2009.08.21
What a waste!
Let me take you back to a scene from last night: I'm sitting in my kitchen, staring sadly at half of an angel food cake that I know will never see the lining of a human stomach. Why? Because in my house, there are just certain products that never seem to get finished off.
With the angel food cake, it's because I always buy it for strawberry shortcake and the strawberries always run out before the cake. I know I could dream up some other delectable topping, such as peaches or fudge sauce, but the little voice in my head that doesn't want to be grossly overweight says, "You don't HAVE to polish the durn thing off. You got it on clearance for 99 cents. See the blaze orange sticker?" Not to mention the fact that Howard will never eat it if I don't dress it up and set it in front of him. He isn't a huge dessert guy.
What else routinely goes bad in my house? The last 1/4 of the jug of milk. I know you folks with kids out there are probably laughing and thinking about how often you have to make emergency trips to the store just for milk. I don't have kids, my husband drinks chocolate milk, and I only use milk on cereal, which I don't eat every day. So something usually goes down the drain.
It strikes me that every household probably has at least one food item they can never finish. And since I love these little sociological experiments, I want to know what it is that your family just can't seem to polish off before it goes bad? Is it the loaf of bread? The head of lettuce? The lime you bought to garnish cocktails?
Maybe we could start a food trade! My angel food cake for your lime!
Olives. I never seem to use them up before they get covered with white "mother" (at least that's what I'm told it is). Naturally, bread is never used up, but that's OK, the goats love stale bread, not to mention the dogs. Not much goes to waste around our place, except maybe cucumbers and the occasional potato that gets caught in the bottom of the bin. Oh yeah, halves of onion. Husband uses 1/2 onion in chili, then puts the other 1/2 in a plastic bag, and it gets lost in the 'fridge. He also uses kidney beans on his salads - opens a can, uses half, puts foil over the top, and months later, I find... well, let's not go there.
Comment by Susan — August 21, 2009 @ 11:32 am
When I shop, I always seem to buy too many vegetables. Some (not many) always seem to spoil before I can use them all. Usually, it is zucchini or cucumbers, or romaine lettuce. I always try to buy less, but it never happens.
Comment by Melissa — August 21, 2009 @ 11:35 am
Loafs of bread or packages of dinner rolls. Bags of lettuce. Anything I fix that has more than 2 or 3 servings goes completely to waste, since I generally don't want something anymore after the second time around. I also seldom buy more than a few apples or oranges at a time either.
Comment by Leisa — August 21, 2009 @ 11:51 am
I normally waste produce, although not on purpose. I'll buy something to use in a recipe and save the leftovers thinking I'll make something else with it but no, I usually don't. Into the trash goes a partial bag of not-so-fresh spinach, a half of a green bell pepper or part of a lemon. Just last night I had to pitch about a 1/4 bag of carrots because they were nasty. I hate it when I do that because some produce can be expensive, not to mention that wasting food is a shame!
Comment by Kim — August 21, 2009 @ 11:58 am
We honestly don't have too many things that go bad. We changed our buying habits a while back to reduce waste, because we used to buy a lot of groceries on the weekend, and by late in the week some of the meat or fresh veggies would have spoiled. We changed that by buying more frozen vegetables and freezing meats that were on sale. Otherwise, if we need fresh meat or veg, we buy the day we cook it. Now, about the only thing we toss are leftovers more than 3 days old. We don't use any milk other than almond milk, and that goes quickly since we use it for all our dairy needs. We also make a lot of things from scratch, so we're more inclined to actually eat it than let it sit, since we have vested time and effort into it.
Comment by Other John — August 21, 2009 @ 11:59 am
Produce. You name it, it's gone bad in my refrigerator, or sitting in my produce basket. Shriveled potatoes, mushy half cucumbers, limp celery, slimy mushrooms. Funny how the junk food never goes bad...
Comment by Lori — August 21, 2009 @ 12:02 pm
Wow. I am seeing reflections of myself in all of these comments. Susan, I do the same thing your husband does with kidney beans. I LOVE kidney beans or garbanzo beans on my salad, but Howard doesn't like them and it's hard to think of a way to use those up if you don't have a soup or a chili planned.
Also, I can't tell you how many times we have traced a weird odor to some kind of mystery blob at the bottom of the produce drawer. Usually I can identify what it was during its better days, but once I couldn't even figure it out! How gross is that? I think cukes are the worst, and grocery store ones don't seem to last as long as fresh ones. I wonder if it's that wax they use?
Comment by Lindsey Nair — August 21, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
Actually the angel food cake didn't totally go to waste. Zoe (our cat) got into it last night, and I found it on the floor this morning with some nice-sized bites out of it.
Comment by Howard — August 21, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
Produce. yes, limes and lemons, oranges, grapefruit, etc.
Bread, until I started putting the unused rolls, etc., in the freezer and only get out what I know will be eaten.
