Food Waste Friday: The Trifecta

I am sad to report that this was not a super successful food waste Friday for me, but an example of the times when you just can't help but waste food (unfortunately).

That's 1/2 a tub of cottage cheese, a jar of hot fudge sauce and a small amount of broccoli slaw that turned strangely pink (but still tasted ok).

In the case of the cottage cheese, buying it was a bit of an experiment.  I love cottage cheese, but I'm super picky about it.  To date, the only brands I like are Cass Clay (available only in the midwest), and the Stop and Shop brand.  I can tolerate the Friendship brand, but it's way overpriced.  The one pictured above is Target's store brand, and it just didn't do it for me.  I gamely ate half of it, and meant to choke the other half down, but it was starting to go off and therefore goes into the trash.

The broccoli slaw was good, but I just didn't get around to eating it.

The hot fudge was the most disgusting thing I've consumed in years.  I had borrowed a yonana from a friend, and wanted to make hot fudge sundaes.  I got a really good hot fudge recipe from my mother, but the day I set out to buy the ingredients, I was all overwhelmed and could not bear the thought of searching the whole store to find sweet and condensed milk.  So, I bought Mrs. Richardson's hot fudge, and I'm here to tell you: DO NOT DO WHAT I  DID.  It tastes like brown plastic, and it settled into my stomach like a brick.  You microwave it, and then it immediately solidifies into a hard lump of awful.  I kept it around for a few weeks thinking that maybe I would want to eat it again, but I just don't.

How did you do this week?

Food Waste Friday!

I haven't been participating in Food Waste Friday in forever, but I think this is something I need to start doing again.  Also, what better time to start re-participating than a week with no waste!

Since moving, I have been to the grocery store once and continued on my quest to eat down the pantry.  I haven't been cooking much, unfortunately, but am slowly getting back into it.  I've got some food that's getting close to going bad, but I have time to eat it and I'm on budget for groceries.

New apartment = fresh start!

How did you do this week?

Grocery Budget

I've been trying to figure out how to budget for my new apartment and the things I need to buy for it--and me.  Like I said before, the nice thing about living alone is that you can really control your circumstances, even to the point of being a bit crazy.  To that end, one of my big plans is to really rein in grocery spending.  I'm going to spend the summer at the Farmer's Market and the winter crockpotting--it's going to be awesome!

But I started thinking about it, and I don't even know what a reasonable amount of money per month is to spend on groceries.  BF and I were spending $300+ each month, which always seemed really high to me, but maybe that's just typical for two people?

Thankfully, I found this awesome chart from the USDA that breaks down what a person or family should roughly be spending on food.

http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/FoodPlans/2013/CostofFoodApr2013.pdf

That's obviously a little small, but click the link to see the full chart.  Man, I just love charts.  This is the part I'm most concerned with though:

As a female in the 19-50 age bracket, I can expect to spend ~$163 per month on food, if I'm on the thrifty plan.  That actually sounds really high to me, but that's going to be my grocery goal for living alone--at least to start.

I'm lucky in that I don't like meat and therefore don't eat it, I like lentils and most of the food that I actually want to eat is pretty cheap.  Hopefully I don't develop a taste for truffles in the coming months (yummy truffles), and I'm also planning on buying less food overall, and hopefully wasting less too.

Wish me luck!

Food Waste Friday: A Horrifying Cucumber

I've had a little half cucumber knocking around in my crisper.  Every time I moved the salad, I'd see it and think I wonder if that cucumber is still good?  Wednesday morning, I discovered that it was decidedly not good as it was displaying white spots and squishing in the middle.  I didn't even want to grab it for fear that it would rupture when touched, but I got a paper towel and tossed it.

Instead of a picture of the icky cucumber in my crisper, I give you a picture of a sea cucumber that is (probably) perfectly healthy--I mean, I hope it is, but how do you really tell?

Food Waste Friday: Too Much Comfort Food

I made this recipe last week: Gnocchi Mac and Cheese, which sounds phenomenal.  I'm all about any excuse to eat cheese as a main component of my meal, and over the years I've perfected my baked mac and cheese recipe, so I figured this one would come our amazing as well.  In the interest of not having a super-heavy meal, I added some baked broccoli, and kind of made it up as I went along.

