Use it up!

Are there ways you tend to use up food before it goes bad just so you don't have to throw it out?

If I'm cleaning out leftovers from the fridge, I'll often throw everything into the crockpot with some broth and make my "everything soup". It's different every time I make it, but tends to be pretty good.

I had about 1/2 bag of spinach that wasn't going to last much longer, so I made some wraps using a recipe I saw online - one cup of spinach plus two eggs. Liquify in blender and pour onto a baking sheet with parchment (except it stuck to my parchment! will spray pay next time). Bake about 15 minutes in 350 degree oven. They actually tasted good as a wrap with ham and swiss cheese. LOL.

Anyone have any standard use-it-up recipes to share?

it’s a rare time when we throw out food because it’s bad. When I buy fruits and vegetables, I use the ones that go bad towards the front of the week. The ones that last much longer such as apples, oranges, and hard surface vegetables, I can take my own sweet time in using up.

generally, wasted food has gotten lost in the fridge, and when found, is way past using. Other than that - most things will freeze. I freeze almost expired milk, if I don't have time to make pudding. We freeze sad veggies, especially spinach and avocado, and dry celery when it's gotten too floppy for anything else. We don't use much fresh celery, so that happens off and on. Lemons get squeezed and frozen into juice cubes. We don't really much like most soup, so while using up ends in soup is a great idea, for us, then the soup would just get wasted. I just try to watch things closely and use them up as soon as. If I do have some bits and bobs, I'm more likely to put them into fried rice. You can hide a lot of stuff in fried rice! :~)

Just today, I cooked a half package of Kamut wheat that was getting old and made a grain salad with old red bell peppers, arugula and dried up dates. DH does most of the cooking so I just have him throw older veggies into the stir fry or soup. I also add older veggies to the stock container in the freezer.

I was going to start a thread with this topic last week, happystuff! I was annoyed with myself because I wound up throwing out too much food. Our refrigerator is in the pantry and to see what's on the bottom shelf you have to crawl on your knees.. often things get pushed to the back and found much too late to save them.

Because I make soup a lot I tend to scavenge in the fridge and freezer for to use. I have been considering doing what my greataunt did when I lived with her at her beach cottage. We would go "uptown" to shop almost every day, and we'd eat what we bought that day or the next. I find that I waste the most when I buy too much to begin with.

I've been pondering this because we throw away so much food! Not just produce, but chicken, steak tips, haddock. I think it's often because the package of whatever is too big for us and the leftovers often go to waste. I think one thing we need to do is portion up and freeze some of the animal protein we buy, and then take out and defrost as needed. Unfortunately, we're not very good at managing freezer contents either. We kind of suck at this food thing. We're in our mid-sixties, maybe we'll figure it out someday . . .
I wish our friend who grapples with food insecurity lived close enough to come by and have dinner with us!

rr, I've gotten into the habit of dividing up meal portions of animal protein pretty quickly. I, however, have to do a better job of labeling what I'm freezing! LOL.

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Originally Posted by rosarugosa

I've been pondering this because we throw away so much food! Not just produce, but chicken, steak tips, haddock.

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Funny you said haddock! Haddock was exactly what made want to start a thread on waste. DD bought it from a local farmer, so it's not like it was a loss leader deal at the supermarket. He probably paid $20 for the one-pound package. But it sat in the fridge in plain view beyond what I use as the deadline for eating fish--3 days. We were busy those days and just never got around to cooking and eating it. I would have cooked it but I like to bake fish and DH likes to fry it, so while in some cases I'd just use it up even if he bought it, in this case, I thought he would get mad.

So it didn't eaten, either baked or fried. What a shame.

My labeling is sporadic at best. AND I reuse freezer bags until they have holes. This can be problematic... last night I was looking for a flat bag of frozen tomato paste. I found it, but the bag said spinach. My lemon cubes are in a bag that says peppers. *sigh* I'm always so optimistic (aka unrealistic) when I put things in - always in a rush- and tell myself "of COURSE I'll remember what's in this bag!!". *double sigh*

rr, I'm in your age group, and I too hope to figure out a LOT of things - someday-.

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Originally Posted by rosarugosa

I've been pondering this because we throw away so much food! Not just produce, but chicken, steak tips, haddock. I think it's often because the package of whatever is too big for us and the leftovers often go to waste. I think one thing we need to do is portion up and freeze some of the animal protein we buy, and then take out and defrost as needed. Unfortunately, we're not very good at managing freezer contents either. We kind of suck at this food thing. We're in our mid-sixties, maybe we'll figure it out someday . . .
I wish our friend who grapples with food insecurity lived close enough to come by and have dinner with us!

