Prevent Wasted Food

Waste happens. Own it-Track it-$ave!

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Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

With spring unfolding here in the mid-Willamette Valley, it’s time for some cleaning, clearing out and… confessing!

We’ve been saying it here for almost a year now: WASTED FOOD = WASTED MONEY. But exactly how much, and why? That’s where our newly-updated D.I.Y. Wasted Food Discovery self-audit form, both in English and Spanish, comes in handy. Try it for a week, and you’ll gain some valuable insights about your household’s food-wasting habits. Behaviors change when we measure them.

Gautami, NFLB’s OSU intern (2019)

You may become inspired to keep doing it on a regular basis — especially after discovering how many grocery dollars you can keep from going down the drain, compost bin or garbage!

OWN IT: Waste happens!

Are you ready to admit that waste happens in your kitchen? It’s not about guilt (although that can be a motivator) — it’s being willing to get real, about how some items in your fridge, freezer and pantry that coulda/shoulda been prepared and eaten ended up wasted instead. Keep reading for a look at what I discovered!

WHAT GOT WASTED

TRACK IT: What got wasted, and why?

With our D.I.Y. Wasted Food Discovery Week form, tallying up the food items that went slimy, spoiled, freezer-burned or forgotten isn’t complicated. You’ll estimate:

  • The amounts and types of food (it’s okay to “guestimate” your leftover portions/servings, packages or containers — I used cups, ounces and servings for my calculations);
  • The full or proportional cost for each of those items;
  • If you have a kitchen scale, measure the weight of wasted items.

WHY IT GOT WASTED: Recall the circumstances or trail of events from the market to your compost pail or trash can for your listed items. This step is your key to change!

You know how it goes… * Ran out of time to cook or cooked too much?  * Fridge or freezer over-stuffed? * Too tired to get creative with leftovers? * Marked down/sale items go stale or moldy before you know it? * Bananas turned brown or avocados went bad because they were hanging out on the counter together? (Both emit ethylene gas, which hastens the ripening process.)

ADD IT UP. One week’s wasted $$ x 52 weeks in a year… Prepare to be shocked! (I certainly was.)

Here’s what I learned from my Wasted Food Discovery Week.

WHY IT WAS WASTED

Karen Confesses:

Despite blogging and becoming much more vigilant about my own kitchen habits during the past year, I still waste too much!

After a quick review, I discovered that my main problems are inadequate meal prep and managing the Eat First shelf of my fridge and pantry. I also still have issues with wasting avocados and bananas (two of my favorites).

Lessons Learned:

  • Check avocado(s) for ripeness every day! Use or transfer to fridge once ripe, or within 3 days of purchase.
  • Buy fewer of the items I’m eating less of (like sugar- and carb-heavy products).
  • Freeze leftover broth in cubes rather than letting an open carton spoil in the fridge.
  • Buy fewer bananas and just eat ’em — rather than sticking in freezer smoothie bags.
  • Check/update my Freezer Inventory every week!
$$ POTENTIALLY WASTED, 1 YEAR (Omg!)

$$$ Wasted:

This is my worst Kitchen Confession of all! Just one week’s waste in my little kitchen represented a potential loss of over $1,000 in one year! That’s a pretty significant chunk — and a HUGE motivation for me to walk the talk, follow my own advice more, and WASTE LESS.

WHAT TO DO. You’ll have some good ideas once you’ve completed your own Wasted Food Discovery Week. Let our Smart Strategies support your improved habits and behaviors for less future waste.

  • Do you need more meal planning? More prep after your groceries come home?
  • Do you need better storage? (we also recommend StillTasty.com)
  • Do you need to inventory what’s in your freezer or pantry?
  • Do you need more Eat First signs for your leftovers, and are they clearly date-labeled?

Also see our previous Kitchen Confessions for resources and tips you may have missed.

RECIPE CONTEST DEADLINE EXTENSION!

We’re extending the deadline for our Leftovers Recipe Contest an extra week to Sunday, APRIL 11th! What’s your latest hack or culinary inspiration for making use of those random items on the Eat First shelf of your fridge, freezer or pantry?

Here’s of a few of our entries so far: Spaghetti Pie, Mashed Potato Pancakes, Peach Pancake Mix Muffins, Olde Valentine Choco-Coco Bites, and Tuna Cakes with Pickle Cream.

