Happy Friday! It’s time for another edition of Food Waste Friday. Every Friday I link up with The Frugal Girl and/ or Simply Being Mum for Food Waste Friday. I’ve been environmentally conscious about food waste since I was in college and this is a great way for me to keep tabs on what we waste in our house.
Here is how we did this week:
Food Waste Successes
1. Cauliflower leaf smoothie?
A few months ago I saw The Frugal girl using broccoli leaves in her smoothie. I figured I’d try the same thing with my cauliflower leaves.
With enough strawberries and lemon juice I didn’t even notice the greens. No picture of the greens though. They were under the strawberries hiding. I’ll have to do this more often! I usually use spinach, but we were out.
Smoothies are definitely my favorite way to use up fruits and greens.
On another note, I’m toying around with doing a small apartment compost bin. Any suggestions? Don’t tell my husband. He will kill me. I’d like to compost so I’m not constantly wondering what to do with stuff like cauliflower leaves.
Food Waste Losses
2. Lettuce
I rarely buy bagged lettuce, but had a craving for Caesar salad last week and had to have it. The bagged salad was on sale and it made more sense to get it than buying or making a jar of salad dressing for one person. This is why I never buy bagged lettuce. It goes bad way too quickly.
I’ll go back to buying the full heads next week, those last much longer!
3. Another banana
This is the same banana pictured last week. Tom threw out a banana before I could take a picture of it. He said it was too mushy to eat. I still feel like I could have saved it somehow in a smoothie or something. Oh well!
How did you do this week?
Freeze the bananas before they get so bad and Tom can’t throw them away for being too mushy!
Tell your husband to stop throwing away mushy bananas! They make the best banana bread or banana muffins! As suggested above, just freeze it in a freezer bag until you have 2 or 3 of them and bake him some delicious banana chocolate chip muffins. Yum!
As far as small apartment composting, there’s a cool infographic in this article that shows you how to do it. http://ecowatch.com/2013/12/16/how-to-compost-apartment/
Good job on the Food Waste though, that’s awesome. I agree that cut up lettuce wastes faster than whole heads. I have stopped using those too. If you make compost you could use it to grow your own lettuce in containers on your balcony or patio and you could harvest only what you need a meal time!
I always put mushy bananas in the freezer. I use them in smoothies when I’m out of frozen fruit. I also use them in muffins and quick breads. It is actually one of my favorite ways to cut down on waste.
I threw about a quarter of a bag of slimy salad away this week too. I had been lucky for several weeks with the bagged lettuce. I knew my streak would end. Back to full heads for me too.
As soon as my bananas are too ripe to eat, I peel them, cut them up into chunks, and throw them in the freezer. Great to use for baking recipes, in smoothies, or as ice cream!