I’m making it a goal to check my fridge and pantry at the end of each week for ingredients that need to be used soon. This way, I can eliminate the food waste. Sometimes even this effort isn’t enough. For example, I pulled out some chicken that had a sell by date of a few days into the future, however, it had already gone bad. I won’t be shopping for chicken in that store again. I bought it at the beginning of the week.
Today’s hunt through the pantry yielded a carton of buttermilk and some organic cocoa powder, so I decided to put them to good use making a double batch of chocolate waffles. We will have some of them for breakfast, and the rest will be added to the freezer stockpile.
I also unearthed a bit of prepared pancake mix in a box. I usually make pancakes from scratch, so I must have gotten a good deal on the mix. It won’t be a good deal if I waste some of it, though. Because there is only enough for a few pancakes, I’ll use the waffle recipe on the box and whip up a batch to cook with the chocolate waffles. I’d attempt to make two-tone waffles, but I haven’t quite had enough coffee this morning for that.
Most of the time we waste food because we either don’t know what we have, or we simply don’t know what to do with it. Working on these two issues at home can go a long way toward eliminating food waste, and consequently, lowering the annual expense of purchasing food. The more we use, the less we waste, the less we have to buy.
Saving the items I found, is in some sense, giving us a free breakfast, since we might have otherwise tossed them out.
What is in your pantry, fridge or freezer that you can use up today?