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How much food do you throw away?
Slight spinoff from the cleaning/fridge posts from last week--I'm curious how much uneaten food you all throw away on a weekly basis. I feel like FI and I are terrible at this and I'm really working hard to get us to get better. Each week when I clean out the fridge and pantry after grocery shopping, I'd say about 2-4 items wind up in the trash (e.g. an expired yogurt, tub of leftover veggies from dinner, stale crackers, package of protein that's gone bad because we didn't get around to cooking or freezing it in time, etc.) I meal plan for the week and send FI shopping each weekend with a grocery list, but sometimes our plans change or a recipe makes more than I anticipated and we wind up with uneaten food.
We've gotten better about this since FI stopped buying "extras" that were not on the grocery list. He used to come home with, for example, 8 yogurts when they were on sale, even though we already had 6 in the fridge and the two of us go through maybe 2-4 yogurts a week at most. But it's still something that we struggle with and that makes me feel guilty, and I'm trying to get better.
So am I really as bad as I think we are or is our "waste" rate more typical than I realize? How much food waste is inevitable? What tips and tricks do you use to minimize it?
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Re: How much food do you throw away?
I'm trying to get better about keeping the refrigerator organized, since I think that's my biggest issue.
I try not to throw a lot away but end up with a ton in the freezer. If dinner doesn't happen one night (too many leftover to justify cooking), the meat I buy goes in the freezer. We throw away most parsley and cilantro as I'll use a handful or two but not all. A gallon of milk either goes in 2 days or gets tossed. Pretty much all restaurant leftovers get tossed (excluding Chinese and pizza).
We have lots of issues with stale food as well. The Kid doesn't reseal anything so I'll find that a box of cereal that I thought was unopened is stale. No cracker is safe. I've mostly stopped buying these products because he'll eat 2 crackers then leave the box open for days. I feel like we're all punished but I hate shelling out money for stuff that becomes garbage. Single serving packages seem expensive -- and he'll sometimes eat a box of them at a time anyway. The joys of a teen...
I am good about making use of random "ends" though. I make stock out of chicken or beef bones regularly. I toss them in a bag in the freezer and will make a batch whenever I have enough bones saved. I also make vegetable stock out of vegetables ends. I won't save the rotten stuff but if something's not pretty or wilted, it goes into one of my freezer bags. Mine all tend to be mushroom-y as I hate throwing away woody stems of mushrooms.
Lots of things also get cooked up at the last minute and frozen. I'll always cook up the ground beef (usually with onion) before freezing it because it's easier to use that way. Leftover veggies frequently get sauteed. Usually the end up in the freezer, sometimes tossed randomly into recipes. Most things taste good in scrambled eggs so I do that a lot.
This is a big issue for us but I'm working hard to get better.
Not a lot I think. We have a compost bucket that we use for food scraps (banana peels, coffee grounds, etc.) but we don't have much actual wasted food. This week we tossed a whole onion because it had gotten moldy, and I have to toss some kale leaves, but they don't count IMO because I picked them from my own garden. I try to make my shopping list around our meal plan and re-use the same ingredients in a single week.
I very rarely throw away ingredients as I shop pretty carefully with a meal plan and a list. Potatoes are my nemesis though, since it's so cheap to buy the larger bag versus individual potatoes, and the potatoes in the bag are smaller sizes that I like, but they usually sprout before I get through the whole thing. However, I do throw away leftovers. I like to make new recipes all the time and sometimes they don't turn out great... they're fine for one meal but after that I don't want to eat the rest... especially a problem when FI is traveling for work 4-5 days a week. It's just me left to eat all that food.
Dinner wise, I meal plan. I cook on Monday and Wednesday, and we eat the left overs Tuesday and Thursday nights. Weekends are usually take out, out to eat, or if I cook I just run to the store that day.
Doing that really cuts down on waste. We don't mind eating the leftovers the next night though, and it really makes cooking less of a chore for me when I get home from work if I only have to do it twice. The time I save on left over nights, I make my gym time.
But I always have good intentions, which is how I end up in this mess. I need to just admit that until life is slightly less crazy, I'm strictly a canned soup, lunchmeat, cheese, and crackers gal. Add a bag of oranges so I don't get scurvy and I'm set. Even this morning, I was thinking I need to clean out the fridge, and it's probably at least a bag full (though in my defense, I haven't done a good condiment sweep in awhile, so that will contribute greatly).
We're generally pretty good - I'm fairly good at eyeballing amounts, so we only have one day of leftovers (which J eats for lunch) if any at all. We don't have a microwave, so any leftovers we do have are reheated on the stovetop.
I'm a routine lunch eater, too, so it's really easy for me to buy a week's worth of lunches at a time and do them all up in a prep day before I go back to work.
Stirfrys and fajitas are staples in our house, which means a little meat and a lot of veggies. Easy to buy, and easy to get rid of.