…waste.
Very little this week. The apple is much older and more shriveled up than it appears on the photograph. During our recent kitchen transformation, which involved my husband laying a new linoleum floor with the help of a friend, this apple somehow ended up next to the liquor decanters. Since the urge for an apple is diametrically opposed to the urge for an alcoholic beverage (except in the case of hard cider, I suppose) the apple remained uneaten, until it was found by me this week.
The other container has a bit of cucumber raita left inside that I didn’t finish. It was good, I made it from cucumber and yogurt and a few other ingredients, but my husband doesn’t really like that in the first place and so it was left up to me. And he’s much better at eating the leftovers than I am.
As for the writing on the lid, that dates back to my first attempts to reduce our food waste. I had been inspired by Jonathan Bloom’s blog Wasted Food, and so I came up with the idea of labeling the leftovers so they wouldn’t be forgotten and shoved to the back of the refrigerator. After I’d made a batch of chili, I had some adobo sauce left over, so I put it in this container and labeled it “adobo.” The next morning when I opened the refrigerator, I saw that my husband had added the other “words” for my enjoyment. Click here to read all about the fun and games of those early days (4 or 5 months ago). And now that label has become a permanent part of the container (it’s been through the dishwasher several times).
I wasn’t ready at the time to start photographing my rotten food, so that was my contribution. My other early trick was to create an “Eat Me” section of the refrigerator, which both Jonathan Bloom and The Frugal Girl wrote about on their blogs. It’s worked brilliantly for us, and is one of the main reasons we’ve reduced our food waste so quickly and dramatically. If you haven’t seen the “Eat Me!” post, you can read it here.
Are you following The Frugal Girl’s “Waste-No-Food” Challenge? If you are, how did you do this week? Even if you aren’t, please share your tips and advice for wasting less in the Comments section. And if you want to know why you should try to eat your leftovers, I highly recommend a visit to Wasted Food.
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