It was good, but very, very heavy.  BF and I each ate some (I had two servings), but then it languished in the fridge for more than a week.  I wanted to want to eat it, but then the weather got really warm, and the thought of that much heavy food was just not appealing.

So, I trashed my creation, but I can't say that I wouldn't ever not make it again.  I think next time, I'd add some squash to the cheese sauce, and think of some other way to lighten it up a little.  That gnocchi was heavy!

Food Waste Friday: How Long Does Coleslaw Last?

I don't think I actually tried coleslaw for the first time until I was at least 25.  I received a lot of coleslaw at various restaurants, but, like that piece of parsley served as garnish, I never actually thought people ate it.  This headline from The Onion confirmed my suspicions: 85 percent of US Coleslaw Remains Uneaten.

Funnily enough, when I was in New Orleans in June, I was served coleslaw, ate it, and really enjoyed it.  I suspect it was for one or more of the following reasons:

1. In addition to coleslaw, I was served Macaroni and cheese, creamed spinach and bread pudding i.e. the coleslaw was refreshingly light.
2. It's so flinging-flanging hot in New Orleans in June that I was thrilled to eat something cold.
3. I am now a grownup and grownups eat things like coleslaw.

A couple weeks ago, Poor Girl Eats Well posted a recipe for Coleslaw that got the gears in my head churning, and started making me crave the stuff to the point of distraction.  I was convinced that if I became the kind of girl who eats a lot of coleslaw, I'd both lose girth and save money.  Cabbage is dirt cheap, yo.  What ended up happening instead, is that I panicked at the thought of shredding cabbage (how!?!) and bought the bagged coleslaw, which is just bagged, shredded cabbage, and then I didn't know what to add to it to make it taste like the slaw I'd had in New Orleans.  So I guessed.  I guessed poorly.

I added too much mustard and it just tasted like mustardy cabbage-- not good. I was going to try to rinse the whole mess in my fine mesh sieve, but what can I say, I am lazy.  So I've had disappointing cabbage hogging my fridge real estate for going on three weeks now.  I opened the contained the other day, convinced I'd find a science experiment, but it looks and smells totally fine.  I put it to the group: Do I have food waste, or just disappointing coleslaw that I should find a way to salvage?  Sub-question: How does one salvage disappointing coleslaw?

Food Waste Friday: Nothing!

It's another No Waste Week for me! After that horrible trip to the grocery store, this is a particularly sweet little victory.  I've been putting off going to the store, and eating down the fridge and pantry  and it's paid off! I have some salad that needs eating, but I'll get to that today--huzzah!

Food Waste Friday: A Forest of Dill

I sent BF out to buy dill a few weeks back because I was making tzatziki sauce.  I've never bought dill, which is kind of amazing to me, so I don't know if what he returned with is the standard amount, or if the market that he went to is just one where you get a lot of dill for your buck, but holy crap--I got a lot of dill.  I tried to use it up, I made dill roasted potatoes, tzatziki sauce, I feel like I added it to everything I could, and in fact, everything in my crisper started to taste like it.  It's been a very dilly month.  Sadly, even with my valient effort, I just couldn't eat it up.

I ended up throwing away about 3/4 of the bunch, which pains me greatly.  I should have realized right away that I couldn't consume that much dill and just dried it, but I also don't really know how to dry dill....  Instead, it went into the trash--damnit.

Food Waste Friday: Rotten Tomatoes

Guys, I suck at tomatoes. Tomatoes and basil never seem to last once I bring them into my house.  I got a six-pack of tomatoes on the vine from Trader Joe's last week, and managed to eat one.  Three were rotten about four days later, and then bf threw the remaining two away.  It was as he was throwing them away, that I realized that my basil was also looking pretty tragic.

Ok, I consulted this list about how to properly store vegetables, and I followed the instructions, but it hasn't worked!  It seems like I pick the prettiest, greenest basil at the store, and as soon as I bring it home, it starts turning brown, and quickly devolves into a science experiement.  Then all I want is basil and I can't have it!

