First, I’m not finished blabbing on about cheap groceries…the series is just on a break until probably Monday, so that I can get my food waste photo in and also post my menu (coming later today).
Secondly, for those of you that might have just found my blog and are wondering what in the world is up with me posting a picture of my moldy food, here’s a brief bit about that. While I’ve always been a really frugal grocery shopper, I’ve not always been very good at using up all the food I buy.
Actually, to be honest, I’ve been really bad at it! I either let it rot in the fridge, or I put in in the freezer (and all too often, the freezer is just a pit stop on the way to the trash can).
Anyhow, a number of months ago I got fed up with myself and decided to buckle down and work on this problem.
Buying cheap food isn’t such a fabulous bargain when you end up throwing a bunch of it away, and throwing food away isn’t especially wonderful for the planet either (there’s the unnecessary trash, and then all the resources that went into producing and transporting food that we didn’t even eat!). I thought some accountability might be good, so I initially started a blog solely about not wasting food.
This has helped me a lot…there have been many times where I’ve persevered with some leftovers just because I didn’t want to have to add another thing to my food waste photo!
Writing about my food-wasting progress doesn’t really give me enough material for a lively blog, though, so I decided to start this blog and include my no-food-waste efforts here as a weekly feature.
I might throw in another post here and there regarding food waste (because reducing food waste is a very frugal thing to do), but there should be at least one a week, highlighting my waste(or hopefully my lack thereof!).
Maybe someday I’ll get this down pat and this feature will disappear, but for now I still need the pressure of having other people look at my garbage. 😉
Kristen
Tuesday 22nd of July 2008
I've read statistics like that...it's so mind-boggling, isn't it? And, given that Americans are usually more wasteful than our European counterparts, I'm sure that we're wasting at least as much per household. I've been reading Jonathan's Wasted Food blog, and he's liked to the lovefoodhatewaste site before, so I have it in my bookmarks.
It would be very cool if the U.S. started getting proactive about food waste. I'm hoping that higher food prices will motivate and inspire us.
Philip Booth
Tuesday 22nd of July 2008
Annually, the UK dumps 6.7 million tonnes, meaning each household jettisons between £250 and £400 worth of food each year. Most of the waste – which nationally costs £8bn – is sent to landfill where it rots, emitting the potent climate- change gas methane. It is great you are raising this issue. Our Government has even helped set up a website on the issue: http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/