What do I mean by minimizing your food waste? I mean buying and cooking only what you need and taking advantage of leftovers. You can do this by planning meals and properly storing leftovers. Let’s start with meal planning.
My husband and I do our grocery shopping once a month, so doing meal planning is an essential key to not loading up on items we really do not need. To help with my meal planning, I download a monthly calendar to use. Then just fill in the meals for each date. I first will start with planned meals using what we have had for a while, such as meats in the freezer that have been there for a while, etc. Then I look to see if a meal will have leftovers, such as chili. When I make chili it is a big pot of chili and I do that intentionally so we will have leftovers. A few nights after we have the chili, on the menu will be chili over a baked potato with cheese. Or chili dogs perhaps. The rest goes into the freezer for future meals. These leftover meals are included on my meal planning calendar. It’s a great way to answer that age old question of “what am I going to cook tonight?” And it really does not take as long as one would think to put the monthly calendar together. Meal planning and making that grocery list are done at the same time so it’s taking care of two things at once!
Leftovers. Not everyone’s favorite! I do a lot of cooking for two to minimize our leftovers. However, there are some things I intentionally fix that will have leftovers, such as chili (as mentioned above), crock-pot spaghetti, ham and beans just to name a few. Face it, some foods are better as leftovers! I like to mix it up on some leftovers. The leftover spaghetti can be turned into a baked spaghetti topped with mozzarella cheese, it is so good! Then you have things like the ham and beans, just defrost and heat up and you really can’t beat that! Get creative with the leftovers! When you do have leftovers don’t let them go to waste, have fun with them. Sometimes we will have a Leftover Smorgasbord for dinner! Just heat up what we have and then have what we want! It’s a great way to minimize your food waste and you can maximize them and turn those leftovers into some great meals.
Composting-more to come on this in a future article.