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Honey, you need a dog.

with us the very few bits that go bad can usually be consumed by a dog. I had a small bag of turkey that was at the back of the refrigerator and it was slimy, so I didn’t want to eat it, but boy that was perfectly fine for our dog. Their little systems are built for scavenging so they can scarf down too old food and be fine.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

Honey, you need a dog.

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So true! Dogs are the most efficient composters of meat and grain products ever.

I’m feeling lighter today because I got rid of a dozen floral containers, ones someone had donated to our plant society. I made flower arrangements in them for our daffodil show and scattered them around the show site. I will walk off and leave them there and the staff who work in that building want them. It is a win-win situation because I got to make floral designs, display them so the public could see them, and I don’t have to go home with any of it.

I generally buy frozen for any soft fruit (cherries, berries) because it's just me and they go bad so fast.

I feel pretty good about how we manage. I am good at freezer labels, keep all the chicken in one are, pork, beef in another. Then coffee, baked good and frozen meal on the bottom tall shelf. Blueberries in the lower basket. I've even been labeling canned and pantry goods as soon as I get them home by using a sharpie that is in a convenient drawer. My husband does the portion sizing and I label and take down to the freezer. It's worked very well. I hardly ever have food too old in the freezer because it got caught in the back. I put the new stuff in the back and move the oldest to the front. At 76 I finally figured it out!! Now for the rest of the house!!!!

I don't think this is a good enough reason in itself to get a dog, lol. Overall, it would probably be cheaper to continue wasting a bunch of food! Plus, Louie and Raymond would not approve. I actually had to assure the director of the shelter where we got Louie that there would be no dogs in his life. Apparently he is terrified of them, and that's why he was surrendered by his previous adopter.

I do buy frozen berries and that works very well.

I think DH has a harder time than I do asking at the fish counter for 3/4 lb. of something, rather than 1 lb, and "sure, a bit over is fine." With things like chicken and steak, the packages are usually too big for us, so we really need to portion them and freeze some right away. I have not continued with the fun goal of trying new produce items because we are having enough trouble finishing the things like spinach and asparagus that we know and love.

Bananas are another big waste item because I like them slightly green, but they turn so quickly! We joke that they must have green lights over the bananas at the grocery store.

We've talked about grocery shopping more often and buying less each trip, but we don't really like to go to the grocery store, and I think that would end up costing us more and bringing more crap food into the house. For example, every time DH goes to Trader Joe's, he feels compelled to buy one of those honking huge Kringles, and then he eats the whole thing himself within a day.

Nswef: Sounds like we should swap places for a little while, lol. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the rest of household management, but the food waste thing really bugs me.

I also feel like it's bad enough to waste money and life energy on discarded food, but it's kind of obscene to think of an animal that died and parts of it just went into the waste stream. It's kind of the opposite of the Native American concept of honoring the buffalo by using all parts of the animal one has hunted.

I have never heard of people using dog poop for a fertilizer or garden compost, but there should be a plentiful supply.

Since most of my cooking is for one, the biggest problem is what others say. Buying in the right quantity to use before it goes bad. I can use up a lot of things in morning shakes or in soups or pizza toppings. I can buy fish at the meat counter in any amount, but fresh greens are usually sold in specific packages. I compost some of what's going bad, but it's still a food waste. I'm looking forward to gardening season where I can walk out the door and get fresh greens. There are certain things like yogurt, canned marinara, tomato paste, that I try to use well past their expiration date, but still end up throwing some out occasionally. I recently bought two for one jars of my favorite peanut butter on sale and noticed it had just past its use by date. I didn't know peanut butter could go bad, but know of people who refrigerate it. I rarely eat out, but suspect my food waste is very small compared to what restaurants must throw out and the expired foods in supermarkets.

To be honest, what helps me waste less food is to buy what I like. No experimenting with new stuff. Like eggs. I love eggs, primarily fried eggs. So yummy with toast to dip into the yolks. Since it’s just me I don’t really care about the price of eggs and this is a way cheaper meal than fast food or going out.

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Originally Posted by Rogar

I have never heard of people using dog poop for a fertilizer or garden compost, but there should be a plentiful supply.

