Personal food waste solutions

[catherine]

A small thing, but I switched from onions to onion powder in recipes. Even in a Ziploc bag and inside a compartment the odor of half an onion left over would creep out.

I don't mind the smell of onion or garlic (except on my breath--I don't want to offend anyone!).
I keep all my onions, garlic, potatoes and ginger on one of those cool, collapsible baskets that have been around forever. I had it under a bed in NJ because I ordered it but never used it, and nearly got rid of it, but when I moved up here, there was a hook in the pantry ready-made for it, and it also matched the color scheme! (Red). It works VERY well for me.

https://www.amazon.com/Fox-Run-Hangi...1050046&sr=8-4

If I have half an onion left over, I put it in a repurposed plastic or glass jar/container or ziploc bag.

[SteveinMN]

Oh, and something else I did to avoid food waste is to nix any recipe that called for very small quantities of items we don't normally consume. Molasses? Yes, it keeps a while, but, no. Pimientos? I'm the only one who'll eat them and even a small jar is more than enough for me. Chinese stirfry calling for some bottled sauce I rarely use? Pass. Buttermilk (or even buttermilk powder)? No.

If I can buy the quantity I need in bulk at the co-op, OK. If I can substitute something for the ingredient (say, a stone-ground mustard for Dijon), fine. But I just say no to ingredients I know I likely will never use again.

[catherine]

Oh, and something else I did to avoid food waste is to nix any recipe that called for very small quantities of items we don't normally consume. Molasses? Yes, it keeps a while, but, no. Pimientos? I'm the only one who'll eat them and even a small jar is more than enough for me. Chinese stirfry calling for some bottled sauce I rarely use? Pass. Buttermilk (or even buttermilk powder)? No.

If I can buy the quantity I need in bulk at the co-op, OK. If I can substitute something for the ingredient (say, a stone-ground mustard for Dijon), fine. But I just say no to ingredients I know I likely will never use again.

Excellent tip for my situation! DH has been walking around saying "We should always have buttermilk!" I'm not sure if he's joking or not! I may have used buttermilk once in 40+ years. But being the foodie in the family, he tends to get on these odd kicks so who knows what he's jonesing to make with buttermilk!

Here's another thing that works against you when you a) have a small pantry and b) live in a rural area. You are in a supermarket 30 miles away, and you can't remember how much salad dressing you have. So you grab it "just in case." That's how you wind up with a dozen bottles of salad dressing. I'm happy with oil and vinegar, but it is nice to have blue cheese on hand for veggie platters and chicken wings.

[KayLR]

I don't mind the smell of onion or garlic (except on my breath--I don't want to offend anyone!).
I keep all my onions, garlic, potatoes and ginger on one of those cool, collapsible baskets that have been around forever. I had it under a bed in NJ because I ordered it but never used it, and nearly got rid of it, but when I moved up here, there was a hook in the pantry ready-made for it, and it also matched the color scheme! (Red). It works VERY well for me.

LOL, had to read this twice! I thought, wow, she must be afraid of vampires to keep her garlic under her bed!

[herbgeek]

. Buttermilk (or even buttermilk powder)? No.

I'm with Catherine's husband. We are almost never without buttermilk. I use it almost every weekend in pancakes or biscuits. Use it for cakes, and for soaking chicken before making oven fried chicken. Quick breads of all kinds, for creamy salad dressings.

Plus it keeps a long time. I mean if its already kinda sour, how would you know it went bad anyways?

[frugal-one]

I'm with Catherine's husband. We are almost never without buttermilk. I use it almost every weekend in pancakes or biscuits. Use it for cakes, and for soaking chicken before making oven fried chicken. Quick breads of all kinds, for creamy salad dressings.

Plus it keeps a long time. I mean if its already kinda sour, how would you know it went bad anyways?

I either use milk with vinegar as a substitute or, as now, have a container of dried cultured buttermilk where water is just added.

[ApatheticNoMore]

People who aren't into fruit, you really don't have to eat it. I eat a little, but vastly prefer vegetables. I get my vitamins from vegetables, and I get my sugar from chocolate

I prefer to wash my own greens, they taste better IMO, although sometimes I'll get the cut up greens, for variety I guess, but it's seldom as good. And btw I wash prewashed greens often at least once, and find they aren't all that clean afterall sometimes, ok and occasionally a whole romaine lettuce is filthy or something and I'm washing it like ten times, but it's not always that much an advantage with the precut if I end up having to wash them too.

Food waste, it's neither terrible nor wonderful here, some gets wasted, mostly old produce, but I eat enough produce that the veggie drawers aren't big enough anyway and shelves are already overflowing with it. Most gets eaten, some …

[NewGig]

I move the produce we get from the farm every week. Starts on the 3rd shelf and goes to the 5th in 2 weeks. Top to bottom. If I had your set up I might do it bottom to top. I make myself go through all of it each week so that things get tossed and moved. Yes, i still waste food, but a lot less than I used to.

Most of the years we’ve gotten csa food, it has come on Thurs. and the dumps open weds, sat and sun. So I try and clean out the oldest on weds. If I just can’t do any more than that and it goes to the dump or compost. Then on thurs. I move everything down before I move the new stuff in. Then i try and go thru it aga8n before the weekend dump run.

This year the food has come on Tues. and that has made things difficult. The only reason my fridge isn’t dripping green goo all the time is that I’ve been selling or giving away excess all summer. And,yeah, I still have green slime.

For most of the season, this works. But by this time of year... no.

I have a sign:

“If it crawls out of the fridge, let it go...”

I have a use this first basket for the oldest onion, potato, shallot and garlic. I have a left over shelf in the fridge, although they overflow it... We have small jars with the ends of dry goods next to my stove: rice, beans, herbs, etc. I put marked use this first containers for greens and veggies in the fridge

This all works and doesn’t sometimes. We get busy and tired. We do not want to eat the same thing, again. I keep trying to find better ideas.

[early morning]

I really want a freezer on the bottom but they are too expensive now. Our first fridge/freezer (one my parents gave us when they bought a house with newer appliances) had the freezer on the bottom, I think it was the norm then. I loved it. It died in the early 80s, when top freezers were about all there was to buy. But here, things fall OUT of the freezer, and the farther they fall, the more they hurt my foot!! And I'm short, so getting the stuff into/out of the back of the top of the freezer is a PIA. Thankfully my DD has taken over the freezer Tetris operation. She's much taller than I am, lol.

I have trouble with veggie storage on the fridge shelves - it either dries out or freezes. Nothing else does, just produce. Sometimes we freeze left-over onion, garlic, or herbs in water and then label and bag the cubes. Good for stocks, soups, etc.

[pinkytoe]

I guess we have been married so long that we now have a frequent conversation about what food items in the fridge are reaching their end date. We often base our nightly meal on whatever needs to be used up and try to be creative with it, ie what can we do with these mushrooms that are going south? If something goes past its "I don't want to eat that" date, I can always throw it in the compost for its second life. Right now, I have boxes of cherry tomatoes I grew that I hate to waste so will make sauce for pasta with them. Or put them out for the birds. We bought a new bottom freezer fridge a year ago and I have to admit that it is so much easier to see and use what is in the fridge - not so much the freezer. Always having to dig through the freezer to see where things have migrated.