It’s been a good food waste week so far.

Well, it’s been more of a good “use up the food so it doesn’t go to waste” week, really.

• On Friday, I looked in the fridge and found leftover lunch meat, some random bits of cheese, some mushrooms, lettuce, and tomatoes. I also had some day old french bread on the counter.

It was most decidedly not the night to have the planned meal of grilled chicken. No, instead I made mushroom, cheese, and roast beef panini sandwiches (which were possibly the most delicious panini I have ever made!) and we had a green salad along with it.

I love it when things work out that way.

• I had a little bit of lettuce left after that dinner, so for lunch on Saturday, I had a lettuce and cucumber salad with some Romano cheese sprinkled on top (I topped it with some leftover salad dressing).

• I used a cup of leftover pumpkin to make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for breakfast on Sunday.

• I used up a few apple slices that were left from dinner earlier in the week by sauteing them in a little bit of butter for about 10 minutes. They were really tasty…sort of like eating applesauce with a fork. (I do often make applesauce with leftover apples, but there were so few this time, it didn’t seem worth the effort).

• I had several tomatoes that were going to go bad before I used them, so I blanched them, peeled the skins off (they practically fall off after blanching), and froze them to use next time I have a recipe that calls for canned tomatoes.

• 4 very black bananas had inhabited a shelf in my fridge for a week or two, and I finally used them up. I made banana muffins with 1 cup of mashed bananas, and I froze one more cup of mashed bananas to use later.

• I had a lone peeled potato in the fridge. I accidentally peeled too many when I was making potato cubes the other night. So, I boiled it, shredded it on my box grater, and froze it to use when I make Deep Dish Pizza on Saturday.

• One small head of broccoli was in the veggie drawer, so I cooked it last night. Lisey and I sprinkled leftover Romano cheese on it and ate it with our dinner.

• I had a couple of peppers and a few mushrooms in the fridge, so I bought two zucchini and tonight we will have grilled vegetables along with our grilled chicken.

I purposely did very minimal grocery shopping this week in order to force myself to use up the contents of my fridge, and it’s working pretty well so far. My fridge hasn’t been this empty in a long time, and I’m thinking I just might have a no-waste week at long last!

Edit: I can’t believe I forgot to mention that I used up the white rice I asked you all about. You had so many awesome suggestions, and I decided to use the rice pudding suggestion. I cooked it and had it for breakfast on Saturday, so it’s all gone now. Yay!