Prevent Wasted Food

Wasting Less: There’s An App for That!

What’s “app,” Conscientious Food Consumers?

So here we are, Earth Month 2024: four years out (and counting) from that global viral event that brought us all to the “new normal” and the early editions of our “Kitchen Confessions” blog. Life is still busy, groceries are more expensive and too much of them are still going to waste, plus many of us are tethered more than ever to our phones! So what’s an electronically-enabled Conscientious Food Consumer to do?

Perhaps a bit of digital intervention might be “app”-ropriate! Particularly given our country’s ambitious goal of reducing food waste in half by 2030.

Many of us recall when grocery shopping was primarily in-person and involved hand-scribbled lists, consulting hard-copy cookbooks, chefs on TV, and recipe swaps with family and friends. We can still do those old-school things, of course, but nowadays, there’s an app for pretty much everything!

For this edition of our Kitchen Confessions, we took a superficial dive into the wild-wide-world of digital food tools, and came up with a brief listing of ones we’re either currently using or are willing to try out. In particular, we looked for app developers with a well-stated commitment to our shared mission — empowering folks to waste less food and save money at home, everyday!

We found the most app-ealing ones to offer: ease of use, free downloads, reasonable usefulness without purchasing an upgrade, and transparent policies regarding what happens with your user data. For the most part, the apps listed below correlate with NFLB’s Smart Strategies, and can help you take these old-school website- and paper-based tools to the next level!

As Conscientious Food Consumers know, wasting less starts with 1) Shopping your fridge, freezer and pantry first, 2) Meal Planning, followed by 3) Smart Shopping (lists). After you get home with the goods, it’s time for 4) Smart Storage (as well as Smart Prep, if possible), and finally, making sure you’re keeping track of what’s on hand, and sharing or donating your excess. There’s apps and old-school resources for all of that!

In Europe and some large U.S. cities, there’s some well-known apps like Flashfood and TooGoodToGo doing the important work of  food rescue: connecting consumers with restaurants, retailers and food-based businesses whose excess meals and products would otherwise end up in their dumpsters. These are not operating in our area, so they’re not on our list.

We’re also highlighting three apps we’ve listed here since Day One of our program, as well as a few links to websites and printable resources that we like — because not everyone loves using apps!

We hope you’ll find them both useful and fun to use! (Please see important note at the end***)

FRIDGE/FREEZER/PANTRY INVENTORY & SHOPPING LISTS

  •  OMG  Oh My Groceries! When was the last time you LOL’ed while making a grocery list? It happens every time we use this app, which does only one thing — it generates a categorized and shareable shopping list. This developer should win a prize for best sense of humor and his pay-it-forward, enlightened sense of mission. (Apple users only)
  • Cooklist This muscle-bound, very-smart app does it all: helps organize and track your kitchen inventory, monitor date labels so you know how (not-)fresh everything is, generates shopping lists with your product preferences, and can even place your shopping orders. (Apple & Android users)
  • Old School (website): NFLB’s Freezer Inventory (English and Spanish). You’ve probably already seen or picked up this downloadable pdf on yellow card stock, one of our most popular Smart Strategies!

MEAL PLANNING & RECIPES

  • Big Oven We’ve listed this one since Day One because it helps you use up what’s already on-hand! Plug up to three items into the free recipe tool, and out pops dozens of recipe suggestions. Registration is now required to integrate certain features like the shopping list and meal planning, and to save your favorite recipes. (Apple & Android users)
  • Mealime was recommended to us by a Farmers’ Market booth visitor for healthy meal planning. It incorporates your personal preferences for suggested menus, along with portion sizes, to generate shopping lists for recipes that can be whipped up into a meal in just 30 minutes! (Apple & Android users)
  • Old School (website): The Guestimator Speaking of portion sizes, here’s a great tool for prepping and cooking the perfect amount of food for all your guests, particularly during the holidays!

SMART STORAGE/FOOD SAFETY

  •  USDA’s FoodKeeper  Authoritative, searchable database for freshness and safe consumption for everything edible. (Apple & Android users)
  • Old School (website): Eat Or Toss is absolutely golden! Credible advice for those questionable food item characteristics you might find while rummaging in your fridge, freezer and pantry, plus “use it up” recipes.
  • Old School (website): Still Tasty An oldie-but-goodie, user-friendly, searchable fave of NFLB/Kitchen Confessions staff. Check out the “Shelf Life” section!

