This is the first Friday I've done so far. (If you want to see the whole explanation, check out this post)
I noticed throughout the week that we do alright at eating up leftovers
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| Here it is in all of it's un-glory. Leftover steel-cut oats from breakfast yesterday, artichoke hearts (that are molding..) and lemon peel. I was going to be industrious and make cleaner or something from the lemon peel, but that never happened. |
(except artichokes and lemons, apparently) but the majority of my family's food waste comes from.....the kids.
This wasn't too much of a surprise, but I didn't really realize exactly how much of their uneaten food we throw away until this week. It is a lot. Like, half of what I put on their plate at every meal.
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| This is typical kid food waste. It happens every time we eat. |
I guess I'm giving them too much?
I always feel like I should give them a good helping, because if I give them the amount they really eat then I feel like they're not eating enough food! I forget they have tiny tummies and don't need as much food as we adults do.
I'm going to experiment and give them less and see how we do with food waste. They can always ask for seconds, and if they don't, we can just put the leftovers in the fridge and eat them for lunch the next day!
Do you have any suggestions for me on how to help my kids eat more of their food?
They aren't really picky at all, they just don't eat a ton. We've started making Ethan sit at the table until we're satisfied with the amount of food he's eaten, and we set the timer for him to finish dinner in 20 minutes or he has to go to bed. That seems to work really well. We just need to be consistent with it. ( I always forget. Thankfully my hubby does not.)
So there is my food waste for this week. For the record, the lemon peel and the artichoke hearts went straight to the compost. So really I threw away only the steel cut oats.
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| Our inside compost bin. We empty it almost every day into the outside one, where the real magic happens. :) |
How did you do this week?
Linking to The Frugal Girl
4 comments:
Giving the kids less food at a time works for me. You can always give them a second helping if they're still hungry. Also, not giving any snack for an hour to an hour and a half before meals ensures that they are hungry enough to eat a healthy portion (and not be so picky!).
Also, you need 2 or 3 chickens. They will take your food waste and turn it back into more food :D
I know WilliamB over at The Frugal Girl always says that you can zest the lemon and freeze that for use in a later recipe before throwing out the rest of it if you have to.
I always feel better that at least *some* of it didn't go to waste.
You might enjoy reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books with your kids. In the original, "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle," there is an applicable story, "The Slow Eater Tiny-Bite Taker Cure." The books have been around for over 50 years and she has a cure for everything. When my kids were younger, they liked hearing the stories, and when they were older they liked reading them themselves.
Lemon zest! Yes! I'll do that next time I have extra lemons peel on my hands.
And I think I might've read the Mrs Piggle Wiggle books when I was a kid...I vaguely remember them. We'll have to make a visit to the library and check them out.
Thanks for the suggestions! :)
p.s. Kayci I don't need chickens.:)
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