Waste Not

This desert was the best thing we ate all weekend.  It was not actually this one, as made memorial day weekend, but the same recipe made by DD#2 this afternoon. On Thursday, National Public Radio was doing a story on how the average household in the United States is wasting as much as 1/4 of the food they purchase.  I knew it was a lot, and that I am guilty as charged, but hearing that high amount, made me almost sick.  I decided it would not happen in my household.  

DH had made fajitas on Thursday, and on Friday, I pulled together a mac and cheese and chicken chunks meal on the fly before we settled into evening activities.  There was a good portion and a half of mac and cheese left. Saturday I came across a few cherry tomatoes and peppers that needed something done with quick, so I threw the in the crock pot with some broth.  Great base to a soup I thought.  I went to my nephews football game, and when I came home, through some  angel hair pasta in.  It did not turn out as expected.  instead of a tomato-pepper noodle soup, it was a sticky mess.  We ate it for lunch anyway.  There were also leftovers. DD#2 had a sandwich and popcorn for supper and DH and I went to a corporate event, so not a real meal for supper had to be cooked. 

After church today, as much as I would have loved to cook up a nice brunch, I started pulling things from the fridge and we cleaned up all the odds and end leftovers from the week. The leftover mac and cheese, one serving of tortellini soup, the fajitas,  a smidge of salsa and another smidge of queso dip, along with a couple ore tortillas, and I even ate the sticky mess from Saturday.  Guess what?  There is more for my lunch tomorrow.  I may give in and toss, but really want to just suck it up and eat it, knowing full well, another 1/2 of the worlds population is packing nothing for a lunch tomorrow. For supper, I used the half bag of meatballs from the freezer, rinsed out the last of the BBQ sauce for two different bottles to cook them in.  We ate these with broiled egg plant, a couple bananas, and for desert, the delicious dump cake-strawberry and rhubarb, with produce from the freezer. I feel pretty accomplished.  

While the meals might have been weird, I saved food that might have easily gone in the trash without a thought.  I have a lot of meat in the freezer, but the pantry is starting to get low, and I am OK with that.  I think we need a good dose of planning, and organizing to figure out how to make good nutritious meals, and plan for not wasting leftovers. To do this, I am planning to only buy ingredients we need for meals, as oppose to a full on grocery shop until at least Thursday. Until then, I will improvise, as we needed to do with my daughters cake.  We are completely out of pantry staples like flour and sugar. I learned you can substitute  powdered sugar for granular sugar in this recipe with similar results.  She probably added an extra 1/4 cup to be on the safe side, but her cake was every bit as good as any other I've tasted-maybe better because she was so proud of it. If you have tips for avoiding food waste, please share the in the comments.  Wish me luck for the rest of the week.