Food Waste Friday: I Have NO Idea!

I know there is food in my fridge that's no longer edible. I'm just not sure exactly what or how much right now. This week has been really hectic, and coupled with a heat wave that's left me reluctant to open the fridge door for any longer than necessary (not to mention the fact that we haven't felt like eating much in the heat) I know there are some food waste casualties in there. I'm hoping the temperature will drop off enough for me to dive into the depths and do a full-scale cleaning out before next week (I'm sure it's not going to be pretty!)

I did have a couple of food waste victories this week: I managed to eat the ENTIRE bag of five avocados I'd bought on sale before any of them spoiled, and I made my first ever batch of watermelon rind relish (thus transforming what would have typically gone into the compost bin into edible food).

As usual, you can head over to The Frugal Girl if you want to see how others fared with their food waste this week.

Food Waste Friday: Nothing...Yet!

I don't have any food waste to report for this week...but my fridge feels like a ticking time bomb right now! It's packed full of food; lots of leftovers and produce. So I'll have to be on the ball for the next few days to try and make sure everything gets used up in a timely fashion.

This also leads me to wonder: why is it that my fridge is either packed-to-the-gills full or nearly devoid of food? That middle ground seems elusive. One of the great mysteries of the universe, I suppose :)

To see how others fared with their food waste this week, head on over to The Frugal Girl.

Food Waste Friday: I Really Fell Off the Wagon

 This was not a good week in food-waste land at my house. I ended up wasting an entire bunch of broccoli (which, although it doesn't look all that bad in the picture, trust me, you wouldn't want to eat it!) It had gotten buried at the back of the crisper and forgotten about. There have been a lot of good sales on veggies lately, and I was a bit over zealous in my purchasing, forgetting how many greens I had in my garden that were going to need using up (they're starting to bolt).

The second victim was a bit of honey-orange breakfast polenta, which was a recipe experiment of mine. I thought it was not too bad but no-one else in my family liked it, and after eating it for a few days myself I let the tail end linger in the fridge too long.

I also wasted a couple of handfuls of sweet cherries (not pictured) that started to spoil faster than I expected (maybe that's why they were on sale for so cheap!) I did manage to salvage most of the bag.

To see how others made out in the food waste department this week, head on over to The Frugal Girl.

Food Waste Friday: Back to Zero Again!

I'm pleased to report that I'm back to zero waste again this week.I managed to save a couple of items from ending up in the compost by making a batch of muffins using the Universal Muffin Recipe from the Complete Tightwad Gazette. This is a very handy recipe to pull out when you have a few odd bits of things lurking in the fridge that need to be used up ASAP. In my case, I had about 1/2 cup or so of crushed pineapple left over from another recipe (and no yogurt to stir it into) and a couple of egg whites left over from making Boiled Dressing (I think I might try this recipe with one whole egg rather than 2 yolks to see how it turns out, otherwise I may be making a whole lot of meringues this summer!) I also had a couple packages of frozen grated zucchini left from last summer, and really wanted to get those used up, too. So I decided to make Zucchini Pineapple Muffins using the universal muffin recipe. They turned out quite tasty (although they would have been even better if I had remembered to add some spices to them; I realized I hadn't put any in right after I stuck them in the oven).

I bought another bag of 5 avocados on sale for $2.50 this week, so keep your fingers crossed for me and hopefully I'll manage to use them all up this time! I also have a whole lot of lettuce, spinach and arugula in my veggie garden that is starting to bolt, so I'll need to be vigilant about using that up, too.


To see how others fared with their food waste this week, head on over to The Frugal Girl for the weekly roundup of food waste reports.

Food Waste Friday: Oh, the Irony!

How embarrassing. After last week's extensive discussion of ways to use avocadoes over at The Frugal Girl, what was the first food victim of the week? Yup, nothing other than one of the little green fruits. It was lurking at the back of the crisper behind a lime and went unnoticed by me for quite a while. Unfortunately, by the time I found it there was no way to salvage it at all. This was the last avocado of a pack of 5 I'd bought for $2.50 (usually avocadoes are $1 to $1.29 each around here). They're on sale for that price again this week and I'm determined to make sure not a single one goes to waste this time!

