Happy Friday! It’s time for another edition of Food Waste Friday. We wasted a little more than usual this week.
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:
1. Zucchini “chips”
I bought a pack of 3 zucchini last week and only used 2. The last one almost went bad on me. Luckily, I found him hiding in the bottom of my fridge just in time to make some zucchini chips.
Even better, I used up some of our crumbs from tortilla chips for the breading. I always try to save the small chips and crumbs and grind them in the food processor for this reason. No more buying bread crumbs for me!
They ended up being perfectly crunchy. I didn’t follow a real recipe because this was just some experimenting for Food Waste Friday. The crumbs were pressed into both sides of the thin zucchini slices and then I roasted them on a oiled sheet pan on 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, flipping halfway. I’m very surprised I didn’t burn them as that usually happens with my little experiments.
Robert loved them so much that I tried making apple chips the next day. He still prefers the whole apple which is fine by me!
2. Threw out moldy foods
I’m not sure how this little guy got past me. It must have been moldy when I bought it because we discovered it the day after buying. So gross. I was afraid to go strawberry picking after seeing this because I knew we already had too much fruit on our hands. The good news is that Robert is in a huge strawberry phase right now so this was our only wasted fruit!
We also had some moldy okra. Once again, I think it was on it’s way out when I bought it because we’ve only had it for 3 days. So gross. We were able to eat most of it in gumbo though!
3. Threw out some milk
I don’t usually buy cows milk because we never drink it fast enough before it goes bad. We tend to stick with coconut, soy and nut milks. I don’t even remember why I bought this milk. Bread making, maybe? Who knows.
4. Lot of frozen fruit
Since I hate for my fruit to go moldy I usually keep a bowl of frozen fruit in the freezer at all times. Yup, just a plastic bowl, no baggy. I do this so I’m encouraged to use the frozen fruit ASAP. If I put it in a freezer bag then I assume the bag will protect it for all of eternity and I usually lose it to death by freezer burn. This week I had a bunch of blueberries because they have been too tart to eat lately. Is blueberry season over? Why do mine consistently taste bad this week? I used Shrove Tuesday as the perfect excuse to utilize my frozen blueberries and I made a Dutch baby.
This was a fun way to use my frozen blueberries and I think I’ll do it more often because it was so easy.
Of course, we’ve still been doing smoothies. I have to use up those half eaten bananas somehow!
5. Carrot and apple “cupcakes”
Robert is obsessed with baking cupcakes lately and I knew I couldn’t keep making sugary cupcakes each week (even though I really want to). When he started asking for cupcakes and pulled the flour out of the cabinet I knew I needed to find some way to use up our leftover carrots and apples. We’ve had way too many apples lately and I’ve been trying hard to eat them before they go bad. A quick Pinterest search led me to this recipe and it was perfect for what I needed. I used cashew milk and coconut oil instead of cows milk and vegetable oil and it turned out perfect. Here is a picture of Robert helping me bake.
Pinterest is my favorite place for food waste inspiration. All I have to do is type in the foods that are going bad and see if someone has found a way to use those foods before. So easy!
6. Threw out half a veggie burger
I thought I’d be a good wife and make Tom lunch one day. It was the one day of the week where Tom didn’t make it home and I ended up having two extra veggie burgers on my hands. I tried hard to eat them all, but had to stop at one and a half. While I hate to waste, I also hate to feel overfull. I would have put it back in the fridge but it was already getting soggy and gross.
How did you do this week? Feel free to leave a comment or link up with The Frugal Girl or Simply Being Mum.
I wasted an entire sealed pack of okra. :-( I forgot it was in the fridge. I was upset because okra is one of my favorite vegetables. I thought of you and your Friday blog post as soon as I pulled it out the fridge. I thought “Hannah would not be proud!” lol :-)
Oh no! So funny about the okra. It must have been a bad week for it because mine went bad so fast. At least you don’t have to feel too bad since mine went bad too!
I hate throwing out mouldy berries too! Our Little Miss shifted from fresh all the time to wanting only frozen berries. We lost a lot of berries that week…
I wish they didn’t mold so fast! I guess that’s the cost of buying good, fresh food.
Ooh this is a good idea for a weekly fridge clean up. I often find things that have gone bad and have forgotten about, weeks after we bought them. I like the zucchini chips idea, yum!
We used to have the same problem! Things get lost in the fridge so easily.
I am definitely using your zucchini chip idea! I have about four zucchinis in the fridge that I have to use before they go bad and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I bought them to make zucchini pizza boats, but then I used up all the cheese. I also love the ‘cupcakes’, I like to make muffins and give them to my son as cupcakes too!
I adore zucchini any which way you can think to prepare it, but I definitely don’t make it into delightful little snack chips frequently enough. It’s such a delicious, effortless way to get another serving of vegetables in!
Right? I’ll do anything to get my toddler to eat veggies!