Every recipe is an entry to win a $30 gift card from First Alternative Coop. We’d love to see yours!

Keeping spices spicy with Smart Storage

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

After an unsettling start to this New Year, I’m finding a lot of comfort in the kitchen these days. (Not just while snacking!) And it’s in my spice cupboard.

When was the last time you savored the simple delight of homemade spiced apple cider (also known as wassail)? Ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, simmering in a pan of apple juice with citrus and sweetener… The mixture diffuses a lovely aroma in the home, and a fragrant, soothing mug of the stuff will fix you up right on a winter’s day.

Oh, and I used up a half-bottle of apple juice from my fridge’s “Eat First!” shelf making it!

That’s how I recently developed a fresh interest in herbs and spices: those magical bits of berry, bark, leaf, flower and root — many from exotic, faraway places — that we humans have used since ancient times for food preparation and enjoyment, healing, cosmetics, trade and ceremony. The history of spice is epic!

Spices, Mapusa Market (Goa, India) https://www.flickr.com/photos/judepics/409841087/ (Creative Commons 2.0.)

The aromatics, colors and variety of herbs and spices are intrinsically comforting, don’t you think? Here’s a searchable, comprehensive list of herbs, spices and seasonings, along with their culinary properties and countries of origin.

Properly employed, the magic of spice and herbs — particularly when they’re fresh or well-preserved and stored — can help you waste less food and save $$$ every day, every meal! Spice magic can inspire you to raid your own pantry and use up everyday staples like rice, beans, pasta and canned goods, and whatever’s in your Eat First areas.

With inspiration from spice allies like cumin, ginger, garlic, curry, red chili oil and paprika, I’ve explored some delightful variations on fried rice.

One of Yeung Man Cooking’s Cantonese-inspired fried rice dishes  (YouTube)

Of course, this blog is not really about “the joy of cooking with spices”… it’s about not wasting what went into each one of those little bottles of flavor: all that agricultural water, energy and human labor; industrial packaging and transportation (fuel) in supply chains across multiple countries. Not to mention all the $$$ you spent stocking your herb and spice cabinet!

Depending on your tastes, using spice can be EXPENSIVE! So here’s a few tips for keeping those spices spicy and ready for use in your 2021 meal plans:

  1. HOW LONG DO SPICES LAST? It’s true spices don’t spoil like other types of food, but over time they will lose their fresh “flavor profile” (as I have discovered, see below!), and have less of an effect in a dish. So pay attention to those “Use By/Best By” dates on the containers. A variety of factors influence a seasoning’s potency, so check the details at StillTasty.com.
  2. BUY JUST WHAT YOU NEED for special dishes (or strictly-occasional use) by shopping the bulk spice and herb bins at the Co-op, Winco, or other stores in our area. You’ll find a great selection and save $$$ too!
  3. For the best flavor retention, BUY WHOLE SPICE/HERB products (for example, nutmeg), then grind or grate them just before usage.
  4. Follow the lead of most herb/spice manufacturers: store bulk-purchased or homegrown seasonings IN GLASS CONTAINERS to preserve the freshness, properly labeled, away from heat and light sources.
  5. DON’T FREEZE spices, but some herbs can be frozen in ice cube trays in water or oil.

Also keep in mind the global carbon footprint of spice. Many of our favorites come to our kitchens from far away, like India (a principal export country), the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. The nutmeg and cinnamon I used in my spiced cider probably came from Indonesia, Vietnam or Sri Lanka! So there’s a huge supply chain and expenditure of energy involved to get those flavors into our kitchens.

While many of our favorite herbs also originated on other continents, they’ve adapted to cultivation in North America. So your favorite packaged or fresh herbs are easily sourced locally and thus have a smaller carbon footprint: garlic, mint, basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, to name just a few. Or you can grow your own!

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Now here’s our first Kitchen Confessions for 2021:

the joy of a well organized spice cabinet!

KAREN CONFESSES:

Now that I’m cooking more regularly, I’m noticing when my use of spice doesn’t have the intended effect (not as tasty, perhaps not spicy enough)!  Although I’m sometimes over-cautious with my use of seasoning, it’s more likely due to the condition of those spices.

Recently I discovered a few three year-old spice bottles whose powdered contents had turned to hard-cake or failed the smell test. Worse yet, I also had a jar of non-expired Japanese gomasio seasoning with what looked like cobwebs inside — eeeeww! 