FOOD SHARING/DONATION

  •  OLIO Share extra or unwanted food with your neighbors with this trusted app, used worldwide. Welcome to the sharing economy!

TRACKING WASTE AT HOME

  •   Mitre’s new app, the Food Waste Tracker, helps you get a precise reality-check of what’s going on in your kitchen. We’ve just started using this eye-opening app, which quantifies daily consumption and waste patterns. The anonymous data generated will likely inform future progress reports on national food waste habits. (Apple & Android users)
  • Old School (downloadable): NFLB’s DIY Wasted Food Discovery Week form (English/Spanish)

Happy App-ing! We’d love to hear about your experiences in the comment section below. Which are your favorite apps for wasting less and saving more, at home, everyday?

***PLEASE NOTE: We don’t claim to be product evaluation pros! The above mobile app or company listings are provided by No Food Left Behind Corvallis for informational purposes only. They are not necessarily endorsed by the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, its governing Board, nor its partner organizations.

 

 

 

 

 

Smart shopping and $aving — not just for the holidays!

Happy Holiday Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

As we head into the final stretch of this unprecedented year, we hope you are discovering some new and creative ways to experience holiday cheer this season. Not to mention good bargains (no matter which holiday you shop for)!

Those holiday sales at the grocery store can sure make it difficult to stick to a shopping list — especially with lures like “Buy one/Get one!” (BOGO) and “Rewards”! But we all know from experience what happens when we don’t… and then the bank card statements arrive. It also tends to result in wasted food and wasted money.

Shopping lists are certainly a lot more high-tech now than in the bygone era pictured above, but I still prefer an old-fashioned paper list (soon to become an antique as well?). There’s endless apps for your smart phone, or you can download and print out our “Smart Shopping with Meals in Mind” form.

Over $7 billion spent in 2020 online grocery shopping

Shopping sure looks different now than it did at the beginning of the year, doesn’t it? We’ve de-coupled socializing and shopping, and learned to keep our distance in the store aisles. We stand on colored circles on the floor as we wait for our turn at the checkout. Online grocery sales in the U.S. grew from $1.2 billion in August 2019 to an over $7 billion industry as of June 2020.

On the plus side of online grocery shopping —  we’re pretty much forced to use lists! Whether you’re ordering through a local supermarket chain, an independent market (like NFLB and Sustainability Coalition partner First Alternative Co-op), or a non-local supplier, you have to get organized and be very specific (quantity, brand and other attributes). With service fees and tips on top of that grocery bill, we are likely to be more careful with our ordering.

Another plus — when someone else is fulfilling your order, it’s easier to resist impulse buying and off-list purchases!

On the down side — the carbon footprint associated with online order fulfillment and delivery, including all that packaging! And don’t forget your vehicle emissions from picking up your own order. For more information on the environmental impacts of food packaging, check out NFLB’s links to Oregon DEQ’s Food Fact sheets.

One of Karen’s recent shopping lists

K’RENE CONFESSES: There are definitely times when I don’t use a shopping list… and I always end up having to go back for the things I forgot or really needed!

Sometimes I find myself “pigging out” on spending for extra treats or costly specialty items. While I enjoy being spontaneous in the store on occasion, those indulgences certainly add up.

Stick To The List so you don’t “pig out” with your shopping cart!

At this stage of the 2020 holiday season, Conscientious Food Consumers and Shoppers, we realize you may have already completed the bulk of your holiday shopping. So consider how the following tips can facilitate your “Smart Shopping and $avings” heading into the New Year:

