Food Waste Friday Frolics

Every Friday I catalog our food waste for the week, in hopes that keeping better track of it will help us to waste less.

This week some leftovers went to waste, despite our best intentions. In the orange tupperware is some unappetizing turkey parmigiana, the remains of a very disappointing dinner. My husband had told me about a friend's chicken parmigiana for years, so I finally got the recipe from her and was excited to make it for him. She told me they use turkey cutlets, so that's what I got. But from the look on my husband's face at his first bite, I knew he didn't like it. The turkey was surprisingly bland and inexplicably tasteless. He finished that cutlet and the next night I made garlic bread and made the leftovers into sandwiches and it was a lot better. Being a good sport, he tried to eat this last cutlet the following day, but told me when he sliced into it, it was just too gross. Of course that guaranteed that I wasn't going to eat it either.

The other container has a bit of a pumpkin experiment I made, which was not terrible-tasting, but I was sick of it. I had some canned pumpkin left over from making bread, so I decided to cook it into a savory little casserole. I ate more than half of it, but the rest went bad this week. Click here if you want to know the story of the writing on top of the container.

Why do I care about throwing away food? Well, for one thing it's like throwing away money. But more importantly, it's terrible for the environment. All that wasted food sitting in a landfill creates carbon dioxide and THAT'S a big problem. You can read all about it over at Wasted Food. And visit The Frugal Girl to see how people are documenting their waste so we can all try to waste less. I can tell you, it's an ongoing process. It's nearly impossible not to waste anything, I have a lot more respect for those Depression-era folks who really used every little bit.

So how did you do this week? Are you watching your waste? I find it's all a balance. On weeks like this, I'm not going to eat something completely unappetizing when I have healthy alternatives right in front of me. We're not starving, and it's NOT the Depression, despite what you hear on the news. Please share your thoughts in the Comments section.