshells get used to make calcium feed for the veg patch. I think the only things that go in the bin are chicken bones/ oxtail bones after I've made soup and picked them clean.
(I should start reboiling in vinegar to get more calcium out for me!). I think this year all year I've had to dump a few home grown tomatoes and potatoes that I didn't notice had gone bad in time and a small bit of home made jam that had gone mouldy.

I eat according to what needs eating before it goes off. Can't do anything else, it's automatic in me. I have always been genuinely mystified as to how other people end up with waste. If I've bought it, I'm gonna eat it. I don't buy stuff I don't like or won't eat.

Kirsty, I am totally with you. Why should I throw out food that I grew or bought myself?
However, the equation can get tricky when you add kids. I know how much I will eat, and if I realize the portion was too big I will eat it later. But when you multiply that margin of unpredictability by five it can get tough. Not all things are easy to reheat. I usually use the mantra "one meal's leftover is next meal's ingredient" but when all fails the food goes to the chickens. So basically no waste either!
And if I really forgot something in the fridge that got mouldy before time I will usually compost it. Only food waste in my case is also bones after making broth or totally, utterly dried out cheese which is too gross for the chickens and too nutritious for the compost (to avoid rats).

Anita, yeah no kids. But we never had waste at home when I was a child either ... I dunno how we managed that! But we were probably underfed. (Not deliberately, it's just that my sister and I are a good 6" taller than my mother, and I think she just never realised it meant we'd need more food!)

How you cut and prepare things also helps.  As an example, most folks here would cut an apple right through the middle and then into quarters.  Then there is a little area inside with seeds you can cut out in a very tiny triangle.  I went on vacation with some old friends and I was completely surprised when I saw most of the apples that were cut for breakfast ended up in the trash bin.  The block sized, almost square cores were much larger than the apple slices served!  I thought, is this really how a non-frugal person prepares food?  I know I am preaching to the choir here, but boy that really was an eye opener about how much food must actually go to waste in US homes.    

Vera, you have done great this year at reducing food waste, so don't let this dispirit you!

With moldy cheese, often the mold can be sliced off. Mine almost always goes moldy before I finish it.

One of my favorite keto 'dishes' is simply romaine leaves, filled with bacon & tomato wedges, and drizzled with a bit of mayo-based dressing, that I often make from the last of a jar of mayo, or homemade, with tarragon vinegar, a tiny bit of liquid stevia, and a lot of black pepper.

Something else we invested in, that makes a huge difference in our food waste, is a decent dehydrator. Then, freezer space isn't an issue, and I'm not worried that canning jars are going to be too heavy, and break down my shelves - yup, my folks had that happen once, when I was a kid, and we lost half our stash, because the shelf that collapsed then fell to the next one down, then they fell to the next one. Thankfully, the next one was a much stronger shelf, and held. Not every jar broke, so we just had to wash those that survived. Talk about a HUGE waste of food. When it's full of tiny shards of glass, it can't go to the critters OR the compost.

Vera Stewart wrote:This week's challenge will be to use up a head of cauliflower I bought on sale, as well as finishing up the bok choy. I don't really like cauliflower, but my housemate does. I managed to buy a bit less this week's shop, (spending about half as the week before) but because we had to buy some baking supplies I wasn't able to save as much money on the bill as I'd hoped. Perhaps this coming week I'll make some bread pudding. I also should start harvesting some of the rhubarb, and get to trying out drying some of the sorrel from the garden.

I lucked into some clearance food that a local church here picks up from Trader Joe's and the like and puts out for people to pick up. Whatever is not gone by the end of the day is dumped. The woman who runs the program had brought me a bunch of bread a few times, because that's often what they have a lot of, and that $5-6/loaf bread can be fed to the birds and chickens. But if it is at are a few days past expiration, I try to freeze it and use it myself. But I'm getting off my cauliflower subject.

I went by and saw what they had, and it was all FRESH food. Produce, bread, bags of fruit, etc. The kind of things I want to be eating, but also the same kind of things that we waste. Among the items i got was a big bag of rainbow cauliflower. You know how cauliflower gets ratty-looking on the outside? Not something you want to cook...but I got the bag, went through it all, and discovered that it was only a few pieces of the white cauliflower that was going bad. The purple, yellow, and green cauliflower was perfect. But, still, I had no experience with it and I had a ton of other stuff I was having to deal with, too.

I washed the cauliflower and threw it in a quart-sized mason jar in a 2% brine, and in three days it was the most fabulous tasting stuff! Crunchy and yummy, but my teeth can't handle crunchy stuff anymore, so I grated it smaller in a food processor and added it to a high-protein pasta salad. Too very yum.

I had six avocadoes, all of which were not going to survive more than a day. I cut out the bad parts and mashed the good up with lemon juice and froze it in mini icecube trays. Ready for quick guacamole or to throw in a smoothie! Bananas: cut up and tray frozen, then bagged for smoothies or banana ice cream. Tomatoes? Chopped up, weighed to calculate how much salt to add, then fermented a week with garlic. Yummy salsa!

The bread: The stale stuff I made more stale by putting it in the refrigerator, and it makes good toast. Our freezer is already stuffed. I'm wondering if one couldn't dehydrate bread slices and then reconstitute them somehow...I've never made bread pudding, but I should learn. I'd do croutons, but my teeth can't handle it.

Loving all the new suggestions!

I returned from a vacation at the end of last week, and am happy to restart my count! I find that it's useful for me to compete with myself, to get the number higher each time. As the days go by, I get more and more determined not to have to start at the beginning again...

I restarted my count on Feb. 11th, with a relatively small grocery shop to last us until I go into the city at the end of this week to get some vacation-delayed chores done, and a bulkier-buy of ingredients done as well.

I bought some mushrooms that I need to chop up and throw in the freezer, and a few days ago I made up a large batch of potato soup from a mix that was a Christmas gift - I'll be having some for lunch and serving more for supper tonight.
It was nice to be able to go into the freezer and bring out a casserole for supper the first couple of days after returning home, and I'm also using cooked turkey from the freezer as sandwich filler at the moment.

I'd like to set up some kind of compost system this spring, but I haven't really started to look at planning it yet.

For Valentine's Day, I'll be enjoying a few chocolates from a box we bought at Christmas time as our "in case we forgot a gift for someone."
I was delighted to hear my housemate recognize that the cost of the scones he's been buying from a local bakery is now ridiculous (they've gone up by nearly half over the past year or so) (they're an especially indulgent purchase since I don't really like them and they're often quite stale by the time they're all eaten) and instead, they've volunteered to make raisin bread at home, and they've actually done this yesterday! I like raisin bread better, and we'll use it quicker.