  1. Shop your fridge/freezer and pantry first! Be sure to make notes as appropriate on your Freezer Inventory.
  2. In the spirit of eating locally, keeping our shopping dollars in the community (at least some of them) — and potentially reducing the carbon footprint of your purchases — consciously decide which items you can Buy Local First, either in person or online.
  3. Skip those BOGO deals, “family sized” meals or quantity packages unless… you can realistically manage that influx of food products. Assess your household’s eating habits and the state of your pantry. Are you sure you can properly store, plan and prep it all before it loses its freshness and store appeal?
    — Maybe your two-person household hasn’t eaten its way through the Thanksgiving leftovers in the freezer yet.
    — Do your kids really like that brand of cereal enough to justify buying a big box or two?
    — Does your fridge really have room for most of that five-pound bag of tangerines? (They shouldn’t be kept outside of cold storage for more than a week.)
    Don’t be tempted to “save” a few dollars on food that will eventually go to waste!
  4. Use a shopping list app like Big Oven (if you don’t already have one).
  5. Take a “Shelfie”! If you want to make sure you’ve remembered everything for your list, take a quick picture of your fridge or pantry shelf for reference. Shout out to Love Food/Hate Waste and WRAP in the U.K. for this clever name and idea!
  6. For even more ideas (and your New Year’s resolutions), scan this list of 75 tips for saving $$ on food from TheKitchn. We don’t necessarily endorse all of these, and some are not that original or relevant to our region. But we’re pleased to see No Food Left Behind’s standard recommendations in the top five of the list!

Do you have some Smart Shopping tips you’d like to share? If so, please submit them in the comments section below.

Happy Safe Holidays, Conscientious Consumers!!

Caring and sharing food in a crisis: “It’s On Us Corvallis”

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Blessed rain has returned to western Oregon during the past week, bringing fresh air to our lungs and progress in the containment of the monstrous fires raging in our region since Labor Day, including the Holiday Farm and Beachie Creek conflagrations in nearby counties.

A number of those displaced or made homeless by the fires found temporary shelter here in Benton County, at hotels, motels, in private homes or camped out at the county Fairgrounds, which also provided facilities for displaced horses, farm animals and other livestock. Many local resources and volunteers have been mobilized in the spirit of caring and sharing, and we at NFLB salute all of these efforts.

In particular, we’d like to give a shout out for It’s On Us Corvallis  — a fellow project of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition — which has helped comfort those evacuees, host families, and others who have suffered financial hardship due to the wildfires with freshly prepared meals and food boxes. This also prevented countless pounds of food from going to waste during closures due to smoke. And it’s all been made possible by more than $62,000 in donations from our generous local community!

Between September 8th and 18th, IOU Corvallis was instrumental in the mobilization of a massive community-based food distribution effort on behalf of evacuees. Numerous local restaurants, nonprofit and hotel industry partners, farms and volunteer food preppers sourced, prepared and delivered 8,000 meals to local hotels, shelters, the Fairgrounds — even to people sheltering in their cars along the waterfront. They worked with local officials and hotel owners to monitor daily need and prevent waste.

As expressed on the IOU Corvallis Facebook page, “This is an effort to reduce food waste, show community support to our neighbors displaced by fires, and allow our community restaurants to recuperate some of their lost revenue from yet another economic blow.”

This short “Thank You Corvallis” video featuring IOU Corvallis’ key partners in the effort — Bombs Away Cafe, The Brass Monkey, Forks and Corks Catering, and Kalamata Bistro — will make your day!

When hazardous air quality shut down the outdoor markets, IOU Corvallis, Common Fields and the Corvallis Albany Farmers’ Markets  organized the collection and distribution of 170 food boxes of fresh produce from local farms, thus preventing revenue losses and waste of those market-bound products.

While NFLB’s primary focus is reducing wasted food at home, we applaud the IOU Corvallis effort to prevent waste at businesses and restaurants, and get fresh, quality food to local people who need it. Especially during the COVID-19 era, food sharing and donation are crucial for addressing food insecurity. The U.S. EPA’s Hierarchy for Food Recovery lists it as number two among sustainable food management practices.

Prior to September 8th, It’s On Us was famous for introducing local residents to the experience of the fabled “free lunch” — known as “community meals” — at a variety of local restaurants. Using the “pay it forward” method of crowd sourced fundraising, IOU Corvallis solicits tax deductible donations from community, and uses the money to purchase bulk food orders from local restaurants. The restaurants then prepare and distribute a limited number of individual servings (say 250) for the public on a specific date and time, as announced on IOU Corvallis’ Facebook page.

Anyone could wait their turn (in a socially-distanced line) to receive a free pre-made lunch to-go with no questions asked. The unspoken rule: “Pay it forward” (donate) when you can. I myself enjoyed a wonderful veggie curry from Corvallis’ popular Evergreen Indian restaurant, but others went away empty-handed because they hadn’t gotten in line early enough.

These community meals are now on hold as of September 8th, when It’s On Us announced it was taking a break for evaluation purposes. That was also the day when the wildfires turned our skies orange and IOU Corvallis quickly pivoted toward disaster response.

