Five Frugal Things | food waste prevention

I did not plan this to be themed, but today’s Five Frugal Things is gonna be all food-related!

It’s basically a tour through my adventures in trying to avoid food waste.

1. I baked all my sweet potatoes

When I got back from Hawaii, my Hungry Harvest box included a bunch of sweet potatoes. Zoe’s not a fan, so it’s up to me to eat these.

I kind of forgot about them (whoops), so on Sunday I put them all on a half-sheet pan and baked them.

Once they were cool, I peeled ’em and put them in the fridge; a baked and peeled sweet potato is much easier to grab than an uncooked one!

I also cooked a small pot of black lentils.

(I’m embarrassed to tell you how long these have been in my pantry, unopened.)

(Ok, fine, it’s probably been since 2016/2017. It’s a good thing lentils don’t really go bad.)

I also made a cilantro/sour cream sauce (eyeballed, but made of cilantro, sour cream, mayo, salt, pepper, and garlic powder).

So now I can throw together some simple lunch bowls with the lentils, sweet potatoes, and sauce.

I read that black lentils are the healthiest among lentils, and whether that’s true or not, I do know they are a good source of protein.

And more than that, I know they needed to be used up. 😉

So, I’d be eating them right now regardless of their standing in the Lentil Nutrition Olympics.

2. I rescued my crystallized honey

I don’t know why, but my last container of honey crystallized a lot faster than usual. Sooo, there was still a lot of honey left in the container.

To fix this, I submerged the jar in hot water, using a bowl to weigh it down.

After a few minutes, the honey was soft enough to pour right into a glass jar.

I think we’ll finish this before it re-crystallizes, but if it does crystallize, I can always just submerge the glass jar in water again.

3. I made a use-it-up bowl of oatmeal

In addition to the aforementioned half-full jar of honey, I also had the previous honey jar still in my cabinet. This one had only a teeny bit of crystallized honey in the lid, so I scraped that out into my bowl of oatmeal.

Also, before I went to Hawaii, I had thrown my container of blackberries into the freezer.

For longer storage, that’s not ideal (you’d want something more airtight!), but for temporary purposes, this works fine.

I stirred about half of the blackberries into my oatmeal yesterday, and I’ll probably use up the rest in a bowl today.

If it was summertime, I’d make a smoothie to use these up, but man, I don’t really love drinking a cold smoothie in January/February!

(Here’s how I make my one-serving bowl of microwave oatmeal.)

4. I made some croutons

I barely looked in my kitchen freezer last semester, so I didn’t really know what was hiding in there.

But, as I was searching through it this past weekend, I found a small bag of bread cubes.

I sauteed them in butter, then baked them in my toaster oven on the air-fryer setting until they were crispy.

Then I ate ’em on top of a bowl of butternut squash soup (also from my freezer!)

5. I made a small batch of applesauce

I had a gallon bag of thinly sliced, peeled apples in the freezer and honestly….I think I had grabbed these from the freezer at my old house when I moved out.

Sooo, they were kinda* elderly.

(!!!!!)

*that is, if “kinda” means “actually-factually”

But I wanted to at least try to rescue them, so I threw them in a pot with some cinnamon and cooked them until they were soft and falling apart.

They tasted just fine as applesauce, so I’m glad I gave this a try.

Your turn! What frugal things have you been up to lately?