In which I waste copious amounts of food.

Some weeks, I have little to say about food waste (and few photos to share) but this is very much not one of those weeks.

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

The Waste

When I cleaned my fridge earlier this week, I knew I was going to find an awful lot of not-salvageable food.

There’s been sickness at my house for more than 16 days, people aren’t eating what they usually eat, and I got an extra two produce box deliveries somehow.

All of that is a recipe for waste.

So, this post is eerily reminiscent of the food waste posts I used to write back in 2008 when I was first learning to battle against food waste.

The good news is that this is now the exception and not the rule.

The bad news?

The photo above isn’t the extent of my waste.

Nope.

I also composted two moldy containers of mushrooms (these came in the produce box, and Mr. FG, the only mushroom eater in the house, wasn’t really eating anything at all when these arrived.)

I also composted an entire bag of now-slimy beans, which had been delivered the day everyone got sick.

I’d normally have made sauteed green beans (so delicious!) with these, but it never happened because almost no one was eating anything.

I also came across this orange.   Instead of chucking it, I cut off the bad spot and used the rest to make this stovetop air freshener.

As part of my kitchen-cleaning day, I went through all of my kitchen cupboards and I found a little bit of waste there.

These panko crumbs were expired and smelled of rancid oil.   Yuck.

And ditto for this last bit of rice.

The 3 Situations

This post isn’t entirely filled with bad news.   In my kitchen cleaning, I realized that I had three problems that could easily become waste.

First, I had a banana situation in the form of 10 overly ripe bananas.

Then there was the greens situation…2 bags of spinach and 3 heads of romaine.

And I found a potato situation as well.

I peeled the oldest potatoes and boiled them.

(Why yes, that IS my new Christmas pot.   So nice of you to notice.)

And then I mashed them so I could make potato bread.

I also made a pot of clam chowder, which handily used up a number of the red potatoes.

I’m thinking perhaps a dish of indulgent scalloped potatoes should also happen soon.

As far as the greens situation goes…so far I’ve used up 1 of the 2 spinach bags and also a head and a half of the Romaine lettuce.

That leaves 1.5 heads of Romaine and 1 bag of spinach.

So, I think I may actually get through all of the greens.

I didn’t photograph my ten bananas (you can see some of them in the lettuce photo above, though.)

I used 3 to make two loaves of yeasted banana bread.

And I used another 3 to make a double batch of banana chocolate chip muffins.

I used another one to make some sort of weird banana/egg pancakes for myself last night, so now I’ve only got 3 more left to use!

I’ll probably freeze them for future baking, as we have a sufficient supply of banana baked goods at the moment.   😉

In other winning news: my produce box gifted me with a zucchini.

Well, that’s not the winning part.

I am not known for my love of zucchini, but I am pleased to say that I used this one up within a day, and I did not even bake with it.

I sliced it up into thin slivers, which I sauteed, sprinkled with oregano, tossed with tomato sauce, and topped with freshly shredded Parmesan cheese (so affordable at Aldi!).

When mixed with the oregano, tomato sauce, and cheese, the zucchini is surprisingly palatable.   And it’s certainly a much lower-sugar option than zucchini bread.

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Are you still with me??

That was a super long Food Waste Friday post.   But hopefully it was picture-ific enough to keep you reading.

And boy, I hope I have a lot less waste to report to you when I next host Food Waste Friday in two weeks.   My family seems to finally be on the mend from this dreadful bug, so it should be a little simpler to eat up our food now!

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How’s food waste goin’ at your house?  

I’d love to hear in the comments, and of course if you blogged about Food Waste Friday, leave your link in your comment.