Food Waste Friday plus Favorite Blog Post of the Week

It's a giant radish! My husband was a champ and actually ate about 4 or 5 of these huge things, with no help from me. But once we got the new CSA delivery, the smaller, crunchier, zestier radishes beckoned and this one was left in the dust (or in the vegetable crisper, in this case).

That was our only food waste for the week, and it will go in the compost bin, so I'm pretty happy with that. We used up a lot of odds and ends, and froze one meal to have at a later date. Today's lunch was a multi-ethnic concoction of basmati rice, black beans, sauteed mushrooms, and salsa.

I've been tracking our food waste for about a year now, and we're creating much less trash and saving money to boot. If you want to know why food rotting in a landfill is bad for the environment, visit Jonathan Bloom's blog Wasted Food. He's the authority on food waste.

And at The Frugal Girl, Friday is the day when a whole lot of bloggers come together to share their food waste for the week. It's quite a party! A bunch of people taking photographs of rotten food might not sound like fun, but don't knock it until you try it. But seriously, there's something about being publicly accountable that really does help people waste less. It works that way for me, and apparently it works for other people too.

My favorite blog post of the week goes to Betsy at Married With Luggage. I've already given her that dubious distinction once before, but since it's one of my very favorite blogs, it's no surprise that she's making an appearance again. This post, called "How to Have a 24-hour Meltdown," I found both hilarious and surprisingly useful. The idea is that most of us are overbooked, overworked, and overwhelmed these days, and instead of trying to "grin and bear it," if you just give in and have a one-day pity party for yourself once in awhile, you'll probably get sick of your own self- indulgence pretty quick. I'm definitely going to try it the next time I'm having "one of those weeks."

Please leave your thoughts and ideas about food waste, scheduled meltdowns, or anything else on your mind in the Comments section.