I have recently started paying much more attention to the food that we waste. I read an article that said that most Americans waste up to 40% of the food that they buy. I don’t know whether or not that number is accurate, but it definitely made me start thinking about how much food we waste. We have ducks, chickens and guineas plus we compost, so most of our food does not go to “waste”. However, I have started to try to make sure that we use as much food as possible as well. Here are some things that I have begun doing to save our food.
1. When I have a few left over veggies or meat that are not enough for a side dish or someone’s lunch, I have started freezing them to make into soup later.
2. If there is fruit that is overripe, it can be made into jam, apple butter, cinnamon apples or peach butter.
3. Can tomatoes rather than letting them go to waste. Here are recipes for Rotel, pizza sauce (this is so good, I could eat it by the spoonful!!), and salsa.
4. I try to keep my freezer and pantry well organized and rotate foods. My chest freezer is used for my beef only, while I make sure that the rest of the freezer food is rotated. Homemade canned goods are labeled with the year, and when the new food is placed in, I make sure that it goes behind the older food. This way food does not go bad.
5. If I buy excess yogurt when I can get it free, I freeze what I know we will not be able to use in time. Then, I either whip it up really well or use it in smoothies.
6. I make sure that any leftovers are well sealed, and placed towards the front of the refrigerator so that they are used while they are still good.
7. When I have leftover ends from carrots, onions, cabbage, broccoli and other vegetables, I freeze them, and then pull them out and make vegetable stock for soups later. After the stock is drained, I can feed the leftovers veggies to our birds.
8. Onions and bell peppers can be frozen and used later in recipes. This is great if you have a recipe that calls for half an onion or if you have an abundance of peppers.
9. Store your root vegetables in a cool and dry location. This will help to lengthen their shelf life.
10. Save your seeds if you are eating your own produce that you have grown. You can plant these seeds again in the coming years. Check out how to save your seeds here.
11. If you are cooking with pumpkin or squashes, you can toast and eat the seeds. My kids love these! I just add some butter, sugar and cinnamon to the seeds, and they think they are eating candy.
12. Old bread can be used in breakfast casseroles or made into bread crumbs/croutons. We refrigerate or freeze our bread to ensure that it lasts longer as well.
13. Turn small pieces of leftover chicken into chicken salad.
14. Made sure to save all of your chicken and meat bones. These make excellent homemade stock for soups.
15. Dry any fresh herbs before they go bad. These can be stored in baby food jars, and used as dried herbs. Check out how to dry herbs, here.
16. You can freeze many items, even milk, butter etc. You can check out my post here about how to freeze foods. Readers left some great comments about how to freeze items that I was not aware of.
17. Always bring home your leftovers from restaurants, even if it is only a couple of spoonfuls of vegetables. Just think creatively about how they can be used in a different way. My great grandmother was queen of this. She could make any meal that she brought home from a restaurant taste 100 times better the next day as she stretched the food and added extra ingredients.
18. Compost your leftovers. Just make sure to not compost meats or animal based products.
19. If you have a small amount of honey in the bottom of a jar, warm it so that it will easily pour out and can all be used.
20. If you are buying a large amount of something, make sure that you have a plan for storage. I am not saying that you should not buy in bulk, because we often do, especially with couponing. However, I make sure that I only buy what we will be able to realistically use or donate to others before it goes to waste. Donating to others is a great way to ensure that your food gets used as well. Plus, it teaches your kids the value to giving to others.
I would love to hear what other ideas you guys have about ways to cut back on wasted foods! It is something that we are really working on with our kids so they are aware of how fortunate we are to have so much good food to eat.
