I threw out a perfectly lovely bran muffin last night. Or rather, it was perfectly lovely several days ago. It had gone bad. Along with a few other items I found in the back of the fridge as I was searching for leftovers. And I hate waste. I especially hate wasting food.
Waste Not, Want Not
Do you know anyone who isn’t living on a budget?
Most of us have tightened our belts in the past few years, and with kids in the house, keeping that belt cinched becomes habit.
A good habit.
As for my kids, they also come with a gaggle of friends in tow, and though they’re respectful of the fact that we don’t live large, it does mean having extra snacks and drinks around. Just in case.
Ask Kids About Waste
Ah, the joys of nourishing our children! Let’s hear it for those growth spurts, and then the lulls that follow, not to mention the oh-so-annoying food moods. It’s not easy to gauge how much to buy at the supermarket, or which items will require diplomacy, negotiation, bribery, or threats – in order to be consumed.
My advice?
Talk to your children. Even little kids will tell you what they’re willing to eat, and what they aren’t. Naturally, that doesn’t mean you sacrifice the foods you routinely make or that they need, nutritionally. But there’s much more wiggle room on this issue when we remove ego and will from the equation.
Food Talk Saves
My son has learned to cue me in when his tastes change. And they do change. It may be something as simple as ” I don’t like provolone anymore so would you mind buying muenster?” And for that, I’m appreciative. It’s easy to switch out deli meats for sandwiches, or to buy more milk, more juice, or less – depending on his evolving palate and patterns of consumption.
And so much less wasteful.
Teen Food Habits
Then there are those bad habits – leaving the bread out all night and unwrapped (to go stale), the chicken leg that gets half eaten by a friend, all those Cokes and Spring Waters that are opened, partially consumed, and left sitting around so you end up trashing them. That incurs a parental lecture, and another, and another.
And don’t get me started on the junk food – when they need a boost, or you’re just too tired to come up with an alternative.
But I confess – when I find food gone bad in the back of the fridge, knowing that I’m the one who has been remiss – what’s my excuse?
Full Fridge Syndrome
Teenagers eat constantly. And when you’re life is a little crazed (hello? real world?), you don’t want to have to run out and buy more food every other day.
I also try to keep fresh fruits as snacks, but it’s both more expensive and the shelf life of those items is less than something tossed in the pantry or the freezer.
So I try to buy what we need with as few trips out as possible, anticipate (teen) visitors, and keep reasonably healthy food in the house. But it’s tough trying to keep the fridge full. Without wasting.
Haste Makes Waste
I pride myself on multitasking. Then again, I can’t say I know a mother who doesn’t multitask like a pro. But sometimes, we’re speeding through the days so quickly that things slip through the cracks. Simple things, like a grocery list, or paying attention as we make yet one more unexpected run through the supermarket.
We’re distracted and rushing. We aren’t paying attention. And if you’re anything like me, you overspend. Or, in trying to respect the budget, you succumb to “two for the price of one” – and end up with food that’s never eaten.
Wasting Time
I don’t have time to waste, so I try not to waste time. And tossing out food is a waste of resources and money. I feel guilty when it happens, as though I’m letting myself down and, in a larger sense, becoming part of a collective wastefulness that is ingrained in American culture.
Wasting food = wasting time. It costs extra time to shop again or to purchase differently, and the underlying issue is to consume and spend more mindfully.
And that’s a topic unto itself, that applies to far more than what we put in our mouths.
Conscious Choices
My schedule is crazy, and I don’t always turn in the best performance when it comes to managing resources. When money is more plentiful, it’s easy to disregard a few dollars on a grocery bill, or spoiled fruit thrown in the garbage at the end of the week. When you’re forced to consider what you purchase and why, you tend to think more carefully about your choices.
I do the best I can with each day’s priorities and constraints, yet I know I can do better. My fridge told me so last night.
- Are you wasteful?
- Does your budget require you to pay more attention?
- Do you think about your consumption patterns when it comes to food?
- What about other resources like gas for your car or utilities?
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I will be the first to admit that I can do better with my groceries. I often shop without a list and because stores are nearby, we don’t mind running out to get more stuff only to let the others go to waste without knowing because they’re stuck behind myriad items in the fridge.
But we also cook just for 3 (2.5 really) and sometimes, an entire package of celery is just too much for us when all I need that week are three stalks. I don’t often plan another dish featuring celery because most things I cook don’t. So it goes to waste.
With our impending move, we have committed to being better with our finances (because the new place demands a much larger chunk of our monthly budget) so hopefully that will help me get my act together when I’m at the store. Maybe having another mouth to feed (my mom’s) will help, as she’s more conscious about wasting food.
Let your Mom help – definitely! (I do much better when I make a list. In fact, my older son reminds me to do so.) As for cooking large quantities – how do others accommodate that? Freezer? Sharing with neighbors?
I know what you mean about the fickleness of teenage eating habits. Only slightly less fickle than toddler eating habits.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but one of my secrets is to be hyper-vigilant when clipping coupons. I only clip the ones for things we use and I only clip the ones for real foods. One of Michael Pollan’s ideas that real foods don’t usually have marketing campaigns.
