No picture, but sadly, that doesn’t mean we had a no-waste week. In fact, it was a pretty bad week. On 3 separate occasions, I threw a lot of food away. And because each case involved an “incident,” I neglected to snap a photo. I’ll go through them one at a time:
Incident #1: Last Saturday, after having such success with making dried black beans the week before, I tried to make dried fava beans for a dish I’d never cooked and was making for a friend’s birthday. Without going into the details, dried fava beans were much more complicated than dried black beans, and I ended up with a “fava fiasco.” I tossed the entire heap of mushy, dried out beans on the compost heap.
Incident #2 was also bean-related. On Monday, I made a vegetarian curry in the crockpot with potatoes, leeks, and what I thought were green beans from our CSA delivery. From the look on my husband’s face at his first bite, I knew there was a problem. I went back and looked at the list of produce and found out we were eating flagolet beans, which were supposed to be peeled, and just the beans inside eaten, kind of like black-eyed peas. They were so stringy and dry and tough we had to pick them out, it was basically the husk we were eating. Another pile for the compost bin.
Incident #3 occurred when I opened a jar of pistachios (which had been transferred out of the Trader Joe’s plastic) and found evidence of pantry moths. This was very disappointing because I’ve really been on top of the moth problem, making sure I put out the moth traps and also putting dried goods in jars. I’ve just started taking the step of freezing rice, flour, and other dried goods overnight and I hope that will help. I really hate to waste pistachios- they’re not cheap!
Oh, and one other minor incident- I burned a piece of toast and threw it in the trash. A bad week for food waste, but we’ll just keep plugging on. It wasn’t really a matter of neglect so much as mistakes, and life. And trying new things. Because if I hadn’t tried the dried beans, or the CSA, I wouldn’t have wasted those items. But then I wouldn’t be continuing to learn more about cooking and eating healthfully. So I think it’s worth the sacrifice.
You can find out all you need to know about food waste, like why we should care, where it’s all going, and how we can put a stop to it, by visiting Wasted Food. And if you want to join the Waste No Food challenge, head on over to The Frugal Girl.
How did you do this week? Tell us about in in the Comments section.
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