We renovated our kitchen last fall and one of our big decisions was to buy a smaller fridge. Why did we make this decision, when (in this country, anyway) bigger appliances are often considered better? Quite simply, we wanted to stop wasting so much food--food which was getting squirreled away, lost in the back of our fridge, and forgotten. Now, if we end up buying too much fresh food, we end up struggling mightily to fit it all in the fridge, which is NO FUN and requires a highly developed sense of spatial relations.
Having too much food is a luxurious problem, unique to First World countries. While many millions of people worldwide are struggling just to get to their next meal, Americans routinely throw out food which has gone bad because they didn't eat it quickly enough. Our family is guilty of this practice many times over, throwing out moldy bread that's been hiding in the bottom of the breadbasket, discovering scary-looking cheese that's developed strange and unusual colors, and cooking a brand-new meal when we already have more than enough left-overs in the fridge. My mother-in-law has renamed the fruit and vegetable crisper in her fridge "the rotter"--funny, but sadly true for too many of us.
We've felt slightly less guilty about over-buying food ever since we got a composter (so at least the food waste isn't going to the landfill), but we wanted to make a concerted effort to stop the food waste cycle in the first place. Enduring Hurricane Sandy and nine days without power was a big turning point for us, as we had to throw out an entire fridge and freezer full of food, plus the contents of the fridge in our basement (the previous owners' fridge, which we'd also been filling up to capacity like crazed stockpilers). The sheer waste was sobering. Why did we need all of this food? We're only four people, not an army.
Melissa d'Arabian, a chef on The Food Network, once talked about a time in her life when her finances were very tight, so she decided to challenge herself to a month of no shopping for packaged foods--creatively using only the food already in her pantry. Inspired by her challenge, we're doing the same thing. We're buying only dairy, breads, and produce, until our pantry food is used up. This means keeping our pantry in better order--soups with soups, pastas with pastas, etc., so we can see at-a-glance what's available. It also means going through all of the produce, breads, and dairy foods on a weekly basis--before grocery shopping--so we're fully aware of what we already have. Fresh fruits and veggies need to be eaten before the frozen and canned ones.
Meal planning takes extra time, but I'd much rather spend my time figuring out how to use the foods I already have than throwing away large quantities of it because I didn't take the time to be more mindful in the first place.
Meagan Francis, blogger at The Kitchen Hour, inspired this post with her article, "Simple Strategies for Reducing Food Waste (and Saving Money!) Thanks, Meagan, for reminding me to stick to our mission and to share it here.
Food for thought: How can you reduce your food waste?
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