I've found that tomatoes do seem to last longer when I put them in the crisper, but the list says not to do that because it makes them mealy and flavorless.  So now I'm down to: do I want to throw away rotten tomatoes, or eat mealy ones?  I'm so torn and so sick of wasting these delicious foods that comprise 1/2 of my favorite breakfast (fried egg with basil and tomato on a bun).  Help!

Food Waste Friday: Everything

Let's hearken back two weeks ago when we lost most of our dry goods to a pantry moth infestation.  Now, in the present time, we've lost the contents of our fridge to what wasn't the worst hurricane of the last 20 years, but a mere tropical storm.  If the universe is telling me that I had hoarded too much food, I hear you loud and clear.

Fie on you, Irene. If you were going to wipe out my power, you could have at least been mildly impressive.  Of course, I was out of town for the whole thing anyway, so who cares.

In the past month, I've wasted approximately $300 of food, and it does not feel good.  Since I'm a perpetual optimist, and there's really nothing I can do about it, I gave the fridge a thorough scrub, and went to the grocery store, list in hand to replenish my stores.

All that was saved was some mustard and hot sauce
but look at how clean it is!

Since I've been trying to eat from the pantry anyway, my monthly goal for September is to not go overboard with the food buying.  I'm going to eat what I have, and only keep a reasonable amount of food on hand.  Plus, we still have a bit of the Lipton Noodles and Sauce from my hoarding days--that needs eating.

I'm hoping too that since we have less food in the house, bf will actually be able to see what we already have. It seems to be a trait among men that they can never find anything, so since there's fewer distractions, maybe he'll know where his kraft singles are (note: they're always in the cheese drawer).  Wish me luck!

Food Waste Friday: Bunzzzz

I'm a little proud of myself today.  Not the kind of robust pride that comes with a no food waste week, but the kind of hey, I've got a little ingenuity pride.  I wandered into the kitchen this morning and saw this:


Out damn spot!

 I knew that we weren't eating the hot dog buns quickly enough, but I did not expect mold already.  Since the mold was only on the top of two buns, I removed those and popped the rest in the freezer.  Then I made this:

1/2 hot dog bun breakfast PB&J!  Yum!

Not only have I started my day with the most important meal, but I avoided some waste!  Huzzah!  Total waste this week: Two hot dog bun tops and a teeny bit of basmati rice.  Not too shabby.

Food Waste Friday: The Pantry Moth Edition

No new picture this time because I don't think I could fit it all in the frame.  We've had pantry moth issues in the past, and despite the heart-felt advice of a pantry moth-hating friend, I just didn't deal with it.  In my defense, this is what we were dealing with:

Yeah.  I originally posted this picture July, 2010

I'd been eating my way through that stash, so it was about half as much as you see there, but we also bought like ten boxes of Rice-a-Roni about six months back because I made some for bf one night and he liked it.  He then panicked that we'd run out, we stocked up, and he never ate it because it's too much work to prepare.  Sigh, I love him, but grrr.

So that happened.

All totaled, in the past month I've thrown away:

• 10 boxes Rice-a-Roni in a variety of flavors
• 5 boxes of Pasta Roni
• 6 cans of Campbell's soup that expired in 2009 and that bf brought with him when we moved into this apartment
• 4 freaky pre-fab meals that bf's mother bought for him at Ocean State Job Lot that he never expressed an interest in eating, but refused to get rid of for some reason
• Some cornmeal
• 1/2 bag of split peas

So that's a lot of food waste, and I would have loved to have donated it to the food pantry instead of just throwing it away, but it was either super expired, or potentially infested.  I feel sick about throwing away all that money, but I certainly wasn't going to eat that food--though I'd been using the noodles from the Pasta Roni for other things and throwing away the powdered flavor packet.  It's a bit cathartic.

The bugmen came on Wednesday and hopefully secured the place against any further infestation, the tainted food is gone, and next time bf wants to buy 10 boxes of Rice-a-Roni, I'll remind him that he hates to prepare it, and that I hate to throw away food.