I like that you’ve tracked your efforts so closely, didn’t realize the rabbit hole I had gotten myself into when I started from the beginning… As far as compost goes; I like having at least 2 composts side-by-side; one for the easily broken-down stuff to be my “organic blend” (lots of banana peels & other soft fruit/veggie bits in our house) and one for more junkie stuff that will take much longer to break down; like avocado peels & citrus rinds.

And I like the idea of just putting some used pallets together as a frame, I’m going to try this soon & I’ll report back 😊 … keep up the good work Vera

Everything is going pretty well on the food-waste-prevention front. I do need to freeze some cilantro quite soon. I hope that I remember to do it. I've started volunteering for a literary magazine this week and I've been quite caught up in getting myself acquainted with their systems, and haven't been doing much that's been exciting in the kitchen. One of the things that I want to do next week is re-establish my pattern of testing at least one recipe a week for my cookbook project, but I don't know if I'll get around to it or not. Priorities, priorities!
I was able to buy a small bag of sweet potatoes last week, and a small bag of organic white potatoes this week.
Last weekend, we used two of the sweet potatoes for Sunday roast dinner - but my housemate also made a huge mess of the oven. I won't be able to use it again until I clean it, and I don't want to clean it until a mild day comes along during which I can open all the windows and turn off the furnace for a couple of hours to let the self-cleaning function run. I made the mistake of starting to preheat the oven tonight to make fries, because I'd temporarily forgot about the cleaning problem, but it very quickly reminded me, with terrible smells and smoke, that it needs cleaning. We did not get fries tonight.
The sweet potatoes we have are on the small side - I'm going to look around for what I should do with them!

Great thread Vera. I'm going to join in instead of starting another thread if you don't mind.

I volunteer at a local elementary school to get experience working with kids before I'm off to school this fall to study speech pathology. This means I get to hang out in the staff room during break times. Just yesterday I saw three bags of sweet mini peppers in the garbage bin. I was very confused, because they were a little wrinkly but couldn't see any mold. I brought them home, thinking I could do something with them.

Oh, and there were 4 bags of baby carrots with a "FREE" sign on them as well. I took them.

When I asked my mom about it, she said they were from the school nutrition program for kids. She used to bring food home all the time too when she taught at the school.

There are the peppers. Most of the work was chopping all of them up!



Then I remembered I had some diced squash in the freezer from when I made soup last time and the pot was too full to fit anymore. So I put that in, along with the chopped baby carrots, a can of tomatoes, 4 chopped cloves of garlic, and onions. And of course all those sweet peppers. When the soup was simmering, my mom added some seasonings: some thyme, a bit of curry paste, and I forget what else. And here is how it turned out!



Ohhh yeah. Quite sweet from the peppers but I really enjoy it. Talk about being loaded with vitamins too!

Thanks for starting and contributing so much to this thread Vera!

The more the merrier!

Your soup looks great!

So, I am doing okay, food-waste-wise. I managed to get the oven cleaned, which is a relief. And I got the cilantro chopped up and frozen before it went funny. This upcoming week I'm going to try testing another recipe for the first time in months - I'm going to make sweet potato pancakes and maybe some muffins with sweet potato as well. I am actually a bit frustrated about this recipe-test already, because I know I've previously tested potato pancakes several times, and I wanted to combine the recipes, only now I can't track down my file about the potato pancake tests. It's not a huge deal, but it's a little annoying deal!

I am on a sweet-potato and 'regular' potato binge because they're all starting to get a bit soft. I have previously established that I have no where great to store fresh potatoes.

This week I'd like to use the last casserole that's sitting in the freezer - it's pretty big and I might have to unthaw it and then cut it in half and put one half back into the freezer. I don't think that'll hurt it much.

I still have frozen fruit in the freezer, from when I was going to make myself smoothies. Maybe I should make myself one now? But it's snowing outside, I don't want to drink freezy-fruits!

At the store today I bought a loaf of rye bread that was half off due to being best before today. I have thrown it straight into the freezer. I am envisioning something strata-like with it in the future. There were a whole lot of rye loaves on discount. Maybe I should have bought another one as well?

Vera Stewart wrote:
I still have frozen fruit in the freezer, from when I was going to make myself smoothies. Maybe I should make myself one now? But it's snowing outside, I don't want to drink freezy-fruits!

I was just thinking the same thing-- froze a bunch of peaches and strawberries but I'd rather have banana shakes, I'm going to use them to make a cobbler or cake, i think.

Got super-frustrated about canned fish at the grocery store today. I was only trying to find some tuna that was less than $5 a can and also from a Canadian or American fishery. I would have accepted an European fishery. I thought I'd found some from Spain, only after going through the check-out, I saw on the side of the can it read "Product of Thailand."
I returned it at customer service.
I was angry.
I did not show it too much.
I also returned some soup that failed to come through at the correct sales price, which I was going to add to my stockpile.
I still spent lots of money.
The shopping, it was not so good this morning.

What I don't understand about all the canned fish from Thailand, is that I remember distinctly hearing about abusive labour practises and atrocious over-fishing in Thai fisheries almost twenty years ago, and ever since, as far as I can tell, the only thing that's changed is that more and more options in the canned fish aisle are from Thailand. Or other Asian countries where similar concerns are raised.
I get why other canned fish options have gotten more expensive and over $5 for wild red pacific salmon is not something that I like to pay but I can comprehend why I see that price - but the Thai-fish-in-Spanish-colours this morning was almost exactly as expensive per gram as the salmon.

I wanted the tuna for a recipe.

I'm going to use my one remaining canned salmon from the pantry instead.

I do eat canned sardines now and then, and I'm glad I can get some from Canadian fisheries, I just don't want to only have sardines left as the both affordable and sustainable-ish choice!

In other food-related news, I still haven't had to throw out anything --- although I have to admit I let the bones from a chicken carcass get away last weekend when my housemate successfully roasted one. (The oven is still clean! Hurray!)  
I completely forgot to tell them to save the bones for me when they were carving it up after the meal - I only remembered the bones the next morning, and by that time, they had said sayonara.

However, I did save bacon grease for the first time ever this week. I cooked up a whole package of bacon at once and instead of undergoing my usual tedious and rather gross preparation step where I scissor off and throw out a lot of the fat from the strips before putting them in the pan, I dumped everything into my cast-iron grill pan and poured off the fat as it melted, into a jar.

Then I used the meaty bacon bits in a big bacon (and veggie) pie which fed us for a couple of days, and I've still got most of the bacon fat in the fridge. I've used some of it to fry up some bok choy, and another dollop for something else I can't remember at the moment. I'm quite pleased by how nice and white it looks in the jar, and I look forward to using the rest of it over the next little while.
However, adding to my frustration this morning, my housemate informed me, as they added another package of bacon to the shopping cart, that they prefer their bacon not in pies and would really like it more if I went back to the old way with making a couple of strips at a time, wrapping up the remainder separately, fussing with it, because they "want to see it on their plate." ARRRGH. Just when I thought I'd found a way to make peace between myself and their bacon-wanting.
To be fair, they did say they could make the bacon in the future.
Right, because what I really need is to spend an hour waiting for them to fry a couple of strips of bacon some weekday night, after which I will still probably have to repackage it up and stuff. And I won't get the fat.

