Every week, I post a picture of the food that has gone bad over the last seven days. Why do I do this? Because in March of 2008, I finally got fed up with the amount of food I was wasting, and I thought that showing my waste to other people would motivate me to use up my food instead of wasting it. Because this often embarrassing practice was so helpful for me, I invited other bloggers to join me in posting their food waste photos, and Food Waste Friday was born.
That’s pretty bad, huh? Not as understandable as wasting, say, delicate herbs.
I found these during my cabinet clean-out.
The problem is that most of this stuff was up on the very highest shelf, in the back. We know what that means: forgotten food.
I would totally have used this stuff up if I’d remembered that it was there.
None of these foods are unsafe to eat…they’re just rancid, which means the oils have oxidized. Oxidized oils won’t typically make you sick, but they do taste icky.
Fortunately, the bread crumbs were almost gone, and there’s not much rice left in that bag either.
I also found some bad food in my fridge.
The spinach had an expiration of 12.20, so I’m surprised it doesn’t look worse than it does! The grapes aren’t that old, but they went south surprisingly soon after I bought them (I should have frozen them for smoothies when I noticed they were on their way out).
The mozzarella turned, um, pink because for some reason, I didn’t make pizza one week (I make pizza almost every week so I hardly ever waste mozzarella!), and the leftover chicken thighs went bad because I just forgot about them. On the upside, they weren’t local, organic chicken thighs, so I don’t feel quite as distressed about wasting them.
(Organic, local chicken is both expensive and delicious, so letting that go bad is a terrible crime on two counts.)
Well, at least I ought not to have any pantry waste for a while…I know exactly what’s in my cabinets, and my cabinets are organized in a way that will help me to keep better track of what I’ve got.
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How did you do this week? If you blogged about your food waste, link us up by entering your info into the widget below. You’ll save money, reduce your trash output, and get a little publicity for your blog! And if you don’t blog, you can still share about your food waste by leaving a comment.
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Today’s 365 post: (paper) snowflake aftermath
Joshua’s 365 post: Matildabelle??
Melissa
Wednesday 8th of February 2012
And actually now that I've posted, I remember that I have commented before. Whoops! lol ;) :)
Melissa
Wednesday 8th of February 2012
Looooong time reader, first time commenter! How can you tell when something from the pantry has gone rancid? Refrigerator or freezer items are pretty self explanatory, but I've always had a hard time with dry goods.
Lisa
Wednesday 18th of January 2012
I'm excited to do an Eat-from-the-pantry-and-freezer week (or month!? there's a lot there!) and we were making tacos last night. We put the hard taco shells in the toaster oven and all of a sudden there was this really strong, weird and terrible smell in the kitchen -- the taco shells were virtually sweating and melting! I checked the box and they were WAYYYY expired! Who knew that way expired taco shells reacted that strangely when heated. Fortunately, we had a newer pack in the pantry and we could still have dinner. : ) Watch out for old taco shells! ~grin~
Marie
Saturday 14th of January 2012
It's a miracle! I cleaned my pantry and I didn't throw anything away. Although there was a little waste from my fridge...but it's still better than most weeks. So I'm pretty happy about that. :-)
Ellen
Friday 13th of January 2012
Oh yuck! I just threw out a big wedge of brie (totally uneaten!) that also had turned brownish and pinkish. I shudder to think of the cost. And what makes it worse...we LOVE brie. Just bought it before the holidays and each day kept saying...we'll have it tomorrow, we'll have it tomorrow...