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If you're referring to my comment, I didn't mean putting the poop in the compost--I meant that things like leftover beef and pizza crusts go directly to the dog bowl instead of in the garbage. Eventually, it's eliminated as poop, of course.


TBH, I believe it was iris lilies who instructed me that you can't put dog poop in the compost bin... and that we just as we were starting to compost, 13 years ago! I listened, IL!

Catherine, I don't know if I misunderstood your comments, or was just curious if dog poop could be used as compost. I'd not ever thought much about it. I guess there's a reason why no one does it, but it does seem like a million dollar idea if someone could find a way to make it work. When they do clean ups in the local dog parks they haul away tons of it and it's been a reason to close some of them down. The do sell cow manure as a fertilizer.

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Originally Posted by Rogar

Catherine, I don't know if I misunderstood your comments, or was just curious if dog poop could be used as compost. I'd not ever thought much about it. I guess there's a reason why no one does it, but it does seem like a million dollar idea if someone could find a way to make it work. When they do clean ups in the local dog parks they haul away tons of it and it's been a reason to close some of them down. The do sell cow manure as a fertilizer.

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Everything you wanted to know about composting dog poop, from the USDA. The only way to compost dog poop is to make sure you do "hot" composing as opposed to cold, and you have to use a thermometer to test the heat of the compost pile to ensure it exceeds 145 degrees in order to kill all the pathogens. IMHO, too much trouble.

https://www.epa.gov/system/files/doc...let-Alaska.pdf

I also read that you can compost dog poop via vermicomposting (composting using worms).

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Originally Posted by Rogar

I have never heard of people using dog poop for a fertilizer or garden compost, but there should be a plentiful supply.

Since most of my cooking is for one, the biggest problem is what others say. Buying in the right quantity to use before it goes bad. I can use up a lot of things in morning shakes or in soups or pizza toppings. I can buy fish at the meat counter in any amount, but fresh greens are usually sold in specific packages. I compost some of what's going bad, but it's still a food waste. I'm looking forward to gardening season where I can walk out the door and get fresh greens. There are certain things like yogurt, canned marinara, tomato paste, that I try to use well past their expiration date, but still end up throwing some out occasionally. I recently bought two for one jars of my favorite peanut butter on sale and noticed it had just past its use by date. I didn't know peanut butter could go bad, but know of people who refrigerate it. I rarely eat out, but suspect my food waste is very small compared to what restaurants must throw out and the expired foods in supermarkets.

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The store we went to would divide produce that was bagged if asked. Might be worth asking?

Just got back from a 3-day wedding extravaganza (whole story in and of itself!), so I'm a bit afraid to look in the fridge yet. Tried to get it as empty as possible before leaving, but... :|(

Gifted bag of mini red potatoes… gonna try roasting with seasonings. Got fresh beets from a produce company…. again going to try roasting….never made fresh beets before?

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Originally Posted by frugal-one

Gifted bag of mini red potatoes… gonna try roasting with seasonings. Got fresh beets from a produce company…. again going to try roasting….never made fresh beets before?

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Dh grows beets in his garden so we have some every year. I usually end up boiling them because I don’t like using the oven during summer.

if you boil them, you have to keep some of the beet top on the beet so that it gets its red color.

Beets are really nice in a salad with goat cheese.

It's messy to make, but I really like a shredded beat salad with some homemade dressing of some kind. Have a recipe in my cookbook somewhere. LOL.

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Originally Posted by happystuff

It's messy to make, but I really like a shredded beat salad with some homemade dressing of some kind. Have a recipe in my cookbook somewhere. LOL.

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Years ago we visited Switzerland at a time when beets were in season. Every restaurant served shredded beet salad. And I ate it every time! Loved it.

My garden beets are just now coming up. I grow them as much for the greens as the beets them selves. Cold beet salad does sound good.

Went to a sort-of-local famers' market with some friends. They always go, my first time. On their recommendation, got three BIG stuffed/flavored burgers (one for each of us). Also got some hard rolls, as they said regular hamburger rolls couldn't stand up to these burgers - lol. So dinner tonight will be these burgers.

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Originally Posted by happystuff

It's messy to make, but I really like a shredded beat salad with some homemade dressing of some kind. Have a recipe in my cookbook somewhere. LOL.

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Been making a raw beet salad with carrots and apples. Put all three in the food processor and shred them. A little vanilla or plain Greek yogurt for the dressing. Sometimes add raisins and/or walnuts.

So easy to make--no cooking and delicious (at least we think so!) And I suspect it's pretty darn nutritious...