Back in April, as we all reeled from the stresses of quarantine and the COVID-19 threat, many local restaurants and food businesses were suffering heavy financial losses. So a trio of local volunteers — retired German professor Elizabeth Jones, Food Action Team leader Aliza Tuttle, and Leadership Corvallis alum Ashley Relf — came up with an innovative way to show appreciation to local health care and essential workers, and stimulate local economy at the same time.

They created a GoFundMe campaign, recruited some businesses and volunteers, and It’s On Us was launched.

Since then, the project has tallied the production of 10,500 meals involving 40 locally-owned restaurants, and inspired 700 individual donors. In May, it became an official project of the Sustainability Coalition’s Food Action Team.

You can support It’s On Us Corvallis by making a tax-deductible donation through the Sustainability Coalition, via GoFundMe, or Venmo: @itsonus_corvallis.

Let’s keep the caring and sharing going, and support local businesses feeding our community!

No Questions Left Behind (ok, a few)

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

As autumn approaches, we can all look back on how our lives have changed since March, and the reality of COVID-19. Like most everything else, No Food Left Behind Corvallis has transitioned online, and in April we launched “Kitchen Confessions.”

Before COVID-19, NFLB’s outreach happened in the schools, community presentations, and through all-seasons tabling at the Corvallis Farmers’ Markets — we miss seeing everyone! Although we are doing limited outreach at the Corvallis Southtown Farm Stand & Market (pictured), we’re not reaching as many of you in person now.

Now more than ever, NFLB — a project of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition’s Waste Prevention Action Team (WPAT) — is here to support you in conscientiously developing smart, money-saving approaches for making the most of the food in your home during this pandemic, and beyond.

So with this installment of “Kitchen Confessions,” we’re highlighting a few Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that we hear regularly.

“Are you with the gleaners?”

NFLB is not involved in gleaning, but we love promoting local groups like Mid-Valley Harvest and our Coalition partners, Linn-Benton Food Share and the Marys River Gleaners! These volunteer-driven organizations are helping local property owners, from small rural farmers to your neighbor down the street, manage the bounty that would otherwise go unharvested and rot on the ground. They welcome your energy and financial donations.

“WPAT? What’s that about?”

The Waste Prevention Action Team’s (WPAT) vision for Corvallis is “a waste-free community that fosters behaviors to reduce consumption of material goods.” Strategies include significantly increasing the community’s recycling rate, and diverting hazardous waste and other materials from the landfills — especially wasted food.

We’ve got a big problem there, with almost half of Corvallis residents throwing wasted food into the garbage instead of using the Yard Debris carts provided by local hauler and Coalition partner Republic Services. You can even toss nasty wasted meat, bones and dairy items into the Yard Debris cart!

The video at the bottom of our composting page describes the serious industrial-scale processes used by Republic to create a high-quality compost product. (Note: this curbside composting service is currently available only in Corvallis and Philomath.)

“What about composting? Do you teach people how?”

Composting, and how-to, is not our focus with NFLB. We’re focused on what happens before food gets turned into compost! If something that was edible in the first place ends up in your compost bin or yard debris cart, it was technically still wasted. Just think of all the resources that went into getting that food from farm to fork.

What we do try to teach is how to avoid the waste that has to end up in the compost, and we provide many tools to make that easier!

Utilizing organic waste matter to create new soil is great, and we highly encourage this practice over throwing food away. That’s also why we offer these handy kitchen compost pails — made from recycled plastic, of course! — that you may have seen at our Farmers’ Market table. You can get one of these popular counter-top compost pails for free, or help offset our cost through a tax-deductible donation.

If you’re just getting started, here’s an intro to composting, along with many other informative publications from our local experts at the OSU Extension Service. Additional advice is also available from Extension volunteer Master Gardeners.

“Are you a volunteer group? Who are you funded by?”

As a project of the volunteer-driven Sustainability Coalition and WPAT, No Food Left Behind’s current staff and operations are grant funded by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), in contract with the non-profit Corvallis Sustainability Coalition. We are proud to support the Corvallis Climate Action Plan goals, as well as DEQ’s long-standing work on food waste prevention and its response to Governor Brown’s March 10, 2020 directive (p7) “to prevent and recover food waste, with the goal of reducing food waste by 50 percent by 2030.”

You can read our 2018-19 DEQ Final Report here.