Hmmm.

What did go well this week?
Well, I made sweet potato muffins. And oatmeal cookies. They were pretty good. And I made a crustless quiche last night that I'm hoping to enjoy again tonight.
I found part of the potato pancake recipe I was looking for in my last posting, and I hope to try a combo sweet-and-white-potato pancake really soon, perhaps tomorrow.
I'm glad that I did get back to cooking a bit more, as I hoped I would.
I found some previously homemade hummus in the freezer and have been enjoying that with my lunches.

And I ordered my vegetable and herb seeds for the spring.

A shorter post this week, I promise!

One of my sweet potato muffins went mouldy and I had to throw it out. I've started the count again and have five days without trashing food now.

Today's grocery shop was fast, in town, and well within budget - if I can repeat the trick next week I might come out of the month okay grocery budget wise.
I tested the recipe that was going to be using tuna and ended up using salmon, a savoury loaf with feta and sundried tomato as well, it was quite nice.

This week (soon, perhaps tomorrow) I'm going to try a cauliflower salad recipe as my test-recipe of the week.

I was expecting to go to the dentist this week and so I took out the last noodle casserole I'd already prepared and had in the freezer - soft food at the ready! -  my appointment was cancelled, but I still enjoyed the casserole - although, one of the disadvantages of having no microwave is that it definitely makes it more complicated to heat things up.

I have some sour cream that has reached it's best before date - I was thinking of trying to bake some doughnuts. I might.
But I also have a creative writing contest deadline to make in eight days and I will probably need to pay attention to where I'm spending my time this coming week.

In the regional newspaper, there's a report that the most "popular" location for shoplifting in the city closest to me is one of the supermarkets that I regularly visit. At one of the local grocery stores here in town, a "customer" apparently threw groceries at a clerk after she caught them trying to sneak out of the store. The plexiglass panel put up during the height of the pandemic around the cashier was cracked from the force of the impact.

About two weeks ago, I planted a white onion that was sprouting - outside. It's been snowed on once, but it seems to still be alive!

Greetings from within a 24-hour writing marathon!

This week I've (clearly!) been focused on my writing - early this week I was able to make the deadline for a contest, and in the last day or so I've been working on clearing off all the little tasks from my desk by the end of the month.  I haven't forgotten the food, though.
I'm doing very well on the food budget, even though we've been buying more treats from the store again. One more shopping week in the month to tell the tale. 12 days since I last threw out food.

This morning I finished off the past-best-before sour cream with some remnant stuffed pasta that was on discount at the better grocery store in my town yesterday and which my housemate exhibited less than astonishing enthusiasm for last night. (I thought it tasted just fine, heated up with a sauce, it was stuffed with butternut squash and other things.) The sour cream on top of it, all cold in the morning though, I'll have to admit, it was not exactly a taste sensation. But it was fuel!

I picked up another package of stuffed pasta at the store that was discounted because it was nearing it's best before date at the same time as I picked up the butternut squash stuffed pasta - and now I'm not sure when we'll eat it, but maybe it'll become a couple of my lunches later on. (At the moment it's in the freezer.)

In the continuing adventure of me versus my local discount grocers, I brought to their attention that they were trying to sell packaged goods which had best-before dates in January earlier this week, and also their "on sale this week" yogurt had expired three days prior, and none of these things were on extra discount, they were simply being sold in the hopes, one assumes, that no one would notice. Given that my local population has a pretty high number of disabled senior citizens, residents who do not have English as their first language, and otherwise vulnerable people, it's a fair bet they had some "victims."
I have no problem buying food that is at it's best before date, but I want the store to acknowledge they've overstocked, and I want them to provide a discount on it, because I or anyone else buying it, is going to have to work faster-than-otherwise to deal with it after it's purchased. I don't think this is too much to expect, particularly when this store does discount foods for this reason regularly. (Although apparently not consistently.)

After huffing out of the discount grocery for the second time in two weeks, I proceeded across the street to the local bakery to buy treats for the housemate this time. They have a discount rack - I bought an absolutely delicious chocolate chip cake loaf at half price, along with some cinnamon raisin buns which are better than the better grocery stores, albeit more expensive.

I get tired of baking sometimes and the housemate will not stop eating/buying many many desserts.

I am going to take the last of the Christmas-time-made desserts out of the freezer this week - a lemon fruit cake I've been saving and looking forward to savouring.

I also have some chicken breasts I need to remember to freeze or cook or something before the weekend is out. Maybe tomorrow, after this write-a-thon is over!

Still here! Today I have very little time to type, but I am still on a no-waste streak, about to make stir fry from left overs for supper, soaking beans for making chili tomorrow, and have prepared some homemade hummus for later while giving my pantry a quick look-over this afternoon. I did slow cook the chicken early this week, have some in the freezer for later. Also, I'm ready for Easter with a turkey in the freezer - and saved chicken bones chilling before I throw them in with the turkey carcass after Easter, for soup. 18 days since I last threw out food.

Twenty-three days since I last threw out food.

I was a little bit over budget last month, but I don't think I'm doing too badly, all inflationary things considered.

Really need to deal with a big head of cauliflower - (and a big head of iceberg lettuce) I'm hoping to use part of the cauliflower it in a cauli-broccolli mac and cheese tonight.
I spent a bit of time last week chopping and freezing vegetables and using up some of the pantry food that has been around for awhile -
I did make a big batch of chili, still have some left, but I'll probably finish that off at lunch in a few minutes. I also finished off a bag of cranberries in a cranberry-cinnamon bread which was quite tasty.

Because of uncontrollable pastry-purchasing by my housemate, I put half of my lemon-berry loaf back into the freezer, so I still have that around.
I'm hoping to get in a cookbook test recipe this weekend, with an icebox cake concoction where I'm planning to use up some of my frozen berries.
I also have a dinner-and-a-movie event next week that will have me making a recipe attributed to Bette Davis. Apparently, she liked corned beef and beets.

I started a bag of vegetable scraps this week which I'm keeping in the freezer in anticipation of getting out in the garden soon - I'll bury them in one of the garden beds.

After Easter, I expect to have a turkey carcass to use in making soup.

Unintentionally mouldy cheese being sold at the local budget grocery store this morning.

Carrying on!

We'll call this day thirty in my current no-throwing-out-food streak.

Another grocery shopping day confined to town, which really helps the budget.

