Food Waste Challenge check-in: week 4

Well, today wraps up the last week of this year's Food Waste Reduction Challenge. We did fairly well and I was responsible for composting only the following:

1 cup cooked Cream of Wheat
1 cup corn cereal
1/2 grapefruit

I must admit I would have not thrown these foods out except for the fact that I had the stomach flu all week long (Monday through Thursday). Since I didn't actually eat anything during those days, it was easy to reduce the food waste generated to some degree. By the same token, I couldn't eat the leftover grapefruit that I left out on Sunday for fear of hurling it back up.

When I was able to eat again, I overestimated the amount of Cream of Wheat I could stomach. Particularly since, after a few hours, it turns into an unpalatable gelatinous mass. Same deal with the cereal. I thought it would settle my stomach, but it just made me queasy. Anyway, I'm definitely feeling better, but still not able to eat what I'd like to. Oh well. At least now I'm down at my goal weight :)

How was your last week of the challenge? How did this year's challenge help you be aware of the food waste you generate? Did it help at all?

Food Waste Challenge check-in: week 3

During the third week of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge we, well, fell down kinda hard. Aside from the usual kid food scraps (which are minimized by doling out food a little at a time), we had a bunch of food that didn't get eaten, for whatever reason.

So, to make a long story short, here's the summary:

1 banana
1 large strawberry
4 small tortillas
1/2 bagel
1 cup cooked chicken
1 cup roasted potatoes
1 cup refried beans
2 cups whole milk

Some of that could have been consumed, but I refuse to feel responsible for all the leftovers by myself just to consume it. And some of it was looking sketchy and I've had enough stomach issues lately that I didn't feel like proferring my guts up to the sacrificial intestinal gods yet again.

One more week left in the challenge and, hopefully, we'll go out with a bang. How was your last week, food waste wise?

Food Waste Challenge check-in: week 2

The second week of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge went really well. Again, I'm not going to count the food waste generated by the kids since their waste is slightly difficult to predict.

Mostly, I don't want to give them negative food issues by making them eat something when they are no longer hungry. I'm not giving them the guilt trip that "there are starving kids in Poland" that I got as a kid growing up. But, that's an issue for another post entirely.

So, this last week's waste included:

• 1 apple - I had cut it up and left it on the counter in a container for far too many days before I was going to get around to eating it
  
• 3 slices of turkey - this was actually from before the Food Waste Challenge started that I forgot to get rid of and have been dutifully ignoring
  
• I'm sure there will be more lettuce casualties soon, but I'm ignoring it for now

How about you? How did the last week go for your Food Waste Reduction Challenge?

Food Waste Challenge check-in: week 1

The first week of the Food Waste Reduction Challenge went fairly well. I think I managed to reduce the amount of waste generated from the kids, mostly by being a little more on top of metering out their food.

But, still, the most food waste came from them. My kids are picky to some degree, but mostly the problem is they eat like birds.

As for me, I composted a perfectly good slice of onion and a few slices of tomato and lettuce. I just was too lazy to find a home for the food. The biggest throwaway was a head of lettuce that got funky (I wish they sold half heads of lettuce :) and about half a thing of triple cream brie that my husband didn't end up eating and got fuzzy. I had the misfortune of eating some of it Friday night without noticing the fur and spent most of Saturday with really unfortunate stomach pains that I attribute to it.

Anyway, here's the run-down (I'm not including the kid's half-sucked on scraps):

• About a cup and a half of onion and tomato
  
• One head of lettuce
  
• 4 oz of brie

Anyway, all in all, not too bad. How did you do?

Getting fat from eating scraps

Welcome to the first day of 2010's Food Waste Reduction Challenge!

As I went through all my posts from last year's Food Waste Reduction Challenge, I remembered how kinda gross I felt after the month-long experiment. I pretty much felt forced to eat more than I normally do, just to prevent having to throw out food. And I think I gained weight over the month.

And, do you know what I finally just now realized? I'm fairly certain that we buy more food each week than we can possibly eat. Now, by Friday or so, it seems like the fridge is looking fairly empty, but we have a bad habit of overbuying just so we have a couple options on hand in case we don't have time to make some of the things we have planned. Meals with ingredients that will keep are generally punted first, but inevitably, you end up with more food in the house than you need.

Over the weeks, this sort of adjusts itself since I take into consideration food on hand that didn't get eaten the previous week, but it only really works for dry or frozen goods. Fresh food will only keep so long. So, we tend to buy less fresh broccoli and the like on the off-chance that it doesn't get eaten. I've noticed that we've done that more as a result of trying to eat local during the winter months - there just isn't a huge variety and we tend to stick to things we froze last summer or local vegetables that we can buy frozen.

Anyway, this time around, I'm not going to overeat just to keep things out of the compost. But, instead try to plan better to keep things from going bad.

One last thing, if you find foods or leftovers of things you don't know what to do with, feel free to ask for suggestions on the Food Waste Reduction Challenge posts. I'll try to offer up some recipe ideas as I'm sure will other readers!

