Following the meal plan

K, here's the thing. I try to follow the meal plan. I made quesadillas last night and had so much leftover I had another one for lunch today. And I switched the stir fry for tonight and it was SUPER yummy. (break: I just threw a bunch of ingredients in a marinade for the chicken and then cooked up some broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, yellow peppers, red onions and pineapple chunks. All over a BIG bed of rice. yummy! And so pretty with every color of the rainbow! Love it!)
So I have leftover rice from tonights adventure- and I still have yellow pepper left and I still haven't cooked up the ground turkey in the fridge SO instead of doing the follow dinner tomorrow night I'm doing stuffed peppers!


I'm gonna mix up the rice with some salsa, corn, and red onion and the ground beef. Saute it all together while the yellow pepper is roasting in the oven. (YUM! It matters!) Then throw the mixture in the middle of the cooked pepper- top it with some of that Monterey jack cheese I gotta use up, and throw it in the oven to melt the cheese. 


That uses up the rest of the pepper and the rice. Gotta do something w/ the rest of the turkey and the cheese (how hard can that be?). 


I have leftover stir fry for lunch tomorrow.  So the sandwich for today got boosted and the lean cuisine meal for tomorrow can wait! 


OH! And I have like 2 stalks of broccoli left, about an 1/8 of a carrot and bits of pieces of red onion that I chopped but didn't want to put in the stir fry. Of course I don't want to throw it away. I figured now is the time to a trick I've heard of for so long and never tried. Puree the leftover veggies and mix it into the spaghetti sauce. More veggies, more sauce, no waste. I just hope it tastes good so it's a win/win/win. 

I have ravioli in the fridge that I'm waiting till Fri to cook. (Next on the list...haha) and so we will try the spag sauce trick then. 


Still gotta use:
mushrooms (I do have a plan- I guess I'll cook these on Sat)
chicken (I have a plan on this too- red beans and rice burrito. This will use some tortillas too)
tortillas*
the rest of the ground turkey
All my fruit: mango, peach, strawberries


I don't want to waste a single thing!!

Food Waste

I really need to get into the habit of doing food waste posts again.
My excuse this week is getting settled in my new home.

I wasted almost a whole head of romaine lettuce.
It seems to be lettuce week. Mom's plans and the Frugal Girl both wasted lettuce. I went to make taco salad for lunch and pulled out the lettuce went I saw how it was all brown and wrinkled. I tore off the parts in the middle that were still passable but unfortunately the rest goes in the trash.

Good leftover week!

Have you ever had a foil dinner? I love them. My dad, who's a huge boyscouter, traditionally makes them on camping trips but every now and then he would make them for us at home. And like I said, I love them. They're super easy and super versatile. My favorite combo is:
potatoes
carrots
yellow pepper (any color will do of course)
Red onion (or white or sweet too)
mushrooms (brown, white, portabello)
and protein cut up into chunks, ground beef, stew meat, chicken. (I used 1/2 lb ground beef)
Add a few pats of butter, lots of (my fav!) worchestershire sauce, salt, pepper, garlic and onion salt. Wrap in heavy duty aluminum foil and wrap VERY tightly. Make sure there is No leaks. Cook in 400 deg oven for about 50 min. TIP: make sure you cut your potatoes and carrots pretty small, because they take a while to cook and if you cut them the same size as your meat, either the potatoes are under done or the meat is too done. So I've found that small potatoes and carrots and bigger chunks of meat work best.
Plus, once you open up the foil packet, you can't really cook it anymore.

Now, I used about 1/4 the pepper, 1/4 onion and 1/4 package of mushrooms. What to do with the leftovers?
Tonight I made fajitas.
On the Foreman grill I grilled some chicken strips, and the pepper/onion/ mushrooms. I sprinkled taco seasoning over everything and let them cook. Add the mix to warm tortillas and sprinkle with cheese. YUM. Same veggies, very different flavors.
And tomorrow: Stir fry!
I'll toss everything in the pan with some ginger and soy sauce and serve over rice.

And the next day: Taco salad!
With the rest of the 1/2 lb ground beef, I cooked it up already with some chopped red onion and taco seasoning. I'll heat that up and top it with salsa, lettuce, cheese and the rice I precooked for the stir fry. If I'm feeling up for it, I might even bake a tortilla into a taco shell.

I'm just loving how I can reuse everything! And I'm not having to eat the same thing, or even the same flavor day after day. This plan should surely prevent against having too much food waste!

Ugh, it's food waste friday.

I say ugh because I don't even want to tell you how much I've wasted this week.
1 zucchini ($.80)
1 red bell pepper ($1.00)
1/2 bunch cilantro ($.40)
2 cups yogurt ($.50)
2/3 bag of snap peas ($1.72)
1/2 block monterey jack cheese ($4)

that's a total $ waste of $8.42.
Just plain awful

Food waste Friday

It's funny how just tracking your progress about food waste really helps reduce it! My first week back, I had a lot to report and a lot of waste. This week, while yes I did have waste, it's so much less!

