Two Ways to Avoid Food Waste

 Food waste happens. The other day my friend was lamenting her inability to keep food from being wasted at her house. She asked me what I do to try to avoid it. As we talked, I realized there are a lot of different kinds of food waste.

First there’s the food that you buy specifically as an ingredient for a meal, that you then never actually prepare. Then there’s the food you buy, prepare a meal, and eat the meal, but there are leftovers that never get eaten. There’s the food you buy for general consumption—milk, apples, bread—-that isn’t ever consumed. There’s food you buy to have on hand—beans, ketchup, diced tomatoes—that has a long shelf life, but you buy too much, or you buy something you just never use, and eventually, it expires. Then there’s the leftover take-out food no one ever finishes. And then there’s the junk food or dessert that isn’t eaten. (Actually, I think that one’s a myth.)

I do actually have a couple systems in place for avoiding food waste. However, they don’t always work since they depend on me to make them happen. And they don’t work for all kinds of food waste. And let’s face it, sometimes we buy, make, or otherwise obtain food that we just don’t like or won’t eat. That food is pretty much destined to be thrown out. Waste happens.

Nevertheless, we have to try. Here are my two systems.

How to Avoid Wasting Meals that are Prepared, But Not Completely Eaten

At my house, we intentionally make extra servings of each meal to use for lunches or for dinner later in the week. When I put the food away, I label the container with freezer tape and a sharpie, including what it is, and the date, and most importantly the day of the week. So the brisket we had on Tuesday would be labeled, “Brisket T 10/13.”

Sidenote: To make the system work you have to distinguish between the Tuesday and Thursday and between Saturday and Sunday. I have an abbreviation system for the days of the week that I’ve used since college. Maybe you have a similar one. For me, Sunday is abbreviated as “N” and Thursday as “H.” So my abbreviations for the days of the week, in order starting with Sunday would run like this: NMTWHFS.

The second part of this system is a laminated card I made that I keep on the refrigerator and consult every couple days. Basically, it tells me what food in my refrigerator has just hit five days old. I assume if the food is five days old, it should be eaten, frozen, or thrown out.

This helps me keep my refrigerator from turning into a food graveyard, but it does mean that I throw food away regularly. Frankly, throwing food away regularly really motivates me to avoid throwing food away, which can almost always be done by just eating or freezing the food.

I also carefully label food that’s going into the freezer, and try to keep a running inventory of what’s in the freezer. Since we have a large chest freezer in addition to what’s in the refrigerator’s freezer, I keep the inventory by category (frozen single-serving lunch entrees, frozen casseroles, frozen vegetables, frozen fruit, frozen meat, frozen bread, other (like nuts, flax seeds, coconut flakes, etc.)

How to Avoid Wasting Food That’s Purchased for General Consumption

At my house we eat lots of produce, milk and almond milk, creamer, yogurt, and eggs. So I buy a good deal of these items for us to eat throughout the week, but not for any specific meal. So if I buy too much of something, it can go to waste. Recently I set out to figure out how much of these items we eat in a week.

I identified the specific items I wanted to track: avocados, romaine, cauliflower, lemons, peppers, spaghetti squash, eggs, creamer, almond milk, skim milk, and yogurt. Then I made myself a little chart where I recorded how much of each item we started the week with, how much was purchased during the week, and what we had at the end of the week. I put in a column to calculate what we use, and how much we need to buy for the next week. Finally, I made myself a column, “Need per Week,” which after several weeks of tracking, I was able to fill in.

Now before I go to the grocery store, I check these items to see what we have left, and refer to my “Need per Week” column to figure what I should buy at the store. If one or both of us is going to be out of town, or for some other reason, will be consuming less (or more) of the items, I can adjust. Every so often, something changes and I add an item to the list or drop another item off the list. Then I might need to do a couple weeks of tracking to see how much we use of that item before I can go back to just referencing my updated “Need Per Week” column.

To Avoid Wasting Leftover Cooking Ingredients Like Chicken Broth or Lemon Juice

I can’t really speak to this exactly, because I haven’t done it yet, but I have a system in mind I’ve been meaning to institute. I’ve read about using ice cube trays to freeze small amounts of leftover items like chicken broth, lemon juice, tomato sauce, coconut milk, or whatever else might otherwise be wasted. After it’s frozen, you’re supposed to empty the pieces out into a freezer bag and store in the freezer. I really need to do this.