I had a couple of other items that got wasted this week: a jar of canola oil that was left over from deep frying (it had started to grow something suspect in it) and some decomposing dandelion greens. While I'm not thrilled about wasting these, I know a lot of people don't reuse their frying oil in the first place, so in many cases it would have been discarded right away after its initial use. And the dandelion greens were foraged from my backyard, so not only were they free, they are something most people would have tossed in the compost bin rather than harvesting for consumption. At least the oil can go into my municipal Green Waste bin for composting (obviously the greens can as well), so nothing's going in the landfill.

Head on over to The Frugal Girl to see how others fared with their food waste this week.

Food Waste Friday: Another Zero-Waste Week!

I'm pleased to report that I had another zero-waste week! This one seemed pretty easy to pull off, actually - I didn't even have to make a special effort to save anything from an untimely demise.  In the last couple of days my fridge has mysteriously filled up with food (I'm not quite sure how that happened - usually most things disappear at the speed of light around here!) so I am going to have to be vigilant to keep myself on a zero-waste roll. Head on over to The Frugal Girl if you want to know how others fared with their food waste this week.

I'm also excited to announce that I'm going to be holding my first giveaway next week! I'm going to keep the specifics a bit of a surprise until the official giveaway post goes up, but look for it on Tuesday - I promise it'll be worth your while. The giveaway will be open to all my Canadian and U.S. readers.

If you missed my earlier posts this week, I offered up a deliciously different baked bean recipe and shared how I got a gorgeous perennial garden for free! As usual, you can stop by tomorrow to check out my weekly yard sale report - after a couple rainy Saturdays, this week the weather is supposed to be fabulous.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all my U.S. readers!

Food Waste Friday: The Avocado Got Me!

 Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Last week's zero waste victory proved to be short lived. The very next day I went to cut up an avocado I thought was just fine, only to discover that it was well on its way to the dark side. I managed to salvage about 1/3 of it, the rest ended up in the compost. That was the only thing I wasted all week.

To see how others fared with their food waste, head on over to The Frugal Girl.

If this is your first stop by Abundance on a Dime this week, you might want to check out my recent post on How to Make Yogurt without a Yogurt Maker, Heating Pad or Crockpot. And be sure to stop by tomorrow for my weekly Yard Sale Report. It's a long weekend here in Canada, but there are still a few sales running so I hope to do some serious treasure hunting!

Food Waste Friday: Sweet Nothings!!

I did it! Finally, I have accomplished a zero-food-waste week.

::Does little happy dance::

Hopefully, I'm on a roll now.

To see how others fared with their food waste this week, head on over to The Frugal Girl for the weekly Food Waste Friday roundup.

My challenge for the coming week will be to use up all the rhubarb in my fridge! My neighbour kindly offered me free reign in his large rhubarb patch - I came home with about 15 lbs or so of fresh-picked rhubarb! I chopped up much of it with some help from my younger ds. There was SO much that I filled my largest storage container with it, plus a couple of others, and still had some left over. I'm running low on freezer space at the moment, so I'm planning to whip up a double batch of Rhubarb Muffins to sell at our yard sale tomorrow morning! I'm sure there will still be some left after that, so I might have to get a bit creative to use up the rest of it.

Since we're holding our own yard sale tomorrow, I'm not going to be doing my usual rounds, but I do hope to make it over to a church rummage sale that's not too far away. So, I should still have my weekly Yard Sale Report up tomorrow (last week's is here).

Food Waste Friday: SO Close!

I thought this was going to be the week that I had no food waste to report, but, alas, one little item snuck past my radar. About two mouthfuls' worth of my Cucumber and Bean Salad went kaput. My 10 year old son had saved this from a meal, insisting he was going to eat it later. I did remind him about it a couple of times, then we both forgot about it. So, I was very, very close to a zero waste week, but didn't quite make it! Swing on over to The Frugal Girl if you want to see how others did in the food waste department this week.

