FWF: Week 10

This week we did pretty poorly. Food waste was not at the foremost of my brain and so we ended up with more waste than I would have liked. It's frustrating for sure, so next week I hope to do better.


1 avocado

egg whites - I meant to use these in meringue cookies, but I wasn't really feeling like anything sweet. Then the hubs went and made killer chocolate cookies and pretty much sealed the fate of these.

pita - The hubs made homemade pita earlier in the week, but the thing about homemade pita is that they have the life expectancy of a fruit fly, and we couldn't eat them all in time.

2 sweet potatoes - oops.


1 zucchini - from last week. We used up one, but the second never got used up.

a bit of omelette veggies - I cut up a bunch to have omelette veggies cut up to use when making the hubs breakfast (my knife skills are limited at 5 am). But he asked for scrambles and grits more than omelettes this week and messed me all up!

too many strawberries - oh the pain...

FWF: Week 9

This week:

a bruised and battered pear

1 cup citrus waffle batter - note to self: make batter into waffles before batter goes bad.

1/2 cup tuna salad - from our hiking trip this weekend. jerkey and trail mix just don't cut it for me, so we took fresh strawberries, cut up fuji apples and tuna salad with water crackers as a mid-trail snack.

On a better note, we've eaten up all the dinner leftovers, no precious strawberries have committed suicide by mold and the two zucchini that are on the fence are getting used up in omelettes this morning and stuffed omelettes tonight (with calzones, which will also use up peppers, mushrooms and a half cut onion - they are truly God's gift to leftovers).

Grocery shopping this week - ridiculously light. Only one bag of uncooked jumbo shrimp (for this recipe later in the weekend). 

FWF: Week 8

So, it's taken me two months, but I'm finally getting the hang of this FWF business. (I'm hoping this cockiness doesn't jinx me for next week). Before y'all get too excited, I will say I wasn't totally waste free this week, but after a major and thorough fridge clean out (even scrubbed the crisper drawers - go me!), this is all I had:

little baggies stuffed with various herbs. Technically these have (or had) some value monetarily, but they are all cut from the hubs plants. Sometimes when I say I need 1/4 c. chopped parsley, for instance, he can't help himself but give the plant a little pruning and me a little more than I bargained for. I think in the future I'll just toss in the extras just to use them up, but the good news is that we spent about $0.00 on these so it isn't a real big waste.

Other than that, I did have one itty bitty strawberry. I was cutting up the last ones for a mid-morning snack and this one, stuck in the bottom of the container, was plagued with mold. It was only about 4 days post-purchase, but you all know how strawberries are, especially organic ones. The waste associated is worth in season strawberry goodness, in my opinion, although ideally I would get to eat them all!

So, even though this isn't a completely waste free week, we are getting that much closer. I am claiming this week as a food waste win, because for me, it's the closest I've ever come.

I will say that I love that my fridge is actually making more sense now. I sometimes get carried away at the grocery store, but I'm shopping very moderately this week, just so I can keep that fabulous looking fridge I've got going.

FWF Week 5: Sheesh

cheese - This is supposed to be a dry cheese, and my hubs was concerned that I was tossing good cheese, but this thing could have killed someone it was so dry and hard. Not salvageable as far as I could tell.
cherry Tomatoes - Shriveled.

store bought hot dog buns - Previously frozen and thawed during a freezer clean out, while not moldy, they just didn't get eaten. It could have been that I made some bread (semolina bread and sandwich buns) earlier in the week and these buns from when we first moved into this apartment were old and I'm sure tasteless. And a little too squishy.

half a can evaporated goat's milk - Not even sure if this is bad, because goat's milk stuff tastes a little off on a good day, but figured I'd go on the safe side here. I used the half a can in some BBQ meatballs, but I didn't freeze the other half right away and then kept wondering "Is it still good?" in my head.

I was a little upset that I wasted the buns and the milk. The milk I really should have saved, but the buns I'm feeling better about now that they are in my trash. I tried all week to use them in various applications, but they just didn't compare to my bread. They were initially bought to tide us over until we settled here, not for nutrition or flavor. And I'm almost certain that any value that they had in either of those categories has been reduced to 0 since being frozen for half a year.

Grocery Spending this week: $30.44. Not too shabby.

FWF Week 4: Gettin' Better

This week, while I did have some food waste, I didn't have too much.

A bit of beet greens and some egg whites. I made something earlier in the week that used the yolks and had the whites left over. I already have whites in the freezer, so I didn't want to just add more to that pile. I made them into scrambles for the hubs one morning, but they didn't go over well. I almost took one for the team and ate the rest of the eggs, but my husband said that they tasted like farts. So...these farty egg whites are showing up today and getting pitched.

A pear also went bad, but I think this one is on the grocery store and not me. I brought home 4 pears. 3 still have yet to ripen, but one turned to mush about 1.5 days after it's arrival in my kitchen.