For Easter I roasted a turkey, and I have several jars of turkey soup now, too.
Finally finished off the lemon-berry cake this past week. Made a (small) test of icebox cake concoction as planned for my cookbook project.

Still haven't cooked the Bette Davis dish, I expect I'll be doing that this weekend. I found a dessert recipe that is perfect for my project, a Scandinavian no-bake cake known as radiokaka which I hope to try this weekend as well. (My cookbook is me matching mostly mid-century recipes to episodes of a radio show. How could I not try something called radiokaka?? The project is proceeding quite slowly, but there's no deadline.)

For my day-to-day cooking, I've cooked up a package of chicken legs in the pressure cooker this afternoon - I hope to get supper tomorrow plus several chicken sandwiches out of that.
Yesterday I made a couple of rice-turkey-turkey-dressing-and-other-left-overs casseroles, one smaller one which we had for dinner and one large one that went into the freezer for now. I do also have several packages of turkey meat in the freezer but I'm a bit tired of turkey at the moment and don't want any more just now. Had fish tonight. The chicken legs tomorrow, then I'll probably be doing Bette's corned beef and beet hash, and then I'll be treated to a roast of some kind on Sunday...

I also do have vegetables about this place.

I decided to "pickle" some of them the other day, just for fun, dunking them into a fancy pickle jar after it had been emptied of it's original pickles.

This afternoon as I was playing with the chicken legs, I heard cranes and rushed outside to watch them fly north!

A question: I have a cup+ of pot barley in my pantry. What should I do with it?

The recipe testing last week did not go particularly well in terms of preventing food waste.

Both recipes were successful, as far as I can tell, they tasted the way that they're meant to taste - but the radio cake was horrendously sweet, and I have thrown out most of it, along with the coconut oil I purchased to make it, because I've never used coconut oil before as a baking/cooking ingredient and have no plans to use it in the future, also, it got a bit "contaminated" with chocolate while I was using it. So I threw out most of a jar of coconut oil.  Plus some condensed milk that I needed for the corned beef hash recipe but then didn't know what to do with it after that and I was already throwing things out and to be honest I just got lazy about it.
The third thing I threw out about a quarter of a can of corned beef, because it was not looking too appetizing after I made Bette Davis' red flannel hash. (Which didn't actually taste all that bad, I ate all of that dish over a couple of days.)

Foods that I saved this past week - I made a frozen pizza on the same night as the corned beef hash, because I wasn't sure how it would turn out and I needed a "back up" in case me and my guest couldn't eat it. Since we did eat the hash, I had an entire pizza left over. As a result, I ate pizza for breakfast for most of the past week. I realize this gains me minimal nutritional or permie points, but having bought it, I did not throw the pizza out.
I didn't know how many beets I'd need to get the amount I needed to include in the hash, and it turns out I bought two too many. I have now cooked those beets up and will be using them up over the next few days.
Yesterday I was out on a prowl through town looking for presents for an upcoming party and found myself at a specialty deli/bakery/cool place, where I bought some presents and also discovered that there was a loaf of wholewheat sourdough with caraway seeds on discount as it was a day old. I bought it and brought it home and it is delicious. I've put it in my upstairs freezer so that I can take a slice at a time out to toast for breakfast on the mornings I'm not eating pizza leftovers.
I have continued working my way through the ancient teas in my cupboard, and even managed to entice my housemate to join me for tea, once.
Because I feel a bit vegetable-deprived, I splurged on them today at the grocery store. I also bought a 50% off organic salad mix that I know I'll enjoy quite soon. Perhaps some chicken-on-mostly-salad for lunch tomorrow, for example. (I have more chicken left over in the fridge at the moment than ideal because I've just learned that my housemate does not actually like my instapot chicken recipe, although they said nothing about it the two times I've made a big batch of it previously. Now I have a bunch of chicken cooked in a way they don't like, so I get to it all myself.)

And I fed my bag of veggie scraps into one of my garden beds last week and I've started collecting another bag-full.

Considering that I heard on the news the other day that grocery prices were inflated by 9% last month compared to last year, I'm starting to feel a bit impressed with myself, budget-wise so far this month I am actually coming in (crossing fingers here) under budget!

Food things I need/want to do this coming week:

Eat less pizza
Chop up and freeze most of a mushroom package I bought today, and probably freeze some of the veggies I bought as well
Eat the last of the (organic!) instant-noodle mix I bought while on holiday
Finish the green tea (move on to the herbal teas)
Plant some seeds for my garden!

It's been only 6 days since I last threw out food.

And I went in to the city today and destroyed my grocery budget for the month. I did not realize how much more expensive dog food has become, but I needed to buy two bags-full (one is a specialty food that I mix in with the 'regular') and there was definite sticker shock. (I've been including dog food in my household grocery budget forever, but it's been several months since I've needed to buy more as I had a bit of a stockpile)
For the month of April, I am about $60 over budget.
Beside the dog food and the recipe-testing last week, there were also some birthday-related purchases. Still, it's quite noticeable that when I go into the city I spend much more on groceries than I do when I stay in town...
however, I've also in the past week picked up some groceries on odd days while walking about the town and these somewhat-impulse purchases didn't help the budget either.

The weather has been great over the past week and I've been trying to go for an hour-long walk everyday, as I'd like to improve my overall fitness, and I used to walk regularly but have let that habit drop for quite awhile.
I should probably try walking away from town instead of towards downtown in the coming week, to avoid the siren call of the shops. The problem is that before I walk for half an hour away from town, I start going seriously uphill, and I don't want to get into sharp incline hiking right now, I just want to walk! Perhaps I can find a route that skirts the downtown shopping danger zones without requiring mountain-scaling.

Also this week I have been testing myself on time-restricted eating. 13 hours between supper and breakfast seems pretty easy for me, but... I've actually managed to gain a little weight this week, despite the walking and the time-restriction! This is not good. I definitely don't need to gain weight! I am, I think, sleeping better, though.

I used up some rhubarb the other day - I think my frozen rhubarb stashes are (aside from the tea) the oldest foods I have in the house - and I still have rather a lot of both.
For the next week, I don't really have much of a plan - I am starting on a new writing project and want to focus much of creative energy there - so I think I'll mostly be playing the meal times by ear. I have several items in the fridge at the moment that need rather quick eating, including some tomato sauce --- I still have lots of tomato sauce from the big batch I made in the fall!

I hope to start planting some beans and lettuce outside this weekend.

How have you been doing? Any big food waste wins or fails in your life recently?

Oh Vera do I hear you about the dog food. I have a senior dog on a special diet (who also takes $$$$ medications) and a 27kg puppy who eats 6 cups of food a day, I feel like I'm at the vet supply every weekend. What is saving me is the point card (buy 10 bags, next one free) and the fact that the vet will cover any other store's medication prices....