Food Waste Friday: Icky Arugula

This is what arugula should look like--
Mine was much sadder

I love me some arugula, so when I went to Trader Joes the other day to load up on coffee and olive oil, I grabbed a bag of theirs.  Normally, I get the Earthbound Farms clamshell variety, but then I would have had to make a second trip to the grocery store.  Trader joes rarely lets me down, so even though the bags of arugula looked a bit dubious, I took a chance.

Mistake.

This stuff is slimy, and has a strange smell.  I put some on my sandwich yesterday, even though it tasted funny, and now I have a tummyache.  Could be unrelated, but I'm ditching the arugula anyway.  Trader Joes has a policy that you can return anything you don't like, but the store is too far from home to make it worthwhile, and if I stop there after work, it will mean either leaving arugula in my hot car for eight hours, or schlepping it into the break room fridge, which is just weird, and really doesn't sound like something I'm into.  I'll take a $2.50 loss and never buy Trader Joes leafy greens again.

Food Waste Friday: It's About Time

This week's food waste is not nearly as sexy as previous weeks.  In fact, it's one of the least-sexy foods out there--Old Fashioned Quaker Oats.  I know what you're thinking: Does oatmeal really go bad?  The answer is not really, but for this batch, it's time  to let it go.

The backstory:  For some reason, before I moved from the Midwest to the East coast, everyone warned me about the cost of food.  Even my landlady, before she sent me the lease asked, "Are you prepared for the cost of living?  The cost of food?"  I don't know why everyone was so fixated on this point, but like the paranoid gal that I am, I believed them.  After all, once five people tell you something, you start to think they must be right.

Wrong.

I packed up a bunch of non-perishables and shipped them to my new apartment only to find that many of the items I'd paid to ship actually retailed for less than in the Midwest.  So I basically ended up paying $2.50/box for Tuna Helper, which is certainly not a good deal.  The only items I've noticed that cost significantly more here are: strawberry jam and bread.  For the jam, I switched to generic, and my quality of life is just as good. For the bread, I just try to buy it on sale.

In addition to shipping out Tuna Helper, I also brought along with me in my car the above drum of Quaker Oats.  Keep in mind that I packed my whole life into that car--everything I thought I would need to start fresh, and apparently that included instant oatmeal.  I had the notion in my head that I would live in romantic poverty--lit by candlelight and subsisting on rolled oats exclusively.  That's just not how people live outside of communist Russia.  Damn books!  Another point to keep in mind that I moved to Rhode Island almost four years ago, and had had that Oatmeal on hand for quite some time already.

Yeah, that's February '08.  Or, 3.5 years ago.

That is some seriously expired oatmeal, but I've still been working my way through it.  There are bugs in it, but I can usually skim them off the top, and I figure they won't hurt me.  But you know what?  I don't have to eat bugs--I'm better than that.  And I finally acted by throwing away the approximately 3 cups of oatmeal left in the drum.

I feel fantastic, but my shelf where the oatmeal always sat looks weird to me.

Food Waste Friday: Mango Chipotle Salmon

You may wonder why this appears to be in a cat food bowl.
Well, everyone in this household had to do their part before
this food got wasted--including Wee Watson, the house mascot
and Feline Companion.  He didn't like it either.

We eat a lot of the Starkist flavor fresh tuna packs in this house, and I don't know if I bought this salmon one by accident or how exactly it ended up in our house, but it's been here a while.  I'd see it on the shelf, but never really knew what to do with it, so there it stayed.  Then one day last week, bf was looking for an add-in for his mac and cheese (we usually use the hickory smoked starkist tuna pouch, which is fab), and we were out of everything but the Mango Chipotle Salmon.  Not to belittle his choices, but it's pretty clear that mango chipolte and mac and cheese is not going to be a winning flavor combination.

I gamely tried to use up the rest by making a sandwich to take to work, but bottom line is: I just don't really like salmon.  I know it's good for me, and I try to eat it sometimes, but I really don't like the taste.  I'm officially going to stop trying now.

