Turned Loose on Food Waste

Today my friend Rebecca from Turned Loose is sharing her experiences with minimizing food waste in her kitchen. She tackles this subject, as she does most others, with a combination of insight and humor.

My friend, Alea, frequently participates in Food Waste Friday… documenting with some rather unappetizing photos sometimes. It’s often amusing to hear her stories of why food didn’t get eaten; and it’s inspiring to learn about how she avoids waste.  My bottom line is that by reading her posts, I have become more aware of food waste, and I try to avoid it.

• Milk close to expiring? Make a big batch of waffles to freeze, or stir up some homemade pudding.
• Fruit getting mushy or veggies getting limp? Blend them up in a smoothie or make a vegetable puree to add to a future meal…like lentil soup (on my menu tonight!)
• Bread stale? Well, we have a favorite duck pond. I don’t know if we are supposed to feed the ducks, but there are no signs telling us not to. So I freeze old bread, and a couple of times a year, we make an outing to be appreciated by the ducks. Last week, we took two little friends with us, who we were caring for — ages eight and four — and they loved it.

I recently cooked a large pot of quinoa to make a salad. I needed enough for our supper as well as for a friend in need, but after putting together the salad, I still had a bowl of quinoa left over.  A large bowl.   I started putting quinoa into everything that week:

I added it when I made hamburger patties, along with barbecue sauce and an egg, which made a sticky mess on the grill.  I was duly chastised by my typically never-complaining husband.  I think his comment was something like, “Will you please stop putting things like rice and quinoa into our burgers?”

Okay…new plan.  I added some to soup, along with vegetable puree.  I finally polished off the seemingly never-ending supply of cooked quinoa by using it in place of rice in the crust of Zucchini Pizza, which was also recently mentioned at Premeditated Leftovers.  And it was a really good pizza, although I had a hard time convincing my family.  They each ate a piece, but there were no seconds.  And the leftovers were all mine.

Rebecca is a homeschooling mom of two teens. She enjoys organizing, planning, cooking, writing, making memories, and getting tasks done. Rebecca shares her musings on homeschooling and home management at Turned Loose. You can find more of her recipes at Loose Ends.