I found a great deal on pork rib trimmings (sometimes it's all bones, but this time it was good meat, the downside is that it comes in 2kg packs, which is a lot). The other night I made Chinese braised ribs with it, then took the bones out and have been using it in sandwiches. The last bit is going into steamed buns tonight, some of which will be frozen for those days when I just can't.

Meanwhile my husband went to go visit family in the country, and came back with a big box full of cassava, okra, hyacinth beans... we ate all the easy stuff (cassava made a cake and homemade bread, which was awesome and got shared among family) but now I'm stuck on the last bit: about 2kg of taro roots. Not the nice big ones you can slice and make chips in the airfryer, but the little ones that are a real PITA to peel. Not sure what I'm going to do with them. I thought of bringing them to my physical therapy clinic yesterday and leaving them there with a sign....

Hello Vera,
   I'm really enjoying this thread. Partway down you talk about a can of beans you found. It made me want to tell you a story.

My husband got freaked out about food some years back and started keeping a "bunker." The word "bunker" was my word for what he was doing--buying all kinds of canned food and storing it on shelves in the cellar. The shelves themselves came to be during the 50s scare about Nuclear War--I think most particularly the Cuban Missile Crisis. We live in the house where my husband moved to when he was 5 years old!

Anyway, husband cleared off some shelves and began stashing canned goods there every time he came home from the store. At that time, I didn't do the shopping as I was working full time. I DID do some canning every summer and will admit to sometimes not eating all of what I canned.

So flash forward a few years and we realize that we actually need to eat that stuff because, well, you know time goes by. What I have learned is that beans, anyway, don't really go bad for a long time. I've eaten cans of beans 3 years past their best-by dates and it's been fine. I'm less sure about the peas--which generally end up going to chickens because I can't bear to eat them--certainly not plain, anyway. I have found that they make an okay addition to an egg dish occasionally when nothing better is available.

Thanks for this thread--I'm always trying to save food, but I've recently become super grateful for my chickens because they will eat anything!
-Ellen from New Hampshire

Thank you both for sharing your stories!

This week I made a happy egg save with some eggs that were starting to get a bit elderly by hard-boiling and sending some off as snacks and using some for an egg salad as sandwich filling.
We're having a heat wave, although it's expected to be considerably cooler tomorrow, and I've been avoiding turning on the oven. I made some chicken soup in the pressure cooker - enough for four servings - although I don't know when I'll be eating it! I've put it in the freezer for now.
I finished off one of my containers of rhubarb compote by mixing some with almond milk and pairing with the last of the excellent sourdough bread at breakfast.
I've brought out of the freezer a small container of left-over cranberry sauce, from Easter, and used some as a light spread on buns with the egg salad sandwich. I'm going to use more of it alongside some left over rice, and fish, tonight.
This week's grocery shop so far is exactly on target budget wise, and if I can stay out of the stores until late next week, that will be a good start to the month budget wise. (But I will probably need to buy cow milk later on this week for the housemate.)
I bought two huge muffins from the local bakery, from the going-stale discount rack, at the same time as I bought a birthday cake. I plan to cut them in half and enjoy them for breakfasts for the next four days - if I plop them in a bowl with milk it won't matter if they're a bit stale.
I'm planning to go 13 hours and 15 minutes between supper and breakfast this week as I try to advance slowly from starting at 13 hours to a 14 hour time-restriction diet. I lost a tiny bit of weight over the past week, although I'm not sure that has anything to do with the time-resticted eating, it might just be due to the heat suppressing appetite and possibly a case of slight dehydration.
I have been drinking a lot of iced tea (it's not actually ice tea because I haven't been using ice... it's just cool tea) and I'm happy to report that I have finished off another old box of herbal tisanes.
I am now starting on a 60-bag black tea box that is stamped with a 2019 best before date.  This is going to take awhile, because I don't really want to drink a whole jug full of cold black tea every day. I have a feeling that would not be great for me. I'm not used to caffeine.
I planted some lettuce in my garden this week, also, potatoes, although i still need to plant a lot more out there.
There was only one small bag of potatoes at the budget grocer's this week.

Upcoming food challenge: Remembering to use up some of the oven-needing items in my freezer in the next little while, before summer properly arrives. Including the casserole I made up and stuck in the freezer downstairs. I need to remember that's there.

It has been 13 days since I last threw out food.

Today, I have been looking at Medium and Substack and trying to decide if I want to start blogging on either of those platforms about food-related things.
I have a feeling I'm mostly procrastinating on my major writing project, alluded to last week --- I haven't really started on that yet, although I've done a bit of nibbling around the edges.
Onwards and upwards! and time for me to get something more to drink.

It's been a busy week, and I'm not feeling 100% so this is going to be short. But I believe this thread has been going for a year now! Happy Threadbirthday to us!

Sadly, I had to throw out a little bit of rice this week. I could see it, getting slimier and slimier, and I just couldn't get to using it until it was too late.

It has been only three days since I last threw out food.

I'm continuing to do to time-restricted eating, and thinking of bumping it up to thirteen and a half hours over the weekend. Unfortunately, I haven't been doing much walking. However, I have finally finished spring cleaning my basement and got about half of my garden in. I got a recipe test in a few days ago, and ate soup tonight even though it's a bit warm - we're expecting hot weather over the weekend and I wanted to get another frozen jar of soup out of the way before then. (There is still some left, so I fear we're going to have to have that for lunch tomorrow. I really don't want to, but I want to eat it on a 30 degree day even less.)

I am not making any progress on my writing project. Is there a thread around here about getting over yourself and doing the thing?

There were lots of nice vegetables at the shop today, so I loaded up with kale, and also a big box of mushrooms, and a big bag of peppers that I'm going to freeze tomorrow. And something else I'm sure but I can't remember what it was right now.
I have plans to test a chinese stir-fry recipe handed out by the local library along with the "spice of the month" - Chinese 5-Spice. I got some tofu to throw into it. I haven't had tofu for a long time.

The sorrel in my garden is almost ready for it's first harvest.

What are you looking forward to on your plate this weekend?

Vera I’m always so glad to see your updates!  You have gotten so creative with your meals over the course of this journey.

Regarding writer’s block or similar, one thing I have noticed in my own life and work is that often if I just can’t seem to make headway it’s because I’m going about it wrong; it’s like I’m subconsciously stopping myself from going further down the wrong path.  Like I can’t make progress on a piece of writing, and after I finally put it aside for a day I realize that there was a flaw in the concept or the organization, and that’s why I couldn’t make it work, so I restructure and then move forward.  But it is hard to see these “big picture” problems when you are pressured to just get work done to get it done.

It has been Ten days since I last threw out food.

