The Ice Cube Method: Not just for baby food!

Remember the ice cube method for freezing homemade baby food? I've been doing a good bit of ice cube freezing since I started making baby food. I already try to portion and freeze a number of different foods (like spaghetti sauce and shredded cheese, or freezer meals like shepherd's pie or lasagna), but I've found that liquids work really well frozen in ice cube trays.

Some of my recent favorite freezes are juices (like the leftover pineapple juice from canned pineapple), and homemade stock. I've also used muffin tins to freeze stock. They are slightly more practical for me because I usually need at least a cup of stock at a time.

Sometimes the cubes need a little coaxing to pop out of the trays. I just use a paring knife and they come right out.

Recently, I decided to freeze some root beer that had gone flat. Incidentally, have you ever noticed that root beer is one of the best off brand sodas?

I'll use the root beer cubes the next time I make pulled pork. It won't matter that the soda is flat and we love the way pork tastes when it is cooked in root beer!

Do you have any creative ways to freeze food? Even though I'm not posting about food waste anymore I still believe that using up ALL the food you buy is one of the best (and simplest) ways to save money!

Food Waste Friday

I've been MIA from Food Waste Friday for several weeks now. For the most part, the good habits I've cultivated over the last 2 years (wow, that long!) of posting about food waste continued even without the accountability. I'm back today for what may prove to be my last food waste picture, at least for a while. I think with the business of December and the family events of the start of a new year, it is best for me to focus my time elsewhere. 

I'm still committing to use up leftover, not overbuy (especially produce), and to be purposeful with menu-planning, and I think I am much better equipped to succeed because of the habit of food waste Friday!

On to this week's food waste. Or really last week's, because I'm pretty sure all of these things were destined for the trash then too. I have one watermelon radish, one white (yes, it used to be white) radish, and one (head? stalk?) of fennel. All of these are from our CSA, which makes them 3 weeks old at least. The radishes simply got forgotten and the fennel I knew I wouldn't use because I'm not a fan. It was in a pre-packed box, otherwise I would not have chosen it!

Have you ever worked to reduce your food waste? When I first started taking pictures of ours, I was shocked at just how much we were throwing out. A lot of the time, I was buying to much of something, or not planning to use leftovers well. If you are looking for some inspiration, be sure to visit The Frugal Girl as she records her food waste each week and provides a linky for other bloggers to participate as well!

Also, today is the last day to enter my giveaway to win a copy of The Money Saving Mom's Budget. Check out Money Saving Mom too!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I hope you will participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

 This week I was able to use up a bunch of leftovers, but this sweet potato had to go down the garbage disposer this morning. I don't like sweet potatoes, but they are one of my husband's favorite foods. I buy them from time to time and make sweet potato fries or mash them with brown sugar and marshmallows for him. I cooked these and then never did anything else with them. I think it was probably the same night that I made regular mashed potatoes for dinner, and these just got shoved in the fridge. I am not inspired at all by the sight of sweet potatoes in my fridge, so they just sat until they became rather...fuzzy.

I had fun making yogurt this week in a new and innovative (at least for me) way...in individual containers. I have a few pictures that I'll share later today!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I hope you will participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 


Yay! No food waste this week! It has been a while since I was diligent to keep things from going bad by Friday. I do have a few things that I need to freeze so that they stay out of next week's photo. 


Check out Thrifty Living this week for my top four tips on avoiding food waste. And be sure to check out my Fridgesmart giveaway. Click here to enter to win this Tupperware container that helps produce stay fresh longer. I love mine!

Avoiding Food Waste: Four Thrifty Living Tips

Last month marked two years of blogging here at Thrifty Living! One of the things I blog about most weeks is our food waste. I've learned over the last two years that I throw out way more than I thought I did, and that I throw out way less when I am consistently going through our fridge every week and being held accountable by taking a photo!

Here are four ways that have helped me to waste less!

1) Buy less. For my family this usually means only enough produce to last a week, until the next shopping trip. This also means that I usually buy less variety of foods. Sure, by the end of the week we might be sick of only eating grapes and watermelon, but then we are free to buy whatever is on sale the next week without worrying about using up the old stuff.

