Wilty lettuce. And thank you. But not in that order.

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.

Before we get to food waste, I just wanted to say thank you to the many readers who responded so kindly to my post yesterday, which announced some changes coming to this space. I really appreciate you encouraging me to place a high priority on my off-line life, especially because that’s not in your own self interest! You guys are great.

I waffled a little bit before making the decisions that I made, but you know what? Now that the decisions are official, I feel really confident that this was the right choice. I think this will be the best of both worlds because I’ll still get to talk about frugality with you guys here, and I’ll have more time to spend with my five favorite people in the world: Mr. FG and my kids (and I think I’ll also be able to find a little extra time to do some more activities that recharge me).

So. I’m happy and excited about the positive effect these changes will have on my life and ultimately on my blog as well. Thanks again for being gracious and supportive!

Ok. We really are going to talk about food waste today.

Here’s mine:

Ooh! I have to tell you that I had a dream (nightmare?) this week, in which my fridge was filled with tons of rotten food. There was all kinds of bad stuff in there, but one thing I remember is that I had something like 4-5 containers of wilted, moldy lettuce.

I was so relieved when I woke up.

But then I went and wasted two little heads of lettuce. Fortunately, that doesn’t hold a candle to the rotten lettuce in my dream.

This is two weeks in a row where I’ve wasted greens. Boo. I have a partial bag of spinach in my fridge right now, and a new package of lettuce, so I’d better get to eating some salad.

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A reader sent me a CNN article about food waste this week. I wasn’t surprised to see that 40% of U.S. food is wasted and neither was I surprised to see that a big culprit is waste at home. Americans throw away 25% of the food they buy, on average. We can do better than that, right?

I shall think of this article as I soldier my way through the greens this week. 😉

P.S. Come back tomorrow because I have a giveaway for you!

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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.

Those of you who participate in Food Waste Friday can now grab a fancy-schmancy button to perk up your posts. If you copy and paste the following code into your Food Waste Friday post, this little graphic will appear.

If you blog on WordPress, just make sure you’re in html mode when you copy and paste the code, or it won’t work properly.

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Today’s 365 post: Well, I was wrong.
(and since I couldn’t stand to stop at 869 posts, here’s one last bonus post: Finis.)

Joshua’s 365 post: Wrex