A (Scary) Food Waste Update - Plus, What to Do with Those Leftovers!

It's been much longer than I planned for it to be since I last weighed in on my Holiday Food Waste Challenge. Unfortunately, a *really* nasty virus swooped in and felled our family the week before Christmas and we've been trying to get out from under it ever since. I'm still not 100% recovered but I managed to stumble over to the fridge and do a bit of an excavation.

There's nothing like being laid up in bed to throw you off your game, and add the biggest holiday of the year into the mix, and it's pretty much a recipe for a food waste disaster! The irony of having the most food waste we've had in a long time during my official Food Waste Challenge has not escaped me.

Here's what I dug out of the refrigerator that is no longer fit to eat:

Some leftover cheese sauce from Taco Platters, 3 blueberry pancakes, a couple spoonfuls of leftover cooked vegetables, and, most unfortunately, an entire head of broccoli.

Since my last update, I also had to toss out two horrifically moldy organic lemons from a 2 pound bag I bought on sale. Whenever I buy organic lemons I always seem to forget that they spoil a lot faster than their non-organic counterparts. I also had to toss a clementine that was rotten in the middle - I don't think there was much I could have done to prevent that one, as the rest of the oranges in that box still appear to be fine.

Yeah, it's a half decent amount.of spoiled food. It does represent a full 4 weeks of food wastage, so it's still much, much less than the average family throws away. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it, it just could have been a LOT worse all things considered.

I'm hoping that you have avoided this unpleasant bug that's been going around, and that you've done better than we have on the food waste front.

If you have some holiday leftovers that still need using up, now's the time to make sure they don't go to waste!

My Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Lentil Soup is perfect for using up any number of leftover tidbits - vegetables, bits of meat, and even gravy easily slide into this soup and it always comes out tasting great.

Leftover turkey or ham both make delicious versions of this coconut curry and these pinwheels.

If you need more inspiration dealing with the remnants of the Big Bird, you can find my Making the Most of Roast Turkey post here.

Swimming in a sea of leftover mashed potatoes? They can be frozen in 1 cup portions for use in my Refrigerator Bread Dough.

If it's sweet stuff that's overrunning your kitchen, most desserts lend themselves well to freezing (except things like puddings and custards, so eat those first!) Whipping cream can be whipped and dropped onto a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet in spoonfuls for freezing. Once the mounds of cream are solid, pack then into freezer bags for longer term storage, and you have the perfect amount to top a single dessert or a mug of hot cocoa!

How was your food waste over the holidays? Do you have a clever way to use up those festive leftovers?

Does Bulk Buying Lead to More Food Waste?

Here I am with the first weekly check-in of my Holiday Food Waste Challenge!

This was a good week in food-waste land in our house. The only thing I tossed was about 1 1/2 very small potatoes that had spoiled in the bag. Considering the huge volume of food that goes through our house, I think that's pretty good! I don't have a pic as the casualties occurred on a night I was trying to get things done in the kitchen extra quick.

One thing I keep reading in articles about food waste is that the trend to buying larger quantities of food to save money is leading to increased food wastage. As someone who is an advocate for the bulk-buying approach to food shopping, I don't think that bulk buying itself is necessarily the problem. I think it's a combination of two things: buying the WRONG foods in bulk and improper food storage/food management techniques in the home.

I buy quite a few foods in HUGE quantities (think 12 kilogram bags of oats, coconut and raisins). I haven't wasted any of them to date. Why? Because they are stored securely in the freezer until I'm going to use them. I keep small quantities in containers in the kitchen for easy access and simply refill them from the freezer stash as needed. Since I have 4 hungry people at my house, even these large quantities of staples are used up fairly quickly (the oats we go through in 3-4 months, the raisins about 6-9 months and the coconut about a year).

Where I think the problem lies is in people buying huge amounts of highly perishable items like salad greens, prepared hummus and the like. This stuff has a very short shelf life, and unless you're feeding an army you're not likely to finish them off before they disintegrate into mush in the bottom of the crisper. Another related issue is buying infrequently-eaten foods in huge quantities. If you're only eating something once a month, you don't need to purchase several kilograms of it at a time!

Produce in general can be tricky to manage well. I know it can be hard during the growing season not to overbuy when there are a lot of great deals out there. If you're properly prepared with freezer space and canning supplies, much produce wastage can be avoided by freezing and canning these items while they're still good and fresh (and then you'll have a wonderful stash for the winter months). This does take a bit of planning and forethought, but it's certainly not difficult.

Finally, it's important to keep reasonably good tabs on your food stash. Make sure you're using the food that's been in your pantry and freezer the longest before you start in on more recently purchased items. A good way to do this is to have one week every few months where you "eat from the stash" and try to use up all the odds and ends that have been hanging around a while (this helps get your grocery bill for the month down, too!) I always try to make sure that more recently purchased items go at the back of the pantry cupboard and the bottom of the freezer, keeping the older items front and centre. Of course, this not being a perfect world (and sharing a house with 3 other people who might not be as attentive to these details as I am), this doesn't always happen so the "eating from the stash" routine helps keep us on track.

Do you think you waste more foods when you buy in bulk? If you're joining me in the Food Waste Challenge, how was your food wastage this week?

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Holiday Food Waste Challenge 2012

Photo by Rosen Georgiev/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know how much I can't stand wasting food. When I was doing research for my book, I learned that the average North American family wastes a full 25% of the food they buy. Yes, really. That's a shocking amount of money that's wasted on food that never gets eaten (if your monthly grocery bill is $800, that equates to $200 a month down the drain).

Aside from the fact that wasted food = wasted money, the environmental impacts of throwing out food are staggering. When you consider all the water, soil, and fertilizer used to grow that food and the fuel used to transport it to you, it soon becomes a mind-boggling amount of resources that are being wasted on food that never gets eaten. If wasted food is tossed in the trash rather than composted (and unfortunately, the majority of it is), the decomposing food then becomes a huge producer of methane gas.

I've become more and more determined to make people aware of this important issue as my own awareness of just how big and how widespread a problem this is across the continent has increased. Nearly 50% of the food that's grown in North America is wasted, about half before it reaches us consumers, and the other half after it's lingered in our refrigerators for too long. Actually, from garbage studies that have been done by various researchers, a significant portion of the food that's tossed from our homes isn't even spoiled!

The good news is that this is a problem we can all address, since half of food waste is occurring in the home. Although I have yet to achieve the holy grail of 0% food wasted on a regular basis, our family's food waste is minimal, and I've found that most of the time it's not a big deal to prevent food wastage *if* you have key food management strategies in place. Grocery shopping effectively, storing food properly, and using leftovers strategically are all key pieces of the puzzle when it comes to reducing a household's food waste.

As we head into the holiday season, there is likely to be even more food than usual in our homes, and a larger than normal potential for wasting it. So, I thought this would be the perfect time of year to get you all thinking about ways you can avoid tossing out food. I'm issuing an official Holiday Food Waste Challenge starting today and finishing on New Year's Day. How close to zero can you keep your food waste over the holidays? 

During the challenge, I'll be sharing photos of my family's food waste, as well as tips and strategies for keeping that waste to a minimum. I'm hoping you'll join me by sharing your own tips, too - either in the comments or via email if you want to remain anonymous (you can send them to abundanceonadime AT gmail DOT com).

Let's make this a festive *and* food-waste-free season!

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