2) Most food can be frozen. Especially when it comes to perishables like fruits and vegetables, but also meats, cheese, and bread, most food does great in the freezer. We love snacking on frozen fruit in the summer, and I've frozen several vegetables that were extra from our CSA so that I can use them this fall and winter.

3) Pinpoint - what is my family (me) most likely to waste? Apparently I'm terrible at using up ricotta cheese! I know that when I buy ricotta I need to have a plan for ALL the ricotta. Sometimes that plan is part of the week's meals, and sometimes the plan is simply to freeze the extra. Do you always have fruit that is going bad? Why does that happen? Questions like these have helped me figure out the what I need to work on and have a plan before I bring that particular food home again.

4) Use up the old one before opening a new container. Do you ever get near the end of something (salsa, dip, etc) and just want to move on to the new jar? We do! If we give in and just open the new one, the old contain usually sits and sits and becomes a science experiment. Of course some things, like salad dressing, have multiple varieties. But the other day I saw 3 bottles of Ranch in my fridge door (although one was still unopened)! We finished off the two that we nearly empty, and now the unopened bottle is ready for next time.

AND (a bonus just for kicks!)

5) Menu plan. Not the complicated here is our menu for the next 6 weeks kind of plan (although if you're there, that's great), but a plan for your meals before you shop. Not only does it help me make sure I'm not buying too much that will just go to waste, but I can make sure I am buying enough, which cuts down on those extra trips to the store before dinner. 

Do you have any favorite tips to avoid wasting food? I'd love to hear them!

And be sure to check back tomorrow for a fun giveaway of a product that has helped me reduce our food waste!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I hope you will participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 


This week was much better than last week! But I've still got plenty of room for improvement considering how well we were at all but eliminating food waste at the beginning of the summer.


This is a small portion of ricotta cheese that has been sitting, and sitting, and sitting. I put plastic wrap down on top of the cheese which kept it good for longer, but that time has long since passed! I also had two produce casualties this week; half a red pepper from our CSA got mushy, but I saved the other half as part of dinner last night! And then I cut into a plum that I bought yesterday and found that it was rotten through the center...boo!

Ricotta cheese seems to be the thing I throw out the most for on Food Waste Fridays. Do you have any food like that...always struggling to use it up before it goes bad? At least I know that I'm bad with ricotta since it is always cropping up in these pictures! So really, it is shame on me for not having a better plan when I buy it! I've frozen some (so it didn't go bad!) which I'll use in a lasagna sometime soon. 


It looks like we are shaping up for a less eventful weekend here on the East Coast. Happy Memorial Day!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I hope you will participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 

Oh boy....after doing so well with our food waste this summer, the past week has been pretty rough. The little bit of leftover pizza sauce and salsa should have just been used up instead of getting stuck back in the fridge. Its so much harder to use a little bit of something! The corn and carrots were both from our Colchester CSA. I just never got around to dealing with them either. And the only thing that I will claim was not really my fault is the leftover orzo. Martin took it to work two different times and never finished it up. I guess I could have eaten it instead, but rejected leftovers never seem super appetizing to me!

One of the good things about the accountability of taking a picture of our weekly food waste is that I am able to pinpoint why food is getting thrown away. Pretty much everything this week was a result of my own laziness. A lot of the time I can get away with not being as diligent as I should and can still salvage our food from ending up in the trash. But this week it all caught up to me. Whew! I'm all the more determined to fight my lazy attitude towards food waste (and a number of other things) this coming week. Thanks so much for joining me as I learn to live a purposefully, thrifty life!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I hope you will participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 

This little section of lime is barely worthy of a food waste picture in some ways. This was leftover from my Cherry Limeade making adventure. It would have been so easy to stick it in a glass of water and enjoy it instead of letting it grow pink mold, though! 

I also had a few of last week's CSA carrots that got a little limp on me. I cut the ends off and have them in water in my fridge, though, so they should firm up and we'll either eat them today or I'll cook them and freeze them for later.