Our grocery bill this past week was $195.38. That certainly is a lot, but I'm pretty certain that I won't be needing much in way of groceries for at least another week, possibly two (aside from some fresh veggies and eggs).

How did you do this week? See how the Frugal Girl did (jealous!) and other participating bloggers over at The Frugal Girl's blog.

FWF: Week 3

Slowly but surely I'm getting a bit better at this. Total food waste this week was not as bad as previous, but I still have a long way to go until there is no waste.

So, what went bad?

1/2 c. chicken stock. I made a creamy gravy for raviolis and didn't know what to do with the remaining half. I was using it for the gravy because it was already getting to the point where it would need to go, and I didn't have anything that needed stock coming up to eat. It's homemade, so the cost to us is negligible. Old chicken bones don't really cost a thing, and makes about 20 cups. So, this half cup, while I'm sad to see it go, isn't a tragedy.

a bit of lettuce. Just a few bites really. I'd say less than half a serving.

1 c. coleslaw. I made a whole cabbage worth of coleslaw last week, and I have to say that while I do feel bad about wasting this, it's not a huge cost and it's more of the coleslaw than usually gets finished.

2 scones. I made scones last week as part of a Club Baked recipe pick. All was going well, except that I didn't realize how quickly they would develop what appeared to be mold. The hubs and I were both unsure if it was really mold or just butter and flour, but we didn't want to risk it. Sadly, two scones bit the dust. Note to self: make half recipes when baking.

Still a ways to go, but feeling better about getting the hang of this. Grocery bill this week: $1.67. I ran out and bought bread because I wanted french toast but was feeling a bit lazy and didn't want to wait for bread to get made at home. I feel like next week will be a doozy.

FWF: Week 2.

This week I still had some serious food waste.

a potato. I could salvage quite a few potatoes nearing their end, but this one just didn't make it. Luckily it was a little guy, so I feel a bit less bad. 

lettuce. I knew this one would be a challenge. Usually we eat up salads for lunch, but my husband's work schedule changed and he didn't end up taking his lunch to work, which meant I had too much lettuce. Should have eaten more dinner salads.

a mango. No excuses. Should have cut it up and put it on the above lettuce and called it a salad.

leftover tart dough. I made a half recipe of dough, but it didn't come out quite right. I re-made it for my Blood Orange Tart, put the funky dough in the fridge thinking, maybe I can fix it, but I didn't...

snow peas. Made these for the hubs lunch. He ate most of them, but had some leftovers, which never got eaten.

a clove of garlic. You know the one. The odd ball one in an otherwise beautiful bulb that just is bad from the moment you bring it home. I call not my fault.

And, I still have a fridge full of food. I've been using up the veggies and fruit we were gifted on our recent California trip, and supplementing with some things from the market.

A no-so-surprising bonus of participating in FWF is that I have become more responsible with not only using everything up (which stretches everything further), but also in buying less to begin with. Our grocery bill this week totaled 39.70. Over $5.00 of that was for a jar of martini olives (we all have our vices, no?). I know many people who spend less on groceries, for bigger families, but for us, this was a decent week. And I imagine next week will be even lighter, in waste and in spending.

Check out The Frugal Girl to see how other people did this week. 

Food Waste Friday

So, I have been wanting to join in on The Frugal Girl's Food Waste Friday  for a while now. I think it's a brilliant idea. Nothing like embarrassing yourself all over the internet to change a bad habit.

I'm sort of a food hoarder. I don't know where or how I got this gene, but I have it. It's ironic because I tend to be very streamlined with other things and belongings. Sometimes this quirk works in my favor - my well stocked pantry has meant fewer trips to the store and makes my meal preparation pretty efficient. The downside is that less stable items tend to go bad before I have a chance to use them. Especially if we have some unexpected scheduling. 

Here's what went bad this week:

a container of whipped cream. I originally made this to top some strawberries and lemon curd. But I ate all the strawberries and still had some of the whipped cream left. I should have gone and bought more berries, because it's a shame to waste homemade whipped cream.

a container of rice.  This was one of those things that found it's way to the back of the fridge and...yuck. I think it's over two weeks old.

dressing. That would be the pink container there - cranberry dressing I made for salads a while back.

eggplant. I bought this for dinner one night, but with all the craziness that's been going on around here, I never got to make the intended dinner.

pasta sauce. Not pictured. My husband found this in the door with a nice layer of mold on top of the remaining sauce and pitched it.

For the good news: We were gifted a LOT of citrus. I can't even caps enough to emphasize how much we got when visiting my hub's aunt (she has tons of fruit trees). Most of it is super fresh and will last a bit, but she did give us a few oranges (blood oranges no less) that were beyond ripe. I made those into a tart almost the minute we got home, so I'm happy to report that those will not be pictured for FWF!

Hopefully next week is a little better!