Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Stop Wasting Food
A couple of years ago, I would see random articles that would talk
about how much food Americans throw away. The numbers I'd see ranged
from 1/3-1/2 our food being thrown away. Even if 1/3 of your groceries
go to waste, that's a lot of money being thrown out! If you spend $300 a
month on groceries every month and throw away a third of your food,
that's going to be about $90 you're throwing away. After seeing some of
these numbers, I started paying attention to how much food we were
throwing away. Stale boxes of crackers only 3/4 gone, produce we let go
bad, stuff stuck in the back of the freezer we forgot about and were
full of freezer burn by the time we found it, etc. Once I started
putting dollar amounts to the food we were throwing away, I started to
freak out about all the stuff we threw away. So, over the last couple of
years, we've been working on improving that. We're still working on it,
but we've definitely improved. And our wallet thanks us! We spend about
the same amount we do per month on groceries, but we're eating better
food now! Seafood once a week makes us both really happy! Here are a few
of the things we started doing to try and cut back on our food waste.
1. Buy less food
This seems like it would be pretty obvious, but how do you know what food you can go without? We started by not giving in to cravings and buying crackers and other snacky foods (which we'd already decided previously not to buy anymore to try and save money) because we'd eat half or most of it, but then end up throwing away stale crackers or pretzels. So, we practiced self control and quit buying that stuff, even when cravings struck. Now, I found out about a year ago that I have a small heart problem that actually requires more salt in my diet, so we do regularly keep pretzels on hand now so I have a quick, salty snack to keep me from passing out on occasion, but I always eat the whole bag now! Produce was the other thing we threw away a lot, so we decided to start only buying the produce we thought we'd eat in half a week and then if we needed to make another trip to the store for produce, so be it. Turns out we would always overestimate how much produce we'd eat. By buying less produce, we were still eating produce, but we ate all the produce we bought. We still occasionally have berries go bad on us, they're tricky ones, but we've gotten a lot better about not throwing out so much produce.
2. Plan your meals using the same ingredients
Anything really perishable that you buy should be used multiple times in your meals that week. If I want to make one dish that uses cilantro, I plan at least 2 other dishes that will use up some of that cilantro. Or if I buy a bag of potatoes, I'll cook with the potatoes a couple of times that week and then plan to finish off the bag the next week before they go bad.
3. Eat all the produce you buy
Again, pretty obvious, but I was notoriously bad at using all the veggies we would buy. I consistently would throw away half the lettuce we'd bought because I'd also bought broccoli and green beans. This goes sort of in hand with "buy less food" because if you don't buy the broccoli in the first place, you would have no choice but to have salad another night and finish the lettuce.
1. Buy less food
This seems like it would be pretty obvious, but how do you know what food you can go without? We started by not giving in to cravings and buying crackers and other snacky foods (which we'd already decided previously not to buy anymore to try and save money) because we'd eat half or most of it, but then end up throwing away stale crackers or pretzels. So, we practiced self control and quit buying that stuff, even when cravings struck. Now, I found out about a year ago that I have a small heart problem that actually requires more salt in my diet, so we do regularly keep pretzels on hand now so I have a quick, salty snack to keep me from passing out on occasion, but I always eat the whole bag now! Produce was the other thing we threw away a lot, so we decided to start only buying the produce we thought we'd eat in half a week and then if we needed to make another trip to the store for produce, so be it. Turns out we would always overestimate how much produce we'd eat. By buying less produce, we were still eating produce, but we ate all the produce we bought. We still occasionally have berries go bad on us, they're tricky ones, but we've gotten a lot better about not throwing out so much produce.
2. Plan your meals using the same ingredients
Anything really perishable that you buy should be used multiple times in your meals that week. If I want to make one dish that uses cilantro, I plan at least 2 other dishes that will use up some of that cilantro. Or if I buy a bag of potatoes, I'll cook with the potatoes a couple of times that week and then plan to finish off the bag the next week before they go bad.
3. Eat all the produce you buy
Again, pretty obvious, but I was notoriously bad at using all the veggies we would buy. I consistently would throw away half the lettuce we'd bought because I'd also bought broccoli and green beans. This goes sort of in hand with "buy less food" because if you don't buy the broccoli in the first place, you would have no choice but to have salad another night and finish the lettuce.
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