Today I am thrown off kilter by a change in schedule. But I made some vegetable broth that is attributed to Gloria Swanson for this month's dinner and a movie event - I'm supposed to be watching Sunset Blvd. this weekend, except that I can't find a free copy - instead I'll just have to do my best to remember it, I have seen it already a few times.

Anyway, the Gloria Swanson "Potassium Broth" is quite easy and nice and no doubt helps you not gain any weight while you are a movie star- it's basically just some vegetables boiled up in a 2 cup water to 1 cup diced vegetable ratio - the recipe I got called for swiss chard but I substituted kale, there is also celery, zucchini and green beans. The recipe is unclear on if you're meant to drink the broth without the veggies in it or if you're meant to eat it as a very light soup with the veggies still in - I have elected to strain the veggies out and set them aside to add to rice for tonight's supper, and I'm sipping the broth throughout the rest of the day. (I've no idea if it's actually high in potassium or not. Mostly it tastes like celery.)

Included in the recipe-possibilities for this weekend's event are several recipes attributed to Cecil B. DeMille, and I'm pondering if I can fit one of them in later on - it is a long weekend, after all. (The deMille recipes are considerably heftier than the broth.)

The tofu stirfry last week was quite nice, I really enjoyed it! Predictably, the housemate was slightly perturbed by both the tofu and the plethora of vegetables, but I was maintaining a cheerful "I don't care, I made it, I like it, you can have peanut butter on toast later if you want to make that" attitude.

I went with my housemate to the city yesterday for shopping, which means my monthly grocery budget has been buried under a deluge of "fancy" cheeses, pastries, and ingredients for bread machine bread. Plus I bought organic apple sauce and cottage cheese which I hope will allow me to snack on something more nutritious than mass-produced pastries. Apples and applesauce continue to be weirdly expensive, for a place where there are literal apple orchards a five minute walk away. I used to get free apples from acquaintances, but now they seem to be hoarding their gold.
I did get fresh asparagus from one neighbour this week!
Too bad I don't really like asparagus.

If I have time, I'd like to visit the community garden-surplus exchange booth on Monday evening. I can take them a bunch of rhubarb. I still have frozen rhubarb from last year, while my rhubarb plant grows and grows this spring/summer.
They probably have a lot of rhubarb coming in right now. I could take them some sorrel as well.

I've just noticed how dusty my keyboard is - I think it might be actually tiny bits of ash - we've started getting wildfire smoke this week.

I'm up to 13 and a half hours of "fasting" in my new time-restricted eating regimen - it's starting to get a bit tough so I'm going to stay at this length for this coming week before adding more minutes to eat. My goal is 14 hours fasting and a 10 hour eating window, sort of the minimal schedule that seems to have some scientific backing.

I wish the temperatures would cool down a bit as I still have numerous oven-related foods to eat - I don't want them hanging out in my freezers until October, sheesh.

Re my writer's block: I have decided that for the rest of the month, I'll just do what I want to do, as long as I'm working on something. If this means that I'm horribly behind on my big writing project by mid-June, well, that's what it'll mean. I don't want to turn it into something that stresses me out unnecessarily. It's not anything that's likely to make me the big bucks, it's not anything that's likely to find millions of readers, it's something that should be enjoyable - and while I want to do it, if it's not going in a way that's entertaining me, it's not like the dentist's, I don't have to do it.

It has been Fifteen? days since I last threw out food.

It's raining today and I made a new-to-me soup, peanut butter and tomato soup using some of my home made tomato sauce as it's base, and topping with a little Thai basil that's been growing on my kitchen counter. It was quite tasty - there is also a variation that uses sweet potato, and I bought sweet potato for it...
but when I came home and opened my browser bookmarks on this laptop, the first recipe that came up was the one without the sweet potato and I was half way through making it before I remembered I had the sweet potato.
But I did remember, since I had my hand blender out to blend the soup, to also make myself a big cup of fruit smoothie to drink this afternoon.

I only have about five more servings of my tomato sauce, I think I'm going to miss it. I'm also relieved that I have made use of all of it - I hope to make a big batch again this fall!
My community's garden share-swap weekly meetings don't start until next month, I am somewhat disappointed to learn.

Today's shop was quite light - I'm still working on using up some of the things in the freezer before the big heat returns, but I also took advantage of a buy one get one deal on chicken drumsticks - I've got one package-worth of chicken cooking in the slow cooker at the moment and will cook the second package tomorrow morning. I've trying two new recipes in hopes housemate will like them better. After cooking the chicken I'll freeze some of it. We were getting a bit low on meat, particularly chicken, so I'm happy that this sale came along.
Earlier this week I investigated the updated prices for a only-grass-fed beef delivery service which reaches my town - unfortunately it seems like their prices have doubled since I last looked into buying from them, and when I last looked I thought I might be able to manage them only a couple of times a year... now I just don't think so. But I'm happy that I investigated. And I do occasionally see grass-fed beef on sale at one of the stores in town. I just need to keep my eyes open.

I was able to re-write the first chapter of my novel this week --- only this morning, I discovered that I have the weather completely wrong --- the prologue talks about a winter storm coming, and the first chapter talks about it being a hot summer day! So I know what I have to fix next fiction-writing-wise. I admit I was a bit aggravated this morning when I discovered what I'd done - but now I've reminded myself that two steps forward and one step back still gets you one step in the direction you want to go.

I'm going to try and get into 14 hours a day fasting this coming week. I was ridiculously pleased to note my stomach was grumbling for food yesterday morning - I have such a bad habit of eating before I'm hungry and then eating past feeling full.

I vanished on a vacation which lasted about twice as long as planned!

It has now been about 18 days since I last threw out food, I had to throw some meat out early on during the vacation as I had a camping cooling catastrophe.

I've just got back home late Saturday and am working to restore all of my "stuff" to it's regular state - doing massive amounts of laundry today - I'm happy that some of the things I planted in my garden survived even though I was gone for so long, including a couple of squash plants, although they are quite small. I am, I must admit, a tiny bit disappointed that my saskatoon berries have come and gone while I've been away. Later on this week I want to see if I can plant a few more plants to maybe come to fruition before the summer is out...

Yesterday I biked to the grocery stores in town to get a few things and was surprised and delighted to discover an accordion player busking at one of the shopping centres.

Today I have restarted time-restricted eating. I lost five pounds while camping this past month, but I don't know that I can sustain that loss, as I was very (although at a moderate intensity level) active for much of the time I was away, and I simply don't have that much time for walking around during my "normal" life at home.

One of the other things that I wasn't doing while camping was snacking very much.  I am going to try and keep that in mind.