And, if you still haven't signed up yet for this year's challenge, you can do it here.

Food wasting away

I went grocery shopping yesterday and did a little fridge clean out in preparation for February's Food Waste Reduction Challenge. No I wasn't cheating to get rid of food I know I wasn't going to eat - just composting food that was past its prime and inedible. You know, the real scary stuff.

But, even though I had a few days before I embarked on really reducing the food waste I'm generating, I couldn't help but start last night. That meant that the few teaspoons of lemon juice leftover from my husband's homemade blackberry pie (with blackberries we froze last summer and local leaf lard for the crust) got saved to use for the million avocados that are all ripening at once. Yes, we have a load of avocados from my brother's backyard.

That also meant that the leftover dough from the lattice crust from the pie ended up getting baked with sugar and cinnamon for last night's dessert. I don't have much control over the food waste generated from my kids, it just means that I have to be really diligent about giving them food that I know they will eat in portions they will finish. I'm not talking about being short-order cook for them, but meal planning with things I know they will eat.

One thing that has been brought up in the comments of people pledging to do the challenge so far is the notion that food scraps given to the chickens, goats, pigs, etc. don't count. Well, if you are looking at it from a cost standpoint, if that's what you normally budget into feeding your critters, by all means, give them the left-overs, but if it's just a mental sleight-of-hand to assuage your guilt over throwing out food, then you'll be better off (financially) saving the human food for the humans and planning better what the animals eat.

I do the same legerdemain thing with compost. I don't feel so guilty throwing out food because in goes in the compost, but I should. It's better to eat the food because it not only saves me money, but it saves from an environmental standpoint. Throwing out (or composting) food and replacing it takes an environmental toll from a production, transportation and packaging perspective since all of these processes emit CO2. Plus, it's just wasteful. Compost the things you can't eat (banana peels and the like) and eat the things you can. Sounds obvious, but we all need to be reminded of this.

If you are interested in signing up for this year's Food Waste Challenge, you can sign up here!

For those of you who get a kick out of eating seemingly inedible things, I'll cover in a future post how to turn your food scraps into something edible. Yum!

Food Waste Reduction Challenge 2010

It's that time of year again to do the Food Waste Reduction Challenge. I think in the intervening 11 months, many of us have stopped focusing on how much food waste we are generating and need a little kick in the hiney to focus on what we are throwing away (or composting). So, let's begin.

You all know the stats: 50% of the garbage that goes into the landfill is edible food. Even if your food goes out into the compost or picked up by your local yard waste service for composting, it's still not only a waste of money, but it's also a waste of energy.

Really, how bad is it? A University of Arizona study showed that 40 to 50% of U.S. edible food never gets eaten. That's $100 billion worth of edible food discarded every year in the U.S.. It's a tremendous waste of resources and one that we are all guilty in contributing to.

There's also a large environmental impact as well if your food waste gets sent to a landfill. Food waste is the largest landfill contributor to methane gas production, so unless your municipality has a landfill-to-gas capture, your rotten bananas and forgotten pickles are contributing to global climate change.

How is it a waste of energy? Because there's a lot of energy that goes into growing and transporting your food (unless you grow it all yourself, in which case the impact is a lot less), throwing it out just means you have to replace it with more food.

Do you have a food waste problem? Most likely you do. This is one of those challenges that we all can and should do. So, now's the time to sign up for the Food Waste Reduction Challenge. But, what does it entail?

The Rules
Well, it's pretty simple. Your goal for the month of February 2010 is to try to reduce the amount of food you throw out or put into the compost. This does not include inedible food waste like egg shells or banana peels (unless you have a use for them I don't know about).

Your job is to keep track of the food that you have on hand and make sure that it gets eaten or preserved before it goes bad and needs to be disposed. All it takes is a little planning, some organization and the willingness to be creative. Just remember to cook wisely and shop wisely.

So, every week starting now, go through your fridge, cabinets and cellar storage and see what's getting close to its pull date or is starting to turn. If it's getting near, plan on eating it, making it into a meal, preserving it or freezing it. Since this is an important challenge that will help you reduce your waste and save money I'm going to host it for the whole month of February.

If you are interested in signing up for the Food Waste Reduction Challenge, add your name to the comments of this post. I'll check in occasionally to see how you all are doing or if you have any food saving recipes or tips to share with others. If you want to put the graphic up on your blog, just paste the following code:

<a href="http://www.thecrunchychicken.com/2010/01/food-waste-reduction-challenge-2010.html"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4k-Jn_mvDYDISxWSgTnSFp4QwpcGvIl6t2311pIG5KjyVnL_jrdirnmgwaauCvr3zwXYxy4XOGKx-VCaKZQPIjLJ2ygcvD8ZFmI1Ie-Tdmf1R_Nx0hvrLGjF2OLyoptosV2OHXKVPWb8K/s259/foodwaste.jpg" border="0" alt="Food Waste Reduction Challenge - February 2010" /></a>

Related reading:
One Country's Table Scraps, Another Country's Meal (NY Times)
All About: Food Waste (CNN)
Wasted Food (blog)