“What about all the food waste happening in restaurants and grocery stores?”

It is a huge problem, estimated to cost U.S. businesses $57 billion annually, while creating mountains of waste in landfills and climate-changing methane emissions. However, a 2017 study revealed that the greatest amount of wasted food happens at home! That’s why it is NFLB’s focus.

Oregon businesses are making great progress in addressing this problem with help from DEQ’s “Wasted Food Wasted Money” campaign. as well as Metro Portland’s Food Waste Stops With Me program, in cooperation with industry associations like the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association. Businesses receive free resource guides, on-site assistance to train employees in food waste prevention, and ways to donate edible surplus food and set up on-site composting programs.

 

This Week’s Kitchen Confession:

KAREN CONFESSES:

This sad specimen of ruined cantaloupe was destined for a fresh fruit salad or ice cream/yogurt bowls. Following my handy Fruit and Vegetable Storage Guide, I put it on my counter to ripen for a couple of days, and then stowed it in the “Eat First” area of my fridge… where it somehow migrated to the back. It was shriveled, over-ripe and moldy on the bottom by the time I retrieved it!

$$$ WASTED: $3-$4

LESSONS LEARNED: Cut/prep the melon for that fruit salad the same day it goes into the fridge! Make more room for my “Eat First!” items. Place cut melon in a labeled or see-through container in my “Eat First” area AND make a note on my weekly Meal Planner.

 

We look forward to supporting you and your loved ones through the coming months of the COVID-19 era. Be Well!

Not just another Earth Day

Happy Quarantine Earth Day, Conscientious Food Consumers!

It's the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and the theme is Climate Action, as it should be! We applaud the roll out this Earth Day of a campaign called "FoodPrints for the Future," challenging us to accept responsibility for the impacts of our food choices and habits on our planet's livability.

As it so happens, that's a huge part of our objective with the No Food Left Behind project as well! Prevention of wasted food is also a key component of the Corvallis Climate Action Plan.

In our first installment of our new Kitchen Confessions blog, we pointed out how the impacts of wasted food deplete the Earth's resources along every step of the food chain - from the production and distribution process to right here in our own kitchens and on our plates.  With nearly 8 billion mouths to feed, we can see how food waste quickly becomes the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet! We can all DO something about that.

But as we all know, this Earth Day is different: How can we exercise greater environmental awareness in the midst of a worldwide pandemic? There are plenty of ideas at Earthday.org, and countless other websites. NFLB's parent organization, the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, has launched a new page called "Building Resilience," with local resources for helping us stay connected to community and to support more Earth-friendly lifestyles in the midst of this crisis.

So now that most of us are sheltering at home, we have to put A LOT more time and energy into planning, shopping, storing, preparing, cooking and re-storing meals for ourselves and our loved ones. In the US, most are no longer shopping as often, we're 'stocking up' each time we do go, and we're much more inclined to think ahead about our how to feed ourselves and our families. And of course, we're being more careful with our food budgets.

This makes it all the more important to get the most out of your groceries and those food dollars! NFLB's "Smart Strategies" are designed to help you, as conscientious food consumers, do just that.

  • Take stock of what you have on hand as you stock up.  Download and fill out your "Smart Shopping" and Meal Planner lists BEFORE heading out on your grocery expedition.
  • Guidelines for proper storage of groceries (after appropriate disinfection!).  We have reference guides for freezing some of the beautiful fresh fruits and other produce you may have gotten at the Farmers' Market or store, and a handy Freezer Inventory Sheet for keeping track of what's in there. Don't freeze it and forget it!
  • Eat First! fridge/pantry shelf reminders for all those partial food portions and leftover ingredients that can easily get "left behind." As you can see from our own "Kitchen Confessions" below, it's something we can all use -- Every Day, Every Meal!
  • If you are sheltering with kids, now's the perfect time to help them learn about all of this too!

Now, normally you could see these materials in person and have a chance to talk about food issues with me, your friendly Outreach Specialist, at our booth at the Corvallis Saturday Farmers' Markets. Our program isn't tabling right now, but we hope you'll be able to shop the downtown Farmers' Market, which opened last weekend for the season with plenty of appropriate safeguards for Covid-careful patrons and vendors. We look forward to returning to the Market's "free speech zone" as soon as it's prudent!

