Food Waste Friday

It's time to talk about food waste, and we don't have any this week! Yay! But next week we have to use up all of the fresh produce from our first CSA delivery. So we'll see how that goes. We were diligent about using up the most perishable items this week - the fava beans, the beet greens, the chard, the romaine, and the purple-flowering broccoli, I think it was called. A little bit like eating tiny trees.

I told my husband to get creative and eat anything he saw in the crisper. Today he told me he had a "pungent" onion sandwich for lunch, and when I checked the refrigerator I saw he'd eaten almost an entire head of raw garlic, thinly sliced like an onion! I suppose there's no harm in eating half a head of garlic. That probably satisfies his antioxidant quota for the month. Tonight he was in charge of dinner and I came home to an excellent frozen pizza and caesar salad.

Next week might be more challenging because we still have a lot to use up. But it's been so much fun trying new vegetables and new recipes. The Alice Waters Swiss Chard gratin, which I posted a recipe for earlier this week, was time-consuming but absolutely heavenly. My husband isn't fond of chard or kale, and he loved this and had seconds.

It can be difficult to try to save money on groceries while eating healthy organic food. When you add reducing food waste to the list of goals, it becomes even harder. But sometimes our resourceful side rises up to meet these challenges. And some people are at their best with a lot of restrictions. Check out 30 Bucks a Week to see how one couple is surviving and thriving on a $30 a week food allowance. And if you think they're sacrificing or only eating rice and beans, think again. There's some gourmet cooking going on over there. Particularly if you're a vegetarian, you really have got to have a look. Because eating less meat or going vegetarian will definitely save money, in addition to being healthier and better for the environment. Full disclosure in case that sounds like I'm on a soapbox: I'm not a vegetarian, I just don't eat red meat.

So how was your week, food-wise? Please share your thoughts, ideas, opinions, rants, and recommendations in the Comments section.