Have you checked what's growing in your fridge lately? Its a constant battle for me, but it is worth it!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 

I spotted this little container of creamy tomato sauce yesterday. I was growing some lovely fuzzy bumps on the inside. Its always a bit frustrating to have such a little bit of leftovers, because it is easy for them to get lost in the back of the fridge and forgotten about. Really, I should have just made some extra pasta for lunch the next day to use it up! This cucumber is from our CSA several weeks ago. It looks like just the one end is going bad, so if I cut it off, the rest should be fine for lunch today.

I was very pleased with how we did this week, especially because I was able to salvage several things by freezing them! I have half a container of ricotta that I'm planning to use for a Stromboli tonight. I also have another 3 or 4 pounds of bananas to cut up and freeze. I love having these as a treat in the summer for my kids, but I bought a ton of bananas this week to have them in the freezer for homemade ice cream. You might say that I have a slight addiction! Other than the ricotta, everything else in my fridge is in good shape, and we'll be getting our new CSA food today! I

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 

This was a rough week for my food waste fight! Not only did I find this rather mushy and fuzzy (and sadly mostly unused) but when we went to cook our corn ears from our CSA, they were way too far gone also. Corn has been pretty expensive around here, and I was so excited about our corn from the farm.

We have a few leftovers for the weekend, but other wise I think we are in pretty good shape for this coming week. I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Food Waste (Saturday)

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 


We were away visiting family all of last week, and in the flurry of packing I did not do food waste last Friday. Yesterday when we got home, I was pretty sure that we would have some milk that did not make it, along with lettuce from our CSA two weeks ago. Happily, both were still in excellent shape, making this a no waste week!


Whew it is another crazy hot day here in Delaware! I've been using the Thrifty Living Facebook page for some summer meal ideas. If you are on Facebook, be sure to 'like' Thrifty Living!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

We've had quite an eventful week. After being out of town for the 4th of July weekend (the 4th is my mom's birthday, so we always get together for picnicking and fireworks), the rock hard peaches had turned ripe and over-ripe. I had to toss one that was molded the whole way through, but I was able to cut a spot off another and the rest were perfect and are happily gone! Not too shabby.

I found a fuzzy bit of squash, onion, and tomato leftovers from early last week. It was really good the night I made it, but the leftovers just never looked too appetizing, so they sat and sat. I had a helper this morning while I went through the fridge and she wanted to be in the picture this week too!

Don't you love those Christmas PJs?

If you're just stopping in for Food Waste, you may enjoy this week's posts about homemade laundry detergent and the Avocado and White Sauce from our hot dog challenge. I'll be back tomorrow with our CSA pick-up from Colchester Farm!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too! 

Well, this week was actually a rough one for our battle against food waste...but they are bound to happen. I am especially bummed that I let some of our CSA lettuce get all slimy. Thankfully, after I picked through, it was just a handful:

Then I pulled this jar of sauce out of the fridge when I was making dinner one night and found little mold spots all over the inside of it...yuck! Thankfully, I had several more jars of homemade sauce in the freezer, so dinner was not a bust!

I also found about 4 ounces of moldy cheese today and it was too gross I tossed it without taking a photo. I also got peaches at the store yesterday, and when I cut the first one open it was a weird texture and the flavor was nasty too. I'm thinking about taking the rest back to the store, but we'll see. Whew! Well, the good thing about taking a look and the pictures of all I threw out is that it really motivates me to not waste so much next time!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!


This week I just had to rinse a few refried beans down the drain! Not too shabby considering it was only a few penny's worth of food. We look pretty set as far as being able to use up leftovers right now too. I'm gearing up for no picture again next week!

 
How did you do with food waste this week? Even if you have to throw something(s) out, forward progress is still encouraging!
 
I'll be back tomorrow with a look at our CSA pick-up from this evening. The growing season is shifting, so I think we'll have some different items...I'm excited!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

Yay! No food waste today! Really, its a pretty decent accomplishment considering that we had the grandparents watching our kiddos while we were away; any time you have extra people to feed it makes it harder to plan to use up all the prepared food. We still have a few leftovers, but I am more than happy to eat those for my lunch(es)...I eat two lunches most days to keep up with the calories I need for nursing. I love having something easy to heat up during the day!