I also found two near-full bottles of vanilla extract (oops!) that are still fine.

$$ WASTED: Around $10 (guessestimate based on current prices) for the wasted portions in three bottles.

LESSONS LEARNED:

  • Take my own advice above and buy bulk spices, storing them in glass containers.
  • No “clearance” spice purchases, unless I plan on cooking regularly with them!
  • Shop my pantry first! Use up the older bottle of vanilla asap by moving it to the front of the spice cabinet, or give it away to a friend, neighbor or family member who can make use of it.

JEANETTE CONFESSES:

Many times we have bought bulk spices like turmeric or nutmeg, only to come home and realize we already had some in the pantry. That bowl o’bagged spice magic makes it hard to “shop the pantry first” because it’s hard to identify what’s there.

LESSONS LEARNED: Start transferring these beautiful flavors into the glass jars pictured after shopping. Many of those jars need to be emptied into compost and started over because their contents are older and flavorless.

Come up with better labeling for the jars, too — clear tape with sharpie is barely noticeable and faded over time.

$$ WASTED: Probably around $10, once I sort and dump ye olde spices.

Here’s to all that good spicy-ness in 2021!

Talking Turkey and wasting less

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Only two weeks until our first Pandemic Thanksgiving! It’s time to “talk turkey” (even for vegans and vegetarians) about less wasted food.

Imagine sitting at bountiful Thanksgiving dinner table. You’ve just filled your plate with an appetizing assortment of your favorite dishes. Suddenly, someone comes over and scoops up a quarter of what’s on your plate, takes it over to the compost bin and dumps it.

Shocking, right? But it’s a good metaphor for how the average American family wastes at least 25 percent of its food purchases every year, at a cost of $1,600! What’s also wasted are the Earth’s precious resources — water, energy and soil — as well as the human labor that went into that food.

But we’re all about changing that. Right, Conscientious Food Consumers?

Turkeys roaming in Philomath (staff photo)

Let’s talk live turkeys first….

Wandering wild turkeys are not an uncommon sight in urban areas of Oregon, including certain neighborhoods of Corvallis and Philomath. Both comical and majestic, these birds are generally tolerated by their fellow urban dwellers. But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife stresses: Don’t feed the turkeys!  If your neighborhood flock (and their you-know-what) becomes too big of a nuisance, you might want to apply for an ODFW “turkey hazing” permit. (No hassling the turkeys without one!)

Here’s a few fun facts about our iconic Thanksgiving mascot from the Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District.

TALKING TURKEY: Celebrating Safely

Whether you’re planning and preparing a Thanksgiving meal for meat-eaters, vegetarians or vegans, this year’s celebration will be very different under the threat of COVID-19. Health safety guidelines from the CDC and the Oregon Health Authority advise avoiding travel, moving activities outdoors (where feasible) and limiting the number of people gathering ’round the Thanksgiving table.

TALKING TURKEY: Planning and Shopping Your Meal

A meatless “Tofurky” roast (WikiMedia Commons)

So let’s “talk turkey” about our Turkey Day logistics. That includes vegans and vegetarians who don’t eat actual turkeys! For many of us, based on what we already know about living through this pandemic, Thanksgiving 2020 may be unfolding as follows:

  1. A smaller dining group, which means smaller quantities of food will be needed (and potentially less wasted) compared to previous years; SO
  2. Your holiday Meal Plan and Shopping List may be less ambitious than in previous years; COINCIDENTALLY,
  3. Your holiday grocery budget may be smaller than previous years, depending on how COVID-19 has economically impacted you personally and/or your family; SO
  4. Your holiday Meal Plan may be based more on cooking with what you have on hand in the pantry and in your freezer (as listed on your Freezer Inventory), which you’ve been stocking and managing throughout the year; AND
  5. You’re already shopping strategically with Shopping Lists for those socially-distanced, in-and-out trips to the Farmer’s Market, the Co-op or other local markets, or for online grocery orders.

With our Kitchen Confessions this year, we hope we’ve helped you become familiar with these Smart Strategies (highlighted above in bold) to help you accomplish the above tasks. They’re all available in both English and Spanish from our Wasted Food Prevention Tool Box.