Not to make this into a rant, but has anyone else ever noticed that there seem to be some foods that you're not allowed to dislike?  I grew up a pretty picky eater, so I got used to people getting frustrated when I would refuse to try things. But now I've grown up and I will try almost anything.  However, when I tell people that I don't like certain foods, like shrimp, for example, people seem to get offended.  "Oh, you must not have had good shrimp.  You should really try it again." Recently bf and I were talking about lobster and I said that I don't think I like it.  "Well how many times have you had it? Where did you eat it?"

My answer: "Maine, which is where you go for lobster."

Does this happen to anyone else?  Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that the same thing has happened occasionally with salmon, which is why I've eaten it so damn many times.  I feel like there's a failure to enjoy salmon on my part--I'm just not trying hard enough, or I haven't had the right salmon.

Let the record show: I do not care for parsnips, salmon, shrimp or steak (though I have to admit, I've never eaten steak, but I don't care for any other beef I've ever tried, so why would I waste my money on steak?).  That means there's just more for everyone else.

Food Waste Friday: I do not like Parsnips

This is a Food Waste Friday late edition. I thought I could make it through the week, but it turns out that I cannot.

A co-worker and I were talking the other day about roasted vegetables (it was awesome, you wish you were there).  Anyway, I was telling him that all I want to eat now that the weather is nice is vegetables: roasted, in a salad, anything, if it came from the ground, I want to sink my teeth into it.  I was particularly enraptured about some ratatouille I had made the other day.  He then started talking up the parsnip, which I had never tried before.

"They're amazing." he assured me, and then said that you can pan roast them just like any other root vegetable. Since I am such a huge fan of root vegetables, I decided to take them for a test drive.  I purchased a bag of parsnips, and added them to my next batch of ratatouille.

I admit, it was foolish to add this untried vegetable into the mix without tasting it on its own first, but my co-worker has never led me astray before!  The ratatouille was a bust, but I managed to save some of it by baking it in a frittata.  Now I just had a wrap of it for dinner (yeah, I made a lot of ratatouille), but every bite was filled with trepidation because I didn't know when I was going to bite into a hateful parsnip.  I threw away 1/2 cup of the ratatouille, and the rest of the parsnips but I will finish the frittata!

I suspect bf doesn't like parsnips either because he sampled the ratatouille, didn't say anything and then made something else for dinner.  I'm never making this mistake again.

Food Waste Friday: A Sad Mango

I do not know how to cut a mango.  Sure this is something I could probably learn if I went online and read up on it, but I haven't ever done that because my bf knows how to cut mangoes and I'd rather let him do it.  Trouble is, he doesn't take the initiative, but rather, waits for me to tell him to cut the mango, and then says something like "I don't think it's good anymore."

I also don't know when mangoes are officially spoiled.  Do they get soft? They don't seem to change colors...

I'm rather upset about this food waste, not just because I wasted food, but because I wanted to eat a delicious mango!

Bah!

Avoiding a Food Waste Friday

Food Waste Friday is something that a lot of bloggers participate in.  Basically, you take a picture of any food waste you've had over the course of the week, and post it on your blog.  The idea is that forcing yourself to be more aware of food that you've wasted by taking a picture of it, and the shame of publicly announcing "I'm throwing away money in the form of wasted food" will make you waste less food.  It makes sense.

I rarely participate in Food Waste Friday not because I never waste food, but because I had a lousy camera.  Also, most of the food wasted in this house is not my food, but bf's.  I harp on him to eat his leftovers (or at least if he's not going to, to throw them away so I don't have to), but nothing changes except his level of annoyance and my frustration with sounding like an angry fishwife.

This week, I'm not participating in Food Waste Friday because I've saved some food that may have otherwise gone to waste!  I had half a container of grape tomatoes that were starting to get a bit wrinkly and sad-looking.  I did throw away four that looked beyond saving, but the others I roasted in the oven with a dash of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt, and now I have delicious roasted tomatoes that are marvelously sweet and that I will add to bf's leftover pasta for tomorrow's dinner!

Look at those happy little fellows roasting away!  They are delicious, and I'm very excited about eating them. Also, in the future, I may use this technique before my tomatoes start to go bad, and make a delicious oven-roasted tomato hummus or pesto.  Stay tuned for that.