Be sure to hop on over to Angela Barton's blog, My Year Without Spending today to see me featured on her Thrifty Threads series! Every week Angela posts pictures of people wearing clothes they have gotten second-hand in some way...I really enjoy seeing the great outfits that can be found if you keep an eye out for them!

I'll be back tomorrow with a picture from our CSA pick-up. And if you're looking for some thrifty family fun this weekend, why not go berry picking? We pulled in a nice haul yesterday at Lockbriar Farms. Not local? Check out PickYourOwn.org to find a farm in your area!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

I was a little concerned about how much food fresh produce we might waste this week after seeing the huge amount of food we got last Friday at our first CSA pick-up, but I am pleased to report that only a few wilty and mushy lettuce leaves are pictured! Unfortunately, I had to throw out half of a container of Ricotta cheese too. I had been meaning to make a second lasagna with it, but did not plan my shopping trips well enough so I was out of sauce and cheese enough for the second one.

Food waste seems a little more manageable in the summer for our family, I think because we are more likely to eat up fresh produce when it is hot, and those are the items that spoil the fastest. Does the summer help you keep food waste under control too?

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

Well, things look pretty bad for me, but for the most part, it wasn't my fault!

First, the peach was totally my fault. It just got left in the fridge and withered until it's now a mushy mess. The cream cheese is goat's milk cheese that I had back when I was avoiding cow's milk. I didn't love it, so once I didn't have to eat it anymore, it got left.

The bananas are from Costco. We nearly always get them at Costco because they are a great price and we go through a ton of bananas. They come in a plastic bag and are very green, but by taking them out of the bag as soon as we get home, they usually ripen nicely. For whatever reason these went from green to mush without ripening. I'm going to cut some of the less mushy ones up so that I can freeze them (my daughter loves frozen banana as a snack in the summer) and hopefully salvage some of the bunch!

Have you been working on reducing your food waste? Are you seeing progress?

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

Today I tossed a donut, a few cut up tomato pieces, and a ton of homemade oatmeal baby food. The donut was from my grandmother and is probably the saddest part of my food waste today. She got a bunch of these from my favorite donut shop in Hagerstown and we kept them in the fridge and would warm them up before eating. The last one I had was getting really dry and so I just never got around to this final guy. The tomatoes are dumb waste -- you should never leave that little bit of anything! And the baby food was a mistake on my part. I did homemade oatmeal for our daughter and thought I would just make a ton for my son. He struggles with the chunkier textures still, so it was way too much. Now I know and I'll make less!

How was your food waste this week? Do you have a lot of leftovers to go through over the weekend?

Food Waste Friday

My computer has been fixed and is on it's way home to me right now, and I am really looking forward to getting back to regular posting.

I have no food waste picture today, which is mostly because we didn't waste anything! I did chop up some lettuce for a salad the other night and we ended up not eating it. I'm not going to have to buy too much lettuce right now, tough, because my garden is providing us with plenty! We enjoyed a nice salad last night and the only lettuce in it was out of our garden.

Local Middletown readers -- remember that today is our first day for curbside recycling. Is your recycling bin out for pickup? Mine sure is! And in the two weeks since I last dropped our recycling off we managed to fill nearly our whole 65-gallon bin!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

This first picture was not my fault...these bean sprouts got all slimy before their sell by date. I could have taken them back to the store, but the time and gas to get my money back for $2 of sprouts just would not have made sense.

Now, on to our real food waste! We have a few dried out and beginning to grow fuzz pancakes, some carrot soup, and homemade (even the stock) chicken noodle soup. The chicken noodle soup sat out at work with my husband back when he was fighting the flu and now has nice little mold spots. I tried to eat the carrot soup this week (it is one of my new favorite recipes), but it had separated and the texture was really off.

 

Whew! We'll hope to turn things around this coming week! Happy Easter - have a wonderful weekend!