Why do we waste so much food/interesting blog

salad I never tire of, every work day salad (and if I had to eat it on weekends I wouldn't mind), but it's never pure low fat lettuce food either, I put cheese, sometimes avocados, sometimes tuna, olive oil dressing etc.

What I do tire of salad is preparing it. Swirl the lettuce in a bowl of water with 3-5 changes of water depending on how sandy/buggy it is (sometimes I water the plants outside with it - I'm not going to win any prizes here for drought adaptation but ...). The latest creatures to come with the lettuce are flies (this is why the rinsing thing). Ugh .... Then after rinsing salad spinner. I get lazy and sometimes then I don't make my salad and buy something at the store. So yea the lazy reason for food waste rears it's head ...

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Originally Posted by kib

I think my food waste tends to come from not balancing + overload. Ironically, I wind up wasting because I don't want to waste. For example, we occasionally have a session of hotdogs for lunch. So I have eight hotdogs and eight buns. but then I decide I don't want a bun with my hotdog. At the end of a week, there are no hotdogs and three rather stale buns. Don't want to throw out the buns so I get more hotdogs, but I don't really want to eat hotdogs at all. Then we wind up with five hotdogs and no buns. This sort of balancing act goes on until neither of us wants to look at another hotdog, with or without buns, and then one or the other ingredient sits around until it's unusable.

Right now I have two heads of romaine lettuce in the fridge, and I'm kinda tired of eating salad. But I'll soldier on and get some stuff to add; peppers, cucumbers, etc. Eventually, waste.

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kib:

Interesting insights. I have a friend who does something similar with burgers. They will have buns left over after making "X" number of burgers.

This is going to sound tacky but she smears butter, some Italian seasoning, and garlic on them and makes garlic bread. She couples the garlic bread with pasta, obviously.

I think it takes some willpower, grit, and creativity (all things we are short on because we have jobs and obligations that cause us to have decision fatigue or to be drained of our creativity) to figure out ways to match things that don't traditionally match and then convince ourselves we want to eat that stuff when we could order a pizza. Much of this lament echoes what was expressed in the blog at the top of the thread.

I had a few leftover "not-dogs" a while back. I chopped them up and put them in baked beans. I had a can on the shelf. A slice of bread and butter on the side and I had a lunch.

Now that I'm home more, we waste much less food (even as I cook more than I ever did).

I've learned to avoid "Masterchef". I cook a wide variety of cuisines, so we have some odd ingredients in the house. But I'll:
- review the recipe and not even cook it if is calls for something quite perishable that I know I won't use quickly;
- make sure leftovers of an ingredient (like a head of lettuce; it's hard to buy just a few leaves) are used at other meals (as a side dish/salad/omelette ingredient/pizza topping). This goes for cooked ingredients, too;
- buy in minimal quantities, if possible (my co-op sells bulk spices, so I don't have to buy an entire bottle of garam masala). I've been known to buy small quantities at the salad bar (sliced mushrooms, a couple of ounces of ham or turkey); it's not the cheapest per-unit cost, but it sure beats tossing moldy leftovers.

We quit buying regular milk because we didn't even get through half-gallons quickly and it's hard to find quarts anymore. Instead we buy plain almond or soy or oat milk, which seems to keep much better. When DW has a jones for a Pepsi, she'll buy one at the convenience store rather than buy a 2-liter bottle or a 12-pack. If I end up buying a large loaf of bread or we're just not going through it quickly, I'll freeze a good portion of what remains. It's still good for toast. I also have an ex-yogurt container in the freezer containing soft bread crumbs made from stale bread whirled in the food processor. I've learned to be very careful about buying produce at ALDI because it just doesn't seem to last as long as the produce I buy elsewhere, so keeping it raw for use later in a week is iffy.

No, I don't always guess right. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes there is a "we'll-eat-weird-this-week" menu. And sometimes I'll have a couple of plastic bags to toss in the compost bin. But I'm sure we waste much less food than we used to, and much less than many other families.

