% of Waste!

[klipin4deals]

Originally Posted by mama22qts Question for ya'll that save veggies and stuff. What about leftovers that are cooked? I'm thinking black-eye peas or butter beans, etc. Or collard greens. When all you have is a couple of spoonfuls of something like that, do you still save it?

mash them up really well (especially if you have kids or a husband who thinks he's allergic to "things") and mix it in with ground beef. Have tacos or burritos. No one will ever know. lol, can you tell I do this all the time? As for the inevitable "Mom, what's the green stuff?" question... "It's just a kind of lettuce. You eat it all the time and you like it."

[puakinikini]

I have made a conscious effort over the last two years to reduce our waste and have almost eliminated it. I am mindful of what I buy that is fresh, and make sure that our menus reflect what we have in the house. We also have left-over night every 3-4 days and my DH takes some left-overs with him to work for lunch.

The thing that helped us was reducign the amount of meals that we eat out. When you have to eat at home, you get creative in using what you have. If I have to buy something special for a recipe, like Cream, I look up other recipes that use that ingredient and make sure that it is on the menu the next day or two. The only thing that occassionally gets watsed is fruit, because my kids are so fickle. One week they will go through a 5lb box of clementines, 12 banans, and a bag of apples - the next week, I have to force them to eat fruit. There is only so much fruit that I can eat to avoid waste - so sometimes I bring it to work. The physicians look at me like I am crazy, but the admins like it.

[mmb1996]

My problem is I make to much for dinner but its hard cause I seriously almost never know how many will be here. My three kids are busy everyday with sports, never know who will be here for dinner or who will be here with a buddy. I have started making my own little frozen dinners of the leftovers. The kids love them, they just grab one out of the freezer and nuke it for a few minutes for a quick lunch or late nite snack. My son loves my meatloaf and mash potatoes so much he will eat it for breakfast some mornings, the girls groan and moan over the "meatloaf smell" so early in the mornings. They are yogurt and fruit people in the mornings, he likes to gross them out.

[MrsPinecone]

Originally Posted by mama22qts Question for ya'll that save veggies and stuff. What about leftovers that are cooked? I'm thinking black-eye peas or butter beans, etc. Or collard greens. When all you have is a couple of spoonfuls of something like that, do you still save it?

I make soup with stuff like that. A bunch of leftover veggies, a couple of cans of broth, and a little chopped leftover chicken can make dinner.

[gettinrevvin2007]

I was just reading an article online, and it made me think 'GOOGLE it', and come back to this post.
OH MY GOSH.
You will not believe the # of results for 'using leftovers', and similar searches.
Check it out!

[clippyclippy]

It helps for me to think about the economics of waste.
If I paid 2.99 for a 3lb bag of apples and we only eat half of them, that price just went to 2.99 for a 1.5 pound bag.....I would never pay that, so we better eat them!
If a half gallon of milk goes to waste, because I bought too much and it went sour, and I paid 3.00 for that milk, it just went to 6.00/gallon!
That motivates me to get creative and avoid waste as much as possible.
I'll make rice pudding or tapioca to keep from throwing milk away. I'll make applesauce from the apples if they aren't appealing to eat raw any more. My kids actually love "prapple sauce" I make it with very overripe pears and apples - they think it's a treat!
If the sweet peppers are getting old, I chop them, put them on a cookie sheet and freeze. Then I bag them and keep in the freezer. I can just take out what I need for a recipe.
Same with onion.
Even aside from the economics of it all, I grew up in a third world country, it make me extra-sensitive to waste in general.