In addition to those at our own website, we love turning folks onto resources like these for Thanksgiving (and year-round) meal strategizing:

  • Make your own turkey bone broth and/or stock: Don’t let these nourishing and valuable parts of the turkey go to waste!
  • StillTasty.com, “Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide,” for getting clear before Thanksgiving about how to handle those leftover cooked turkey pieces, that leftover gravy and those cooked giblets your kid doesn’t like;
  • First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op’s “Budget Bites” – budget-minded meal plans for a week’s worth of meals for two adults;
  • BigOven.com, also has meal planning and shopping lists (and tons of recipes). Upload your own recipes! (They could use a lot more vegan/vegetarian ones!)

TALKING TURKEY:  Caring and Sharing

The 40th Annual Benton County Community Holiday Food Drive, in cooperation with local food pantry organizations like Linn Benton Food Share, will also be affected by this year’s pandemic. For 39 years, legions of caring volunteers assembled and delivered holiday meal food boxes throughout the county to thousands of low-income individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. These efforts are too risky this year with COVID-19.

Instead, the Food Drive is collecting only monetary donations for grocery gift cards, redeemable at the Corvallis Grocery Outlet, where recipients can shop for themselves this Thanksgiving. Food will continue to be available for distribution and pick up at Food Share’s warehouse and other local pantries, like the one in South Corvallis. All monetary donations to the Holiday Food Drive will be used to benefit Benton County residents in need, and are tax deductible.

Next week: Honoring this land and its Native peoples this Thanksgiving; Getting ready for loving those Thanksgiving leftovers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No more “freeze it and forget it”!

If you were expecting a lurid foodie tale about eager veggies, twisting around each other in the privacy of soil, only to be exposed by a hungry, voyeuristic gardener, that’s an entirely different blog!

If you have forgotten freezer food, you are in the right place!

Many well-meaning freezer users have put good food away for later, but then forgot it there and it froze to death.

This unfortunate habit is just like throwing edible food into the garbage, simply because the outcome is the same… and composting it is only one step better than garbage. 

When you include the cost of running an overfull freezer, plus any gas spent driving it home, the cost of disposal (if you don’t compost it), all the many resources that went into growing it and so on, that forgotten freezer food could become your “kitchen confession”! Wasted food happens to all of us… even our staff!

The easy solution is a Freezer Inventory, one of our many Smart Strategies!  It’s a simple 8.5″ x 11″ form you can download, print out and hang on the front of your fridge or freezer, and change as you go (also en Español). We recommend using a pencil for easier updating.Here’s how to use it!

 

ADDITIONAL TIPS:

  • Another Smart Strategy is our Eat First! signs (also en Español), to use anywhere in your kitchen to help ID which items need to be used up the soonest. Simply print and trim, and apply to any food or shelf containing those items!
  • Overfull freezers function less efficiently! CONFESSION: Recently, my own freezer was too stuffed and the little vent/fan at the back sounded awful! It was working too hard, and frost had built up… if I hadn’t noticed, my whole freezer motor might have failed. Yikes! A lesson to keep it clear and not too full.
  • Items in the freezer door are subject to greater temperature variations, so be more mindful of what gets stored there.
  • Food safety also depends on maintaining consistent fridge and freezer temperatures, so be sure to keep your fridge between 38°F and 42°F and your freezer between 0°F and 5°F to be safe.
  • Remember: most frozen food is safe indefinitely, but be sure to double-wrap food and eat it before it’s freezer burned.

 

I CONFESS: We were still “freezing and forgetting” stuff at home when we started No Food Left Behind – Corvallis. I hadn’t yet implemented this Smart Strategy! Since we did, we’ve had no more freezer-burned food, items are rotated out more often, and everything is getting used. The Freezer Inventory really works and our family is saving money in the process!

Not only that, but our meals have also become more varied as we’ve forced ourselves to get creative with ingredients we might not normally put together. I often consult BigOven.com’s leftovers page, which enables users to type in two or three ingredients and receive existing recipes that use those very items. Just click on “BigOven, what can I make?” – highly recommended! BigOven also offers an app – click here for NFLB’s favorite apps!

Thank you in advance for recommending our Freezer Inventory to any friends with forgotten freezer foods… and if you need one too, that’s okay! This is Kitchen Confessions, and your story is safe with us.  😉  We invite you to share your stories in the comments! Confessions? Or maybe you started using the inventory and want to celebrate? Let us know.

