Let’s start with the bad news. And then I will redeem myself.

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.

First, happy Valentine’s Day! We’re kind of big fans of this holiday around our house, although not in the way that involves enormous red stuffed animals or expensive jewelry. 😉

In case you’re interested, Here’s a post I wrote about how we celebrate it. And here’s a more detailed post about the 14 Days of Valentines.

On to food waste!

The Bad News

Oy.

Going clockwise from the top, I have

• a dried-up bunch of cilantro (It’s not like I’m confused about how to use up cilantro.)

• three (!) squishy cucumbers (Whyyy did I buy so many??? And why did I not use them??)

• a few beans (I am so annoyed that it’s hard to find them packaged loosely-I have trouble using up a big bag before we get really bored of beans.   I intended to saute these last few up for another lunch meal for myself, but didn’t get around to it.)

And then the last thing…that package of sausage.

Well.

I was organizing my fridge, and thought a container had spilled. So I took out the fruit drawer to inspect the damage, and lo and behold, there was a package of sausage.

Which had expired in December.

Oops.

I didn’t even realize food could get stuck under there, but I will be a little more vigilant now.

On to the winning part of this post.

Rescue #1

I had some leftover sauteed asparagus and some leftover gravy in the fridge, and I realized that with the help of a blender, the two could become soup! It was quite delicious.

(I apologize for the dizzying angle of the above picture. It seemed reasonable at the time?)

Rescue #2

I took some wrinkly grape tomatoes, cut them in half, tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted them. These are so good added to my scrambled eggs.

Rescue #3

There was a leftover sweet potato half hanging out in the fridge, so I mashed it, added some water to make it more of a pumpkin consistency, and used it to make some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

Rescue #4

To finish things up this week, I blended some leftover roasted squash with water, half and half, curry powder, and salt to make a bowl of squash soup.

It wasn’t quite as delicious as the butternut squash soup I usually make, but it did make the leftover squash way more appetizing.

Hopefully next time around, I’ll have a bunch of marvelous saves to share, and no bad news to go along.

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