Leftovers. Unless I know I will use the uneaten leftovers in another dish soon, they will sit in the fridge until 7-10 days later when they go in the trash on trash day.
Funny, I bought some ciabatta rolls at Fresh Market recently, a package of 6, and put 4 in a freezer bag in the freezer. I made a sandwich with one right away. Yesterday I was going to use the other one for a sandwich and it was already moldy.
Comment by Kathy — August 21, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
I'm bad for wasting lettuce. I'll buy it with good intentions of making salads or eating it on sandwiches but salads and sandwiches I make at home are never as good as I want them to be so I usually never finish it off. That also goes for cucumbers, carrots...anything I could put in a salad that never winds up getting eaten.
Milk never goes bad though. We drink it all the time and are constantly having to buy more milk!
Comment by Bailie — August 21, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
Lindsey, it's funny that you mention the fresh cukes lasting longer. I was just thinking that the other night! I have 2 sitting on my counter that came from our garden. I picked them at least 10 days ago and they are still good and firm! If that were a grocery store cuke, it would be a mushy, oozing mess.
Comment by Lori — August 21, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
Lindsey, I don't know about kidney beans, but leftover garbanzo's can be out in a blender with a little lemon juice, olive oil and tahini and make hummus. If you don't have tahini, just make your hummus w/out it. You'll have a little batch for snacking.
I'm so glad to read that I'm not the only one who has produce go bad on them. I always buy it with really good intentions, but something always seems to get forgotten.
Comment by Debbie — August 21, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
Well Lindsey you are a perfect candidate for organic milk...check the expiration dates - because of the way they are processed, the cartons last a lot longer (at least the kind I have purchased before). You'll never have to ditch the milk again!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-organic-milk-lasts-longer
Comment by Rob — August 21, 2009 @ 11:53 pm
I have often ended up having to throw out half loaves of specialty bread I'll buy off the reduced rack. You only get a day or two with those, but considered the lower price to begin with I feel okay about it. I have some solutions for a few of the above comments...Half an onion can be diced right then and there after chili making, and put in a baggie, but then toss it in the freezer and next chili time just dump it in. Same goes for the half of green pepper. Frozen strips of pepper are great for making fajitas and omelette's. Half a tomato? Chop it up and add that half of onion, half of pepper and add a half of cucumber, celery, spice it up and you have some homemade salsa. Half a can of any kind of bean, garbanzo, kidney, black bean, whatever, can be made into hummus or bean dip. Dump in the homemade salsa and spice it up a bit, dip in the chips! Wilting, but not mushy, spinach is great in an omelette. Stale bread can be made into bread crumbs and mixed into crab meat for crab cakes, or made into bread pudding or croûtons. I guess the key is to not just shove things in the fridge and forget about them. A little preparation now will save money and save you from having moldy oldies to deal with later. Can't help you with that milk situation though...we're always on the short end of milk here so I don't have a solution.
Comment by Heather Froeschl — August 22, 2009 @ 9:47 am
Salad usally goes bad here, but normally only because the fridge always freezes it, so it turns to mush when you take it out.. Aside from that, with a family of 5 stuff is eaten quickly.. The only other thing that ever goes bad is meat.. But we never have much of it go funky on us, and when it does it gets tossed to the dogs.
Comment by Maria — August 22, 2009 @ 9:47 am
I have found that those Debbie Myers Green bags help keep the produce fresh longer. And as for bread, makes great French toast no matter how dried out it is. And the birds always appreciate anything we put out for them. Buying smaller cartons of milk and half dozen cartons of eggs for those of us who live alone.
Comment by Lynda — August 22, 2009 @ 10:16 am
Salad dressing usually goes bad in my house because I'm the only one who enjoys salad, so I don't make it that often.
Comment by MrsHull — August 22, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
Ditto the comment "I have found that those Debbie Myers Green bags help keep the produce fresh longer". I started using those for bananas and they helped keep them reasonably firm pretty much for the week, a big improvement over just leaving them out. Then I decided to place them in the green bag AND in the refrigerator. Works great. I had one this morning that I bought nine days ago and it was still good and firm, though the skin had turned a little brown. No mushiness at all.
Comment by Pete — August 24, 2009 @ 9:01 am
Most of the time when I buy a loaf of bread I will freeze 1/2 of it when I bring it home. I rarely have to throw out more than a slice or 2 of bread that way.
If I have a half of a tomato, I can usually cut it up and use it as an extra side with other leftovers to round out a meal. I also like to eat tomato slices on bagels and biscuits.
Comment by Ken — August 24, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
Our refrigerator is where lettuce goes to die.
Comment by Chickpeas — August 25, 2009 @ 6:23 am
I read somewhere that you should store the milk in the lowest part of the fridge, towards the back - its colder there.
Comment by Ken — August 25, 2009 @ 11:04 am