Friday, October 7, 2011

Food Waste Friday, October 7, 2011

Happy beautiful, glorious fall-ish Friday!
It's a beautiful day outside today, and I've actually managed to get a good bit done here this morning.
(unlike a lot of mornings.)

I've done laundry and got it to hang out on the line, had the kids make their beds, we've cleaned up the living room and I've started some english muffin batter. It's rising right now, although not as quickly as I'd like.
I'm also working on a simple fall DIY craft that I'll show you when I'm done. The best part? It's free! (If you already have all the materials, like I do. I just wanted to use what I had already around the house, because we don't have a budget for decorations.)

Anyway, on to Food Waste.
It is  better than last week, but still we managed to waste some food around here.

I found this one mushy potato in the bottom of the bag a couple of days ago when I went to make potato soup. I was pretty sad too, because we only had a few potatoes left; but I was still able to make enough soup for all of us to enjoy.
This potato was a purple potato (the most beautiful color inside!)- it's not so rotten it is black! Although I have had that happen before. :)
I think what happened with this little guy is, the fridge got turned up too high and it froze, then I turned the fridge down and it thawed and was mushy and weird feeling. I just put it in the compost.



We also wasted the little end of a Roast beef french dip and Swiss sandwich- just the last few bites that didn't get eaten.

I was all proud the other day because I knew we were doing really well not wasting food. I even used up the last bit of leftover marinara sauce from an impromptu Little Caesar's dinner by making pizza bread.


I had taken some homemade Minestrone soup out of the freezer to thaw for dinner, and a while later when I walked in the kitchen, I noticed there was an awful lot of water in the bottom of the dish. (I always put stuff that is thawing in a dish to catch the drips of condensation that form as it thaws, but this was way more than usual!)  I looked more closely..and there was a hole in the corner of the bag! I don't know how long it'd been there, and didn't want to risk eating contaminated food so I threw it away. A whole two meals of soup, wasted. I was so sad!  Okay, I wasn't too sad, because I hadn't absolutely loved the soup to begin with. My recipe needs tweaking. I just kind of made it up as I went along.
So then we went to Little Caesar's  (again- twice in one week! Ahh!) and got a pizza and breadsticks and they were delicious.
I didn't get a picture of the soup, because honestly it kind of looked like vomit. Not very appetizing!

How did you do this week?
We just did our big, monthly shopping trip yesterday so our fridge and freezer and pantry are stocked full! I hope nothing gets lost in there and goes bad! We'll find out next week. :)

Linking to The Frugal Girl, who is the brain behind all of this documenting food waste stuff.

2 comments:

Live and Learn said...

That's a very interesting potato picture. Do purple potatoes taste very different than white ones? I've only had purple potato chips.

Becca Swan said...

I know, the poor thing looks like a nut, or something! The purple potatoes taste pretty much the same, maybe a little sweeter. They are just not as..mealy as say, a russet potato. They turn kind of gray-ish blue when they are cooked. I had never had them either, I just saw them and was curious to try them!