This week's food waste prevention tip is another one for keeping the nasty little bugs away from your precious food! If you add a bay leaf to each of your storage containers (e.g. jars of dried beans and grains) it acts as a natural pest deterrent.

I didn't blog a lot this week as my dad was in the hospital for major heart surgery and I've been running back and forth to the hospital checking in on him (he is doing quite well). I did write about our $75 Deck Makeover if you need some inspiration for sprucing up an outdoor space on a small budget. Check back in tomorrow for my weekly Yard Sale Report (last week's is here if you missed it!) I'm heading off to a rummage sale this morning, and plan to attend at least two sales tomorrow, so I should get in plenty of good "treasure hunting"!

Food Waste Friday

I didn't have any "new" food waste this week (which I'm arbitrarily defining as anything purchased or prepared in the last 3 weeks). I did, however, find a couple things lurking waaay in the back of the fridge that should have been in last week's roundup:

-a couple more hunks of dead lemon (what *is* it with me and the lemons?? Definitely going to have to work on that!)
-a few fossilized strawberries
-most of a bottle of cheap champagne. We received this as a gift at Christmas. Since we're not champagne drinkers and I couldn't think of anyone else who would want it, I was a bit stumped as to what to do with it. I ended up making us Mimosas for Easter breakfast, then the rest of the bottle sat in the fridge until now.

This week's food waste prevention tip is about keeping your food pest-free. We had a pantry moth invasion about a year and a half ago and (uuuugh!) talk about having to waste a serious amount of food! Those little buggers will get into almost everything. One thing I now do to prevent little critters growing in food is to store *all* my bulk food items in the freezer for at least 24 hrs when I bring it home. This includes all my bulk flours and rice, and anything I buy out of bulk food bins. I do this with bags of pasta as well (I tend to buy a LOT when they go on sale for the lowest price, so sometimes they'll be sitting on the shelf for a while before they get used up). Since I've started this practice, I've had no problems with anything going "buggy" on me.

If this is your first visit to the blog this week, you might want to check out Why I Went $40 Over My Grocery Budget This Month and A Day in the Life of Our Frugal Family. And be sure to stop by tomorrow for my weekly Yard Sale Report. You can see what I've found so far this year here, here, and here. I'd love to hear about your own yard sale finds, so be sure to leave a comment and tell me all about it!

My First Food Waste Friday

I've been on a concerted campaign to get our food waste down to zero for a while now. So I was pleased to discover Food Waste Friday over at The Frugal Girl! I'm sure it will help keep me honest about exactly how much I'm wasting.

This is what I pulled out of the fridge yesterday that was no longer fit for consumption:

One dead lime, half a moldy lemon, about 1/3 of a small onion all dried up, and approximately 1 tsp of butter (I'd saved that from butter I'd melted to dip donuts in, figuring I'd use it for another melted butter application, then promptly forgot all about it!)

I *hate* it when I waste citrus!! Well, I hate wasting food at all, but particularly limes and lemons as they're one of the most "spendy" foods I buy - however I do consider them an absolute necessity for cooking good food!

The good news is that I'm pretty sure this represents my food waste for the entire month of April (thus far, anyway). Let's see if I can keep the rest of the month to zero!

I figured I'd try and post a tip about how to minimize food waste each week, just to keep things fun! This week's tip is about storing green onions.

I recently read that it's best to store green onions in a glass of water at room temperature, so I decided to give it a shot. These ones were in the fridge for a bit first, and the little wilty bits happened during refrigerator storage. I've had them sitting like this for a few days, and they seem much fresher now than they did when I took them out of the fridge (where they'd been stored in a Ziploc bag). The real bonus of this idea is that I can't possibly forget I have green onions to use up when they're sitting right on my kitchen windowsill. Plus there's no chance of anyone piling five pounds of carrots on top of them in the crisper and crushing the snot out of them (you know who you are!)

That's it for this week's Food Waste Friday. Have a great weekend, everyone!