Minimizing Food Waste is not as Hard as it Seems!

Let’s dis­cuss food waste. You may think that while you throw away some food every week, it can’t be all that big of a deal, right? Not so much. Most esti­mates say that in the Unit­ed States each year, we throw away $160 bil­lion worth of food — that is no small amount! And while most of that is not from your house, you can do your share to throw away a lit­tle less food and save your­self some of that total.

First, think about all of the rea­sons why we buy too much food. There are whole­sale clubs sell­ing bulk pro­duce and dairy prod­ucts that may go bad before we have a chance to eat them, but they are such a good deal, how can we pass them up? Farm­ers’ mar­kets are gear­ing up for anoth­er sum­mer of offer­ing their deli­cious boun­ty and some­times it is a lit­tle too tempt­ing to sup­port your local farm­ers by pur­chas­ing more than you need in your recipe. We go to the gro­cery store hun­gry or stressed (or both), and we end up buy­ing more things than we need. Many healthy recipes seem to call for small­er por­tions of fresh ingre­di­ents than you can buy at the store, too.

What can we do to min­i­mize this food waste? Here are a few ideas to try and pre­vent that extra food from com­ing into your house in the first place:

1. Try and stick to your list to min­i­mize how much extra food you buy. Be cre­ative and give your­self a reward if you need encour­age­ment. (Food nerd that I am, I like to tell myself that I get to try one new item if I stick to my list!)
2. Need just a small amount of some­thing? Ask the gro­cery store if they can split that bunch of fresh herbs into a small­er size bundle.
3. When­ev­er pos­si­ble, do your best to avoid being hun­gry at the gro­cery store. Can you shop a dif­fer­ent day and just go home if you are stressed? Or try a few min­utes of calm­ing breaths (with a healthy snack) before you go into the store in the first place.
4. If you notice that you are reg­u­lar­ly throw­ing the same types of foods away, don’t buy those at Cost­co any­more — you’re not actu­al­ly sav­ing any mon­ey if a good amount is going in the garbage!
5. Freeze, freeze, and one more time, freeze! So many food items can be frozen to pre­serve their fresh­ness and be used at a lat­er date. 
   • Dice up veg­gies and either make a quick soup that you can freeze for lat­er or freeze them raw for use at a future date. Cut into pieces and lie flat in a Ziploc bag­gie in the freez­er. Once frozen, you can stack the bag­gies to help pre­serve pre­cious real estate in your freezer.
   • If your bananas are head­ing past their prime, peel them and break into halves and store in a Ziploc bag in the freez­er for future smooth­ies or banana bread. Sim­ply let them thaw pri­or to mash­ing, and then you can bake to your heart’s content!
   • Most fruit can be stored in the freez­er to be used in smooth­ies or any recipe where they will be cooked or blend­ed and don’t need to main­tain their orig­i­nal shape (i.e. blue­ber­ry jam, rasp­ber­ry purée for chia seed pud­ding, thawed for muffins, etc.). Berries, mel­on, peeled cit­rus, and even avo­ca­dos do great in the freez­er and add an extra frosti­ness to your next smooth­ie! In fact, check out this mon­th’s smooth­ie video to see for your­self how you can incor­po­rate frozen fruit into your next blender concoction!
   • Rarely am I able to use all of the herbs that I pur­chase before they go bad, and I don’t always have the time to trans­fer them to a pot and let them keep grow­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, ice cube trays are the per­fect size for freez­ing herbs to use in indi­vid­ual recipes. Sim­ply chop the herbs, add a splash of olive oil and fill with water. Once frozen, pop out of the con­tain­er and store in a freez­er-safe bag or container.

Make sure to label all of your freez­er bags with their con­tents and the date, so you can be ready to rock and roll for your next meal plan­ning bonanza!