KAREN CONFESSES:

While sheltering at home, I've had time to dig into my own fridge and freezer and "take stock" of what's on hand. I discovered these items at the back of the fridge... what a waste of wonderful preservative-free sliced turkey and 2-3 servings of jack cheese! These had once occupied a prominent spot on my "Eat First!" shelf, but got pushed back when I added new items.

$$$ WASTED: About $8

LESSON LEARNED: Use a Meal Planner to guide daily decisions; use up or rotate items on my "Eat First" shelf frequently!

JEANETTE CONFESSES:

Bought freezer waffles for my teen, but she didn't like the flavor so we should have eaten them instead - they lingered in the freezer well past their "best by" date and got freezer burned!

Organic grapes were stored correctly in their bag in the crisper drawer, but some were forgotten! Many still tasted fine even though they were ugly, but the ones with cracks became moldy and inedible.

$$$ WASTED: About $4

LESSONS LEARNED: Next time eat them sooner! Repackage waffles into resealable freezer bag and remove air. Eat grapes sooner by placing in fridge "Eat First!" section, or attaching "Eat First!" sign.

We hope these resources support you and your loved ones as we all do our best in addressing the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.

Be well, and Happy 50th Earth Day!

Welcome to Kitchen Confessions!

Hello, Conscientious Food Consumers!

No Food Left Behind, a project of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, welcomes you to our new "Kitchen Confessions" blog for sharing fresh facts, resources, tips, lessons learned and anecdotes around issues of wasted food in the home.

This blog was already in the works before COVID-19, but now since most of us are primarily cooking and eating at home, it’s the perfect way to reach you all, and a great opportunity to become more aware of our own individual and family habits around food.

Making better choices to reduce the amount of edible food going into landfill or compost bins will save your family money and time, and prevent extra trips to stores. Wasted food prevention really does start at home... Every Day, Every Meal!

I'm your friendly Farmers' Market outreach specialist, Karen. For the past two years, I’ve represented the Coalition and the NFLB project at the Corvallis Saturday Farmers’ Markets, and guess what? Food gets wasted sometimes in my home too!

Of course, I feel bad about this because I know it's not just the food item itself that was wasted... I wasted all the resources that went into producing and bringing it to my grocery bag: the soil amendments, the animal feed, the energy (mostly fossil fuels), and so much water! Then there's the labor of all those people at every stage of the food production and delivery process, and even more energy needed to harvest, package and deliver my food to the market or grocery store.

If that's not motivating enough, here's the bottom line: the shocking amount of $$ I wasted! For myself, sometimes it's around $40/month, or almost $500 a year!  (Some of that would sure come in handy later this year when they reopen the restaurants.)

For the average family of four in this country, wasted food adds up to $1600 a year!

Download even more numbers about the "Facts and Impacts" of wasted food here.

With "Kitchen Confessions" we're going to get real about shriveled, moldy and slimy produce, leftovers that turned into science experiments, freezer-burned berries, and many other tragedies involving formerly-edible food. We'll share "lessons learned" and look at ways to prevent future wasting.

NFLB Project Manager, Jeanette Hardison, confesses:
“I bought these lovely cheddar biscuits from the bakery section because they were freshly-baked locally without preservatives. We should have had a meal planned for them right away. They went moldy on me first, because I stored them on the counter!"

$$ Wasted: $4 or $5

Lesson Learned: Refrigerate bakery items that don’t have preservatives.

NFLB Outreach Specialist, Karen Kos confesses: “I bought a butternut squash over the holidays, intending to stuff it or make soup, but I didn’t follow through with my meal plan! It became an “ornament” on my counter and ended up spoiled on the inside without showing it on the outside.”

$$$ Wasted: About $2

Lesson Learned: Prep squash right away by cutting in half, and store in a clear container, placed in “Eat First!” area in fridge.

Farmers’ Market visitors may have heard me joke about how “guilt can be very motivational.” Heck, yeah! But don’t stay in the guilt. Let’s feel good that we can learn from it and just do better with the next batch of bread rolls and squash!

It feels amazing when we feed ourselves and our loved ones better and put grocery money back in our wallets! It also decreases our carbon footprint – always a plus.

Please follow us on this journey of discovery and reform of our daily food habits. It’ll be enlightening, and we’ll try to make it fun!

 

Author: Karen Kos of No Food Left Behind- Corvallis, in Corvallis, Oregon