One of my biggest challenges comes when eldest daughter is home from college. She likes to eat certain leftovers for breakfast. However, youngest daughter rarely eats any leftovers. Changing the amounts I must cook is tricky; unfortunately it can take me a few “meal cycles” to adjust once eldest daughter goes back to school.
I love the Pollan comment! (And teens are nearly as fickle as toddlers – you’re so right.)
I try not to be wasteful and it does pain me to throw out food (if I do throw it out, it gets composted). My consumption patterns are always to improve my health, reduce my ecological footprint and reduce costs; this applies to food, energy, and material goods.
It is a lot of extra work to reduce food waste and the freezer is your friend, extra veggies can be frozen and used for soups where their texture is not as important (freeze that roasted chicken carcass if you can’t make broth on the night you eat it too!). You need to pay attention to the freezer contents, using items rather than forgetting about them. It is tough to remember to use frozen items rather than buy fresh but pulling out frozen peaches or strawberries and having a taste of summer in the middle of winter makes it worth it.
This weights heavily on my mind – not just from the perspective of frugality, but also in a bigger sense of hunger in our world. I haven’t always been good at this, but Husband and I have committed recently to eating what we have and buying only what we need. It’s a tough thing to get used to. Instead of grocery shopping every weekend, we’re trying to go every other week – with more frequent stops to our neighborhood grocery for 1 or 2 items we need. We’re trying to plan our meals better, and sometimes have a Top Chef “Quickfire” mentality: look in the fridge, pull out 3 or 4 items that need to be used soon, and see what we can come up with. Kind of fun when you look at it like that.
The other key for me is to spend 30 minutes on Sunday afternoon cleaning and chopping and bagging my fruits and veggies for lunches at work. I eat healthier and waste less of that precious produce.
Maybe I could assign a teen those bagging / composting tasks? Let’s say, I’d like to, but they would be ignored. Some great suggestions, still.
Everything they say about the adolescents and appetite is true! Our 13-year-old seems to be a bottomless pit these days, and he’s currently on a macaroni and cheese jag. He’s always been a very picky eater and in the past had issues with certain textures due to his CP and oral/motor issues. We usually have to trick him into eating veggies by putting in soup. If I’m particularly ambitious, I’ll purée and mix into his pasta.
I just don’t cook much anymore because of the demands of watching after him in the evenings when I come home from work, so we tend not to buy a lot of ingredient food or fresh stuff (except for salads, we eat a lot of those).
I know what you mean about cooking at the end of a long day, deja pseu. And those teen likes-dislikes turn on a dime!
all those Cokes and Spring Waters that are opened, half consumed, and left sitting around so you end up trashing them.
That used to really frost me. Every time a daughter had a party, this happened. I shudder to imagine how much $ was literally poured out. So, I started buying the cheap house brand of soda. Not a good answer, but I didn’t feel as bad pouring the leftovers out.
I have been known to lecture a time or too on this subject. I sound like my mother and it KILLS me! I wish it’d save me money to buy in bulk but it seems that by the time they are half way through the supply, they’re sick of {whatever} and then it sits forever.
I have been able to whittle down our food to what actually gets eaten. My guilt comes up with the other stuff — the paper towels (hello kids who can reach the countertops) and plastic bags (which hubs refuses to not use). I try to refuse and recycle (and I compost paper towels that weren’t used for fatty things like oils or sauces), but the guilt lingers. (And our move to only cloth napkins was a bust.
I dread cooking for a teenager in just a few years. It’ll be a whole new world!
I will say that my younger teen knows how to cook some things – and very well. He does cook for himself at times. The issue is how worn out he is when he gets home from a full day of school and full afternoon-early evening of tennis practice. (But teach your kids to cook – it pays off!)
Because of my food and weight issues as an adolescent (I was very thin and didn’t eat), I used to buy food for an army when there was only two, then four, then five of us. You would of thought I lived during the Depression, and in some ways even if it was at my own hands I did. It has taken many years and garbage pails full of wasted food, as well as introspection and Weight Watchers, for me to stop buying so much food. My kids, my waistline, and my wallet, shout a big, “Bravo!!”
My little one is the worst! She’ll clamor and clamor for something, I’ll make it, and then she’ll eat just a bit (or sometimes none at all) and then 5 minutes later, she’s asking for something else. ARRRGGGGG
@Kitch, @Rudri – it is SO hard with kids. (Maybe this is part of why the mothers become the human food inhalers? At least, I did, for a time… ) But I know that I don’t pay as much attention as I should either. And I’m really trying to do better. Wasting precious resources thoughtlessly is not what I want to be about.
Wasting food is something my husband and I don’t really like to do. Our five year old has different ideas. Food is plentiful for her; she has never experienced the real pangs of hunger or the sharpness of truly starving. I am afraid to admit she doesn’t value food and is inclined to waste it because she doesn’t know what it is like to never have it. We certainly admonish her and encourage her to finish what is on her plate, but sometimes end up dumping it in the garbage. This is something my husband and I struggle with because we know how many children across the world go hungry everyday.
Great post BLW. Definitely something that everyone should think about.
BTW BLW my ETA for my DIY EFG is RSN. TTFN.
EFG = A TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for Empty Freezer Goal
PS. Translation: This article made me realize I still had lots of frozen foods in my freezer, thanks for the reminder!
🙂 TGIAF (Thank God It’s Almost Friday)