“Maybe the one good thing about rising prices – when they do rise – is that people become more cognizant that they should use up their food. Availability of food makes us less likely to eat leftovers.”

Nancy Gershman speaks with the mid-Atlantic voice behind The Frugal Girl, “a food blog about cheerfully living on less.”

The Frugal Girl: I’m always excited to see a site like yours, that gives people some ideas how to fight against food waste. Food waste was the topic that started my blog journey so the cause is near and dear to my heart. My mom wasn’t as fanatical about food waste as I’ve become – but we’d have leftovers. And mom would save it and once a week we’d have “Leftover Night.” There would be a smorgasbord of things to eat. She’d be faithful about serving leftovers but wouldn’t do anything to transform it. The message resonates with me because more people want to save money on their food. It’s an environmental thing; they don’t want to waste food because it is unnecessary garbage.”

Expendable Edibles are safe to eat!

“A lot of times it’s just that people need to be educated about food waste. I like the website www.Stilltasty.com. You can enter a sample ingredient (something you have in your refrigerator) and it will tell you how to store it and how long you can keep it. What happens is that there is an incredible lack of knowledge, with people erring way too far on the side of caution. People need ideas what to do with leftover stuff. What to do when there are too many bananas, shriveled up sweet potatoes, or mushrooms going bad. How to bake with milk that’s a little sour or freeze tomato sauce. Or that you can safely cut out a rotten piece from a banana or a potato and use the rest of it. Suggestions along those lines. I say: Deal with these things that are about to become garbage!”

Frugal Girl’s Food Waste Friday

“There are some people that think the topic of food waste gets disgusting. But food waste is the reason I started blogging in 2008. I was fed up by how much food I was throwing away! One day after a fridge cleanout, I thought: If I had to show people a picture of this I would be mortified!

Menu planning is the cure for food want

“One thing I’ve learned in my years of fighting food waste is that we buy too much food. “The road to the trash is paved with good intentions” I always say. We go to the grocery store without a plan and see heads of lettuce and all kinds of vegetables and think we’re going to eat all this stuff. Yet we don’t really know what we’re going to do with it! That’s when I figured out I had to learn how to manage my menu planning.

Better planning means asking questions that help us pare down the buying. Like, how many days will we have salad with our dishes? I’ve noticed readers have started planning their meals better since reading my blog which is helpful for food waste. When you randomly buy stuff, you’re going to end up not using it.

The main difficulty with menu planning is getting people to try it. It’s a chore in my book too. But I just remind myself how much more money I spend, the time I waste; how tempted I am to have takeout and let food in the fridge just languish. Menu planning helps get me over the hump.

Produce seems to go bad really quickly. So I’ve gotten good at using up produce. I take note what I buy – for example, what foods are the least shelf stable –  and use those first. Then as I get down to the end of week I’ll use up my grapefruit and carrots that are happier staying longer in the produce drawer.

Maybe the one good thing about rising prices – when they do rise – is that people become more cognizant that they should use up their food. Availabilityof food makes us less likely to eat leftovers.

Menu planning on vacation is important too. When I’m coming up on a vacation I try to be mindful of what is in my fridge. I’ll do minimum grocery shopping because I want to leave the fridge empty. I freeze a lot of stuff. Just recently I came back from a vacation and noticed I had some tomato sauce that went bad and I realized I should have just frozen it in the jar.  You can freeze things in glass jars as long as there is head space at the top. Some people are worried it won’t be good when it’s thawed, but it’s fine. I’ve got frozen jars of salsa in the freezer!”

Freezer hoarding is another form of food waste

“As far as molecular structures are concerned, plenty of foods freeze fine.  Shredded cheeses (like mozzarella) can be frozen. Some vegetables can be frozen.  I’ll slice up celery, saute it in a little oil, freeze it and then use it later for stuffing.My knowledge of freezing comes from experience, reading cookbooks and even seeing what goes into frozen dinners.

As long as you don’t expect to use the frozen vegetable in exactly the same way as you did before, freezing definitely is the right way to go when you’re not up to using a food item that’s at that critical point. Frozen celery doesn’t have to have the same exact crunch as it did before to add a lot of flavor. Spinach doesn’t look that great after thawing – but if thrown into a smoothie – it’s perfect.

The important thing is don’t forget your expendable edible in the freezer. The freezer is not a pit stop on the way to the trash can! It’s ok to say, I can’t eat this right now and decide to freeze something. But if you know you’re going to forget about it in the freezer, you might as well throw it away, right away. I try and look in my freezer when I’m planning my menus just like I peek in the refrigerator, keeping tabs what’s in both. But I’ll always look in the fridge first.”

A good paring knife is your best friend

“I’m a big fan of cutting out bad spots in produce, and then using them in smoothies with spinach, avocado, milk and yogurt. Maybe it’s an avocado or spinach where the texture is not so good or mild flavored strawberries and blueberries or berries about to go bad. I freeze them to use later in a smoothie because frozen fruit gives smoothies this nice icy texture. I was not a believer in green smoothies until I tried them!  My kids are 11, 10, 7 and 5. They’ve been drinking these smoothies since they were little. If you start kids on good food when they’re young, hopefully they’ll be just like you and eat healthily.”

Food waste in the midst of a recession?

“I think as far as leftovers go, we’re prone to not eating them. It’s easier to use something fresh when it’s too much work to change the leftover into something new. Maybe it’s just that we’re not in touch with how hard up we are! In the old days they ate leftovers because food was hard to get. You had to hunt it or grow it. Today, we don’t seem to value food like we did in pioneer days.  It’s a relatively cheap commodity now and we don’t value food that costs so little.  But if you pay more money for something like organic strawberries, you’re going to be darn sure to use them up because you value them!

The road block isn’t pricing or abundance. It’s knowledge. If people get more educated about knowing when foods really go bad or how they can cause methane in landfills, I believe they will get more comfortable in the kitchen, salvaging food and reinventing leftovers.”

The more comfortable you are in the kitchen, the more experienced you get as a cook, the more vast your repertoire of recipes will be that you can draw from your head. I love the saying Katy Wolk-Stanley puts at the end of every post on her blog, The Non-Consumer Advocate: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” It’s a saying from the Depression era. No one’s sure exactly who said that but it definitely applies today!

The Frugal Girl’s top ten ideas for reducing food waste:  http://www.thefrugalgirl.com/2008/11/how-to-cut-back-on-food-waste/

Two of The Frugal Girl’s favorite websites fighting food waste:

• www.Stilltasty.com
• www.theNonConsumerAdvocate.com

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