Today’s shopping was a tad frustrating. But first before I rant about that, I will admit that it has been only three days since I last threw food away – due to an unfortunate accident with a store-bought sauce that turned out to be composed almost entirely of salt. I had some sauce left over on the inside of the fridge door, probably from before I left on holiday, and I checked to see it was growing any uninvited organisms, it did not seem to be, so I added some water to it, swished it around, and figured it was good to dump into a meat-y stir fry… and I ended up with a dinner that was barely edible at all and I threw out about half of it, even with the meat.

That was an example of maybe trying too hard to use up the last bits and bobs of “foods.” (It was barely food. I looked at the label, belatedly, and discovered it was officially giving me 25% of my daily sodium each tablespoon.)
Back to today’s shopping rant! My sinuses hurt OR I’m dehydrated and have a headache I can’t really decide which it is, (I could maybe blame the salt overload?)  but I woke up not feeling super energetic. And then I had to go shopping.

Spent almost an hour making a list from the flyers, checking the points offers, staring at cookbooks, etc., and then elected to drive to the store instead of biking because I didn’t want my head to fall off in the heat which is on its way.
And I arrive at the lower-budget store to discover that I must not be the only one feeling unenergetic, as about half the items advertised are either not on the shelves at all, or in low quantities and in locations where I have to clamber up the shelves or yank boxes out from behind other items on the shelves, or crouch down and do some grocery-spelunking… and the staff is all in the prepared frozen meals aisles, putting out the TV dinners, because that must be what the management is choosing to prioritize. And all of the staff look like they are a new crop of teenage summer hires, presumably getting part-time minimum wage.

There is a gentleman in a mobility scooter trying to get someone to agree that the watermelon he wants to buy should have a discount sticker on it as he’s taken it off the “pretty much probably already rotten” shelf and the strawberries I wanted to at least look at are nowhere in sight. And another gentleman who is on oxygen is staring at the canned fish display with naked dismay at the prices-to-availability-to-quality ratios when I go by hoping for some sardines.

After spending too long bouncing from section to section finding maybe two-thirds of the items that were on my list and settling for a number of almost-insteads, I feel everyone involved in this shopping experience, staff and customers both, are being seriously disrespected and exploited but what can I do, it’s the cheapest place to shop around, and all I’ve got in my garden after cleaning it up are some very immature potatoes and beans and peas and squash that haven’t even begun to set yet. Oh, and some onions that are quite good, I pulled some little ones up last week.
And rhubarb. I have a lot of rhubarb, which I intend to do something with soon. Probably I’ll just add most of it to the frozen rhubarb selection in the freezer.

At the second store that I visit, there is no longer an accordion player to greet me, and there is a big empty space where the fresh chicken belongs. I end up getting a couple of small pieces of rock fish, and this is all the meat or protein that I’ve purchased for the week, and this is going to mean that by the end of this week, our freezers are going to be pretty devoid of meat, which will mean that next week, we’re going to have to spend a lot of money on meat.

I do not go to the farmer’s fruit stands, because I am out of grocery money and also I am out of energy. I wanted to get some fresh, local cherries. A neighbour brought us some last week and they were very good. I want more.
I do not go to the weekly local-produce-exchange booth, because it still has not started yet.

I do not buy any ingredients for testing recipes, so I will continue to fall behind on my schedule for completing my cookbook.
Despite not buying very much meat or meat substitute (although I did buy two cans of chickpeas to make some of what I call “hummus” but which is not really, sometime soon) I am still somehow looking at a $160 grocery bill and I’m just discouraged. That’s all

I feel like I’m missing some basic, essential trick to tame the grocery bill. I understand that inflation continues to be happening, but according to my calculations, even at 10% inflation year over year, my target weekly budget for $150 for two people you would think, with the time that I take to prepare every week and with the extra freezer and with (an admittedly unproductive at the moment) garden, and with the advice I’ve received from all of you here, and with some not fantastic but functional cooking skills, you would think it would be possible. I understand cutting out meat is one of the ways to go about this but I have already cut back and I assure you the second person in this grocery arrangement will not accept meat-less dinners more than a few times a month without serious and prolonged complaint.

I don’t want to just complain. But I’m not feeling optimistic.

It’s summer, I want to enjoy fresh vegetables and fresh fruits and I want to be able to play with my food a little and I’m not having fun right now.
What do you do when your groceries get you down?

At this point I'm just like, *bad word* the grocery budget.

It has been nine days since I last threw out food.

I got to bike to my grocery shopping this morning, I quite enjoy that, but it does make getting things like fish and frozen yogurt a bit stressful - on one hand you're worrying everything is melting/turning stinky - on the other hand, you get extra motivation to power up the hill on the way home without delay.

I did stop at one point during my bike ride home to admire some ducklings trying to figure out paddling - one was going around and around in circles until it's mom gave it a nudge.
And I've gone ahead and bought some ingredients for testing a couple of recipes for my cookbook project, even though this does not help my budget, it does help my mood to know I'm going to make some progress on that project again.

I did make my homemade "hummus" last week and will probably eat some more of that this week. I've also bought some live yogourt, with plans to make my own yogourt from it's remnants once I get down to the last bits of the container.  I have made yog before so I feel reasonably confident I can do that again. I made some progress on eating from the freezer last week since it was a bit cooler and I turned on the oven. I don't know that I'll do that this week coming up.
Yesterday I felt quite competent when taking off for the afternoon/evening out of town - I was sufficiently organized that I made supper for lunch time and took a sandwich with me for later - the sandwich included some sliced strawberries which are just starting to get soft - no need to eat out, and nothing wasted!

It has been 16 days since I last threw out food...

I haven't started on the yogurt I bought last week yet!

I harvested some baby potatoes from my garden and they look great. And I went to a couple of farm stands for the first time this summer - the tomatoes are great! I had forgotten how good local field tomatoes taste compared even to how greenhoused-elsewhere-in-the-province tomatoes taste.

I stayed within sight of the grocery budget this week.

Don't really have anything else to report at this point in time, I'm just carrying on!

22 days since I last threw out food...

I have made an appointment with myself to do a lot of food prep tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to get a lot of it done in the morning. My fridge is a bit of a disaster zone at the moment with all sorts of stuff piled up in there and I'm hoping that I don't find anything that's spoiled.

Also next week we're scheduled to go into the city twice and that is dangerous for the budget but right now we're exactly on target for the week - if we can resist buying anything more while in the city that would be amazing.

We found delicious baby doughnuts and they are very tempting.

Also returned to the farm stand with the amazing tomatoes and got some more, plus some tiny tiny eggplants I look forward to playing with. Saw some purple bell peppers - I was tempted to buy one just because I don't think I've ever had purple bell pepper (I think it was a bell pepper but maybe it wasn't?) however I knew that my fridge is already a disaster zone and so I managed to fend off that impulse.
Apparently one of my housemate's friends has said that if we want some apricots (?) (unclear, may be another kind of fruit) we are free to go by and pick them off their tree. I would like to do this but I need to deal with the preexisting fridge food first...