The reason there are two pictures is because I found the orange earlier in the week. That's right, found it, in the trunk of my car. It must have rolled out of one of my shopping bags one day. And that's part of a yellow pepper. Russ has recently decided he doesn't like peppers so I was all alone on this one.  

The orange was probably .70 

The pepper was 1.50 and I used about 1/4 of it, so that's about .40

total $1.10

Food Waste is back

I haven't done food waste in quite some time. Frankly I'd put it off for so many weeks I got too nervous to start back up again and see what was still in the fridge! And I was right to be scared! We wasted a lot of food!
In this picture is:
1 yellow pepper (which I was planning to use for dinner tonight, rrrgh!)
1 orange
4 plums
4 gogurts
1/2 lb polish sausage
1/2 lb bacon
1/4 yellow onion
1/2 full jar of zesty bean and cheese dip (which is really delicious. Don't know how this got wasted!)
In the Tupperware on the right is the leftover salad that's way gross now.
And in the top round Tupperware on the left is leftover mushroom and pepper mix from when we made quesadillas a while a go
and the Tupperware under that is leftover shredded chicken for a way long time ago.
Just gross and a big waste of money. Not good. Not good at all!

Food Waste Wednesday

Today I cleaned out my fridge and took an honest look at what was in there, and what I would eat, and what was really was waste. Then I started going through the cabinets and pantry and made the same tough decisions. Sometimes it's just easier to leave in the pantry (or the fridge) and tell yourself that you will eat it eventually.

I did take a photo but for some reason it won't load.

I was going to take inventory to list all that was gone but it made me depressed, so I didn't do it. Now I wish I had, since I don't have the photo.
I remember there was applesauce. It was a 6 pack, and I ate two of the cups and thought it was gross both times. I know I'm never going to finish the other 4, so even though they technically weren't spoiled, I knew I need to get rid of them. There were 2 half boxes of cereal. I bought them and didn't like them, but kept them around thinking I would get to them some day, but I also have other (yummy) cereal I keep eating instead. I'm never going to eat yucky cereal. Out they go. There was a lot of stuff in tupperware at the back of the fridge- scary. some moldy cheese. a protein shake that was gross but decided to put in the fridge instead of the trash. Just gross weird stuff. I'm not going to eat it, and I have TONS of food in the house, so it's just better than I throw them out than hang out to them (and feel guilty whenever I see them.)

Food Waste Wednesday

Not the best week for me. I cleaned up my kitchen earlier in the week and honestly didn't want to make dinner and mess it up! I've learned my lesson. This week waste:
Packaged salad- about half is left
2 tomatoes
1 lemon
1 pk thyme- I bought this specifically for a chicken recipe and never made the chicken!
I gotta stop doing that!
Not in the picture is 3 green onions that I thought I could just peel off the top skin part and use, but when I went to do that for a salad I was making, I saw that they were too far gone.
I gotta stick to my meal plans!

Food Waste Wednesday

So the only food I wasted this week were the 4 chicken thighs I had to throw out after my Spicy Honey chicken fiasco and then some leftovers of a foil dinner I had for lunch that didn't turn out that good. I ate half of it, and then just threw the rest away. I feel pretty proud of this actually- especially compared to last week. Next week is gonna be tough; we have a lot of things that could go bad, so I'm gonna have to be pretty watchful. Lots of dairy products that need to be eaten.

P.S. I FINALLY organized my freezer! I have a deep chest freezer that I absolutely love but it gets so messy and disorganized and everything gets lost in the bottom. So now it's nice and organized and it turns out I have SO much food! Next week, I'm really gonna try and use up a lot of that food.

Food Waste Wednesday

This was a bad week for us! It all started when I got sick on Tuesday night.
In this picture:
 1 apple
just over 3/4 of an onion
almost a whole yellow peper
2 greek yogurts
1 yoplait yogurt

The onion, pepper, and one of the greek yogurts was supposed to me made into a dip for thanksgiving, but I was too sick to make it. I haven't made dinner at all in these past 2 weeks, and I really haven't been eating much of anything, so a lot of things went bad. I'm almost back to normal, so hopefully next week won't be so bad.

Food Waste Wednesday

Here's my food waste for this week. (Sorry about the late posting, but at least it's actually on Wednesday this week!) In the picture is 1 apple. 3/4 a zucchini and 2 gogurts. Russ and I are always trying to agree on veggies. I'm a really picky eater, so we tend to have salad a lot, and that gets boring. He likes zucchini and I can tolerate it okay, but this past week I really was not feeling it. Sorry. I'm really sad about those gogurts though. I know you can keep products longer than the expiration date, and I've gotten much better, but these expired in the beginning of October, so I really couldn't bring myself to eat them. I do love gogurts though. I read somewhere (where was that?) that if you like those GU energy gels--which I used to buy for like 1.79 each(!) --that gogurt is just as effective at giving your body energy, plus a pack of 8 is around $2.50- and I ALWAYS use a coupon. A Much better deal! They're really good frozen too! A better alternative for ice cream with built in portion control!

