It's a sad truth, but keeping food from going to waste is something that most of us have to work at. We're happy now to have a compost heap and our own little backyard garden, but the simple fact of the matter is that we don't eat every bite of food that passes through our kitchens. Here are a few tips to get better at preventing waste—and we'd love to hear yours, too.
This list over at Shine on Yahoo offers 14 money-saving tips for the kitchen, but upon closer inspection, we noticed that the tips were oh-so-helpful for keeping food fresh, too.
From lining the vegetable bin in the fridge with a towel to soak up extra moisture, freezing fresh herbs until they're needed, and keeping bananas fresher by keeping them together as a bunch, we learned a few great tips for preventing food waste.
We've also learned to eat the greens off our turnips, broccoli, and beets, freeze leftovers in individual servings, and leaving the pit in a cut avocado to make it last longer. What food-saving tips do you use?
Related posts:
• How to Waste (Almost) Nothing In the Kitchen
• How To: Never Waste Food Again
• How To Make Your Own Indoor Compost Bin
(Image: Flickr members shimelle and Gui Dan, licensed under Creative Commons.)
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We freeze all our food scraps. Onion peels, ends of leeks, cores of apples, carrot peels, kale stocks etc. When it gets too much, everything goes in a pot and we make veggie stock from it. It is a darker stock due to the skins of everything, but it is flavourful and no extra veggies have to be bought to make great tasting stock. Almost nothing is wasted in our house anymore.
Wow, that is a very good idea, i never thought of doing that.
First, that parsnip in the photo it'll go to waste. Don't buy them.
Freezing things I never thought of freezing before has helped a lot.
Squeezed juice leftovers (lime, lemon, oj) used to sit in small tupperware in the fridge forever-- now they go right into a dedicated ice cube tray. If I remember to zest the fruit first, that gets frozen, too. The last 1-1/2 cups of boxed broth/stock: frozen flat in a ziploc. Fresh ginger gets cut into 1-2 inch pieces and frozen immediately. After using that single tablespoon of tomato paste, the rest of the can gets dolloped onto a wax paper-lined toaster oven tray, frozen then collected in a ziploc. Bread heels: ground up and frozen for bread crumbs.
We're looking into getting a chest freezer because it's getting a little crowded above the fridge now. Big thanks to Re-Nest and Re-Nest commenters for most of these ideas.
Great post!! Even food takes a long time to biodegrade. We collect leftovers and bring them to our neighbors to feed their bunny.
(Google House Rabbit Society Diet first, though. Here's their list for bunnies)
http://www.rabbit.org/care/veggies.html
In the summer, when I was doing lemon wedges that would inevitably go bad, I started freezing them. Win-win: they doubled as ice cubes.
I am trying to get better about this concept. Now I at least try to be reasonable about how many nights I'll actually be home to cook, make a list for the coop and I try not to deviate.I try to take stock of what's sitting in my 'fridge already and what I might need to make something out of it.
I have people over every Sunday night and make a big soup with leftover veggies, pasta, and beans. Also, I plan my meals for each week and then make a shopping list, so I usually don't overbuy.
I do something similar to Anna, but it's every 2 weeks (or so). I make stock regularly from whatever I've got laying about and/or frozen. If I don't make soup with the stock, I'll use it to cook my rice, pasta, or even beans.
Great tips here. ZomppaLeva offered some great tips and context about reducing food waste (i.e. checking the user date) as her new year's resolution: http://tinyurl.com/5u9qdar
This was actually my new year's resolution. I am getting great ideas from everyone's tips. I am going to start freezing the scraps like Frugal Veggie immediately!
What do you do with the veggie scraps after you have made the stock?
i started freezing left-over soups, stocks, and compotes in muffin pans. once froze, i put them into a large zip-lock - this way i can unfreeze in portions. using left-over broths and stocks to cook grains and beans is an excellent idea!
Just thought I'd toss in the idea to save the rinds of hard cheeses (like Parmesan, Manchego, Pecorino, etc.). Plastic wrap them and freeze, then drop them into just about ANY pot of soup/stock you're making. They provide an unbeatable flavor boost!
Also... I heard over on the Kitchn that you can freeze milk/cream before it goes bad and then use it thawed in recipes (probably not to drink as it separates as it thaws). I've never tried it myself, but I have some leftover cream that I'm thinking I might use to try it!
In the summer, bananas and cucumbers sometime tend to ripen quickly. I peel and slice them up and put them in freezer bags and use them in my smoothies in the mornings. What's great too is that I don't need to add ice to my smoothies because the fruit is already cold and my cucumbers and bananas do not have a chance to expire.
I've often wondered exactly what CAN be used in a veggie stock- can we use ends of carrots, centers of kale, heels of onion? Maybe I'll give it a try and see what happens!
I've heard that leaving the pit in your avocado to make it last longer is actually a myth.