I'm planning on trying making some pickled summer salad tomorrow... harvested some baby pea-pods from my garden - I planted a bunch but only one plant has come up and now my dog has discovered it's there, she will eat all the peas she can reach now that she's realized it's an edible, that's why I wanted to have a whole bunch. Oh well. I got a few pods anyway and they are very tasty, can't blame her for wanting to snaffle them all. I'm also continuing to eat potatoes from the garden, and I harvested my rhubarb at last this week.

I mixed it up with the last of the frozen bag of berries I bought so long ago for smoothies. Together, the rhubarb and berries and rather a lot of sugar have been making a nice extra in with yogurt - both the frozen and the fresh kind. I probably overdosed with the sugar but I wasn't sure how sweet the berries were going to make the mix. Now I have three new jars of rhubarb-mix, one in the fridge and two in the freezer alongside the four or five frozen rhubarb compote from last rhubarb season.

I'm back on the time-restricted eating wagon and back to enjoying feeling hungry by the time I eat breakfast.

Some time this coming week I have to try cottage cheese sandwiches - for my cookbook project! I'm hoping it tastes better than it sounds like it'll taste...

The best news - 30 days without throwing out food!

The bad news - We averaged a quarter more than my budget target for the month of July. Thanks, visits to the city. (There turned out to be not two but three trips in this one week, due to various appointments that wouldn't line up efficiently.)

More good news - cottage cheese sandwiches are a bit weird, but they're quite edible. One day I made one with some chili sauce on a bun that was going stale, and the next day I made another with pickled summer salad topping.

I modified Carla Burke's pickled summer salad from this thread over here: https://permies.com/t/181659/Dinner#1429817

Mine was smaller (I only had two cucumbers) and it lasted just about a week. I really enjoyed it and plan to make more of it.

I'm also grateful to this recipe because it reminded me that I like cucumbers. I went ahead and bought some more for this week.

Not so great news - I gained weight over the past ten days or so. Nuts.

Bad news? Good news? I spent a couple of hours straight late last week in food prep mode, and I've just spent another couple this morning doing the same. It's working, because I haven't thrown out any food yet, but it's also rather tiring after awhile, and I'm slightly depressed that I still have a couple of items in the fridge I want to do things with but I sort of ran out of energy, my feet were getting tired. I feel like such a softy.

Harvest news -  some of the garden potatoes are probably approaching their peak right now, and I'm a bit angsty about them starting to wilt before I get to them. I don't want to have to add blanching potatoes to my list of kitchen things to do, but it's probably inevitable.

Local nectarines are now available, and I bought half a dozen from the same place that sells the amazing tomatoes. They're not quite ripe enough to eat yet, but I am very much looking forward to them. My housemate informs me they don't really like nectarines. Okay. Weirdo.

Worked - I used up the cup of sour cream that has been sitting in my freezer for awhile, using it as an ingredient for baking a nut-and-raisin loaf cake this morning, (while the forest fire smoke was keeping the sun from shining down and making it too hot) I sort of winged it with the ingredients, using a muffin recipe, and the results are a bit dry, I think, but the housemate informs me they will make sure it is eaten pretty quickly. Okay. Weirdo.

Didn't work - I tried making yogurt last week, and it failed completely and utterly. I am going to try again. I think last time I wasn't careful enough to be sure that the commercial yogurt I was trying to use as a starter had active cultures - this time, I am pretty sure I've got some that does have active cultures, so maybe next week I'll be able to try it again.

Kitchen-thing I'm grateful for - The automatic dish washer. I spent my first thirty years without one, and I know there are questions about their actual efficiency, but I find that they definitely do save me time, and I've got a load of dishes from this morning running through it right now that I'm happy I didn't have to wash by hand. (Although I did wash a few by hand this morning anyway that didn't fit in the washer.)

Food I'm looking forward to this coming week - besides the nectarines, I'm looking forward to making a big green salad, with fresh sliced cucumber, some sorrel from my garden, and with some of the chicken I cooked up today. If I'm really clever, I'll remember to stick some nasturtium flowers on top.

Thing that could stop and I wouldn't complain - wildfire smoke has made its seasonal appearance in the valley, and I wish it wouldn't.

I suppose some people would say being sealed inside is a good excuse for tackling those remaining food-prep tasks.

In has been 35 days since I last threw out food.

Just a (relatively) quick one today, getting myself back on schedule with these Thursday posts. The local nectarines are lovely once ripe and I bought more. I also bought some corn on the cob today from the local farm stand, although they're not actually local, they came up from the lower mainland over the mountains to me. The same farm stand also had plums, more tomatoes (although they seem to be done with the beefsteaks, unfortunately) and something else I forget. Apples? Might have been apples.

In a minute I'm going to get up and throw some chicken legs in the instapot. There was a buy-one-get-one on chicken legs packages today. I am still somewhat bewildered that the lady at the meat counter beside me picked up a package of chicken wings instead. They were right next to each other, and the chicken legs were literally half the price. Are they not basically the same thing?

This coming weekend's schedule includes doing something with my garden potatoes, which are definitely starting to tell me some of them are ready for harvest now - and taking a photo of a mystery plant and asking permies people if it's something I can eat. Maybe I'll do that later today!

I'm attacking spiders in my basement this afternoon since one jumped on me while I was watching Life last night. This is Life, the science-fiction story about an alien life form brought on board the space station, and which begins to wander around it attacking people. I did not appreciate the spider's timing.

I've just remembered I'm going to try and make chicken broth - 1 litre of  Campbell's chicken broth was "on sale" at the store at $1.69 just now. I made almost the same face when I saw that as when the spider jumped on me last night.

I brought up my basement because while I was tipping over furniture to vacuum spider webs off, I was reminded that I have two chairs from Acme Chrome Furniture - https://retrorenovation.com/2016/01/18/acme-chrome-dinettes-vintage-style-buy-today
I don't see the exact same chairs on the websites extolling the virtues of this company's products, and what I have are almost certainly not the super-vintage ones but rather ones from the 1990s, and I remember them being re-upholstered (they're now in a mottled pink that is definitely not my vibe - this is why they are exiled to the basement) - but they were my grandparent's chairs, and I am now dreaming of buying them a matching table (and getting them reupholstered again!) The company does a black and white checkered topped table that would match absolutely nothing in the current dinning room and I'm guessing costs several thousands of dollars, but maybe if I make enough of my own chicken leg broth...

I just wanted to say thank you and let you know how much I’m enjoying your sharing your efforts with food waste. Over all I’m pretty careful, but noticed I’ve been slipping. I think I sometimes use my chickens as an excuse that items “aren’t really going to waste”…

Hope you enjoyed all the nectarines😀