Food waste...Friday

Boy have I been slacking lately! Sorry about the late (and non existent) posts. I've just been in one of those funks lately...
This week I wasted 1/2 a zuccini, 1/2 a stoffers lasagna--one of the small ones at least, about 4 oz strawberries and about 1 bowl of soup- It was progressos creamy chicken and rice, and it was so gross I couldn't even finish it!
What's not in this pile: the last of the orange pepper! I made chili this week and the recipe called for green pepper. I had used 1/2 an orange pepper earlier this week, and was about to get in my car to buy a green pepper when I realized what I was doing! I switched out the orange pepper and my chili was delicious- plus it made a great lunch today. I was so proud of myself!

Food Waste Wednesday

My only waste this week was 1/2 an avocado. (Sorry, no picture this week.) I'm super excited about how much I salvaged from ending up in my waste pile. My carrots were getting a little dry, so I just swapped them from the cellophane bag they were in, to a ziplock bag and just added more water, and now they're just fine. I used up the last of my tomato in a sandwich yesterday and stuck the rest of my produce in those Debbie Meyer green bags. Have you ever tried them? They really are great for making your produce last. I got them at Ross for about $6 for a pkg of 20 bags, plus you can rinse off the bags (and make sure they're dried REALLY well) and you can reuse the bags. I'm pretty proud of my progress.

Food Waste Wednesday

LOOK! Look how small my pile is today! Ok, it's still waste but I've come a long way and I'm proud. In this picture is:
1 Grands biscuit I didn't want to eat after I finished off my freezer jam
1/4 (less than that even) yellow onion
and the worst part: about 3/4 taco blend cheese. Which was sad because I had planned to use this for dinner, but when I opened the package there were little green flecks all over. Not so good.
But I've seen much improvement and soon, I will have a no waste week, I know it!
I've paid much more attention to what needs to be eaten and I've bought so much less! The less stuff you buy, the less you have to worry about spoiling!

Food Waste Wednesday

Not the best week, but I think I'm improving. I see improvement at least. In the picture:
1 apple
1 banana
3/4 yellow pepper
8 oz mozzarella
just a little over 1 cup bagged salad.

I can never(!) eat the last banana. I don't know why. It doesn't matter if I buy 8 or 2, the last banana never gets eaten! The cheese I'm actually proud of because I've had this for a while and it was good for a long time. I used 1/2 the block then it finally turned. I bought the yellow pepper and have been adding little bits to salad, but couldn't use it up in time I guess. But you know what's not in this picture:
The tub of cottage cheese Russ finished!

Food Waste Wednesday

Yeah! Look how little my food waste is. It's not perfect, but I sure have come a long way. This makes me happy! In this picture:
1 Lime
1 Fruit Snax bar- I can't even remember when I bought this; found it in the back of my pantry and since it's organic, (w/ no preservatives) I figured I better throw it out.
Leftover pizza fondue
The pasta sauce I didn't use to make pizza fondue.
I know I should have used up that sauce, and eaten the leftover fondue, but I am still pretty impressed with my progress!

Food Waste Wednesday

(Sorry, my phone's in my car which is in Vegas, so no pictures.) Wednesday seems like a good day to do food waste. Last night, Russ and I had a talk about food waste. I tried to get him on board but it didn't quite go the way I'd hoped. He's pretty good about eating what needs to be eaten anyway. This week was another disappointing week however. I wasted
1 chicken breast (that Russ thought was bad, but I maintain was perfectly fine...)
2 chicken breasts that I had defrosted in the fridge overnight but could just not get myself to cook it the next few days and then my small window closed and into the bin they go.
2 c pasta. I made this from a kit that was on sale, but it was so gross Russ and I couldn't even finish what was on our plates. I put it in the fridge knowing I wouldn't eat it. Not to upset about this one.
1 green pepper. I don't even know why I buy these.
Jello cups Raspberry Goji flavor. I did not like these. I ate one of six and let the rest sit in the fridge for who knows long. I finally decided to toss them.
Almost a whole block of cream cheese. I can't even remember buying this!
1 bag (about 1 cup) broccoli. These were for the 2 chicken breasts above. I didn't make that so I didn't make this. Then it turned brown.
Mozzarella
Parmesan- these were both from the back of the fridge. Both were shredded which of course has a smaller shelf life that block. both were moldy.
So that's my list. Pretty bad, I know.