As for those lurid carrots, we’ll have to get to the ROOT of that some other day…

 

Pumpkin guts are good for you!

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Another pandemic milestone is fast approaching — Halloween without much trick-or-treating. Thank goodness pumpkin carving is still CDC-approved! So is, we assume, National Pumpkin Day on October 26th.

The season of the jack-o-lantern brings to mind one of my (and my kiddo’s) favorite bits of macabre Halloween hilarity — Science Bob’s exploding pumpkins experiment on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Admittedly, it was also a frivolous waste of pumpkin innards, including all those nutritious seeds…

Did you know? Pumpkin guts are good for you!

In addition to its dense flesh containing essential vitamins, beta carotene, and minerals such as calcium, the pumpkin’s oval seeds are packed with a surprising amount of protein, fiber and omega fatty acids, as well as anti-oxidants and nerve-calming magnesium. Here’s an outline of the health benefits associated with pumpkin seeds from the BBC’s “Good Food” website.

So don’t toss (or compost) those punkin’ guts! (Slimy-stringy guts, ok.) It will take a bit of time and effort, but the reward will be a healthy, versatile snack that you made yourself — while saving a few $$$ you may have otherwise spent on fancy packaged trail or nut mixes.

As usual, we turn to the OSU Master Food Preserver program for the definitive how-to on Drying and Roasting Seeds for pumpkins, other squash and for sunflowers as well. The process involves these basic steps:

  • DIG ‘EM out, CLEAN ‘EM and DRY ‘EM well in the oven or dehydrator;
  • Add seasonings, oil and ROAST ‘EM in their white outer hulls (being careful to not over-cook them),

UNLESS:

    • You really want just the tender and green inner seed (known as a “pepita“) — particularly to make the seeds easier for younger kids to eat. Then you’ll be doing the extra work to remove the tough and fibrous outer seed hull before continuing on to the frying or roasting.  If you prefer, prepare a batch to use soon and eat raw.

THEN:

    • SNACK ON ‘EM as is, or THROW ‘EM in your salads, muffins, breakfast cereal, trail mix, what have you! STORE ‘EM in an airtight container in your fridge or freezer (not the pantry, where they will likely turn rancid).

A bit of clarification regarding carving pumpkins, a.k.a. “jack-o-lanterns” versus their non-exploding cousins the “pie pumpkins” which provide the best tasting “innards” for your winter and holiday dishes. Carving pumpkins are grown for their size and tend to have unpleasant-tasting flesh, while the smaller pie pumpkins are cultivated primarily for culinary uses. Right now you might be getting ready to do some pumpkin PREP to:

Don’t forget the pumpkin’s winter squash relatives — the striped and speckled delicatas, spaghettis, acorns, butternuts, Hubbards, etc. —  in your prep, preservation and seasonal meal planning!

HAVE KIDDOS? They’ll probably jump at the chance to get their hands in some “pumpkin guts” or puree to help you make kid-friendly recipes like Jack-O-Lantern Pancakes, pumpkin pudding or even fruit dip. They’re all part of FoodHero.org, a bilingual collection of nutrition learning resources from OSU Extension Service’s Family and Community Health Program.

On their pumpkin home page, kids will find videos, coloring sheets,  infographics and even jokes! The “Pumpkin Basics” infographic introduces key facts and messages such as “Store well, waste less” — which we love seeing!

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And now for this week’s Kitchen Confession:

KAREN CONFESSES: This can of butternut squash was once intended as the main ingredient for a nice soup, but got “left behind” in a secondary pantry storage area that I hadn’t inventoried until… this year!

Although StillTasty.com advises that it is still safe to eat as long as the can is undamaged and its seals intact, I didn’t feel comfortable using it.

$$$ WASTED: $2.49

LESSON LEARNED: Consolidate and reorganize my pantry storage by placing older items in front of those with a longer “Best by” date. Check for other items nearing their date and transfer to upcoming Meal Plans!

 

“Local Eats Month” is underway in Corvallis, with special menu offerings at selected local restaurants celebrating the farmers and foods produced within our six-county region. Between October 18 – November 14, check “Sustainable Corvallis” on Facebook for announcements from the Food Action Team about the latest specials from participating restaurants. On Instagram: @sustainablecorvallis