I've used nut milks for some time. My favorite is cashew, though I alternate. I struggle with waste. It seems like a delicate balancing act.

I try as much as possible to not waste food. Food is pretty expensive these days, and I don't want to waste my money either. I freeze a lot of leftovers to eat at a later date. I also will use any meat that I cook in a variety of meals. Like chicken, I can make many meals from it.... I also try to use every bit of produce from our garden, but that can be hard. I have a ton of tomatoes it seems in the freezer, that we couldn't eat now or give away, but they will be great this winter to make salsa, soup, spaghetti sauce and use in chili.

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Originally Posted by Williamsmith

For example, my 28 year old son, father of one 4 year old and recently separated pending issuance of divorce decree[...]

He is also on the hook for a mortgage he co signed with his ex wife. Since she gets the house, he will never be able to purchase another house unless she refinances the mortgage in her own name. If she ever defaults, he will have to default also and that will kill his credit forever.

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Somewhat OT for this thread, but when XW and I divorced, she wanted the house and I didn't. Part of the dissolution agreement was a requirement that she refinance the mortgage to get my name (and, therefore, connection to the note) off it. I had to write a quit-claim deed, but it freed me from half a mortgage payment for umpty-ump months and freed me from tarnishing my credit when she fell behind on payments. :doh:

BTW, default should not kill credit forever. At least in Minnesota, default will nick overall credit for about three years -- at least it did for default incurred during The Great Recession, when so many others were having problems. We have been getting "preapproved" credit offers for some time now and our FICO scores are about where they were "before".

We did talk about refinancing the mortgage on my current house and found that some lenders would talk with us and some would not, claiming a dent in credit for four years for a short sale and eleven for a foreclosure. That's still a fair amount of time, but it's not forever. But better still is getting his name off the house and the mortgage if at all possible.

I've always struggled with food waste.
I think I fear running out. Not sure why...I've never missed a meal.

Bought a smaller fridge.
I try to buy only what will fit in one or two shopping bags instead of buying a cart full. That has helped the most.

Now trying to cut back even more since both boys are in college and it's just the 2 of us and we work opposite schedules.

I was raised with parents that never wasted food & I think as a result I never did either. I have an occasional lapse but in general I am pretty good about this. If I am going to make a casserole that makes a lot of food I usually wait until I am having company so I know it won't go to waste. I could just make half but I never do.

SteveinMN, thank you for your comment. As far as keeping this on point of the post, I think the OP opened the topic up by referring to the other threads in the blog she referenced.

In any event, one amendment to the divorce agreement was the ex wife apply for refinance once per year until succesful and if denied by lenders.....provide written proof of denial letter. What I see as problematic is that interest rates were at rock bottom when the original mortgage was issued and it was a highly restricted loan to begin with. In other words, they were already accessing one of the lenient lenders out there and I see problems getting a refinance any where near the same terms they had. Which would be a deterrent to her if she would be increasing her monthly mortgage payment. While I see it as a moral imperative since she is the one that filed, her actions during this period dont inspire confidence in her.

As as far as wasting food.......gone are the days of making children sit at the dinner table until all the food is eaten including the Lima beans. Heck, gone are the family dinners at home. Everything we have is throw away, no quality at all. Easily thrown in the garbage and hauled off to the landfill.

We must be weird, we waste very little of the food we buy. Anything that goes bad was likely an "aspirational" ingredient.
latest waste was cilantro for those spring rolls I didn't make. And that was dumb because I love cilantro and could have just added it to a salad.

Also, contrary to most, I don't plan meals. After all of these years cooking dinner for DH we stock up on meats in the freezer and we go to the grocery store for these perishables: veggeis, a few fruits, milk, yogurt. From these ingredients, plus the regular non perishables, I have many choices for a dinner.

all of the other grocery buys last much longer than one week or ten days. And this time of year, we buy few vegetables because Garden.

now food that we raise, yowza,Lots and lots of,waste there. It all goes to the compost bin, though.