Food Waste Friday | Keeping Accountable!

Staying accountable to my grocery budget isn't just minimizing my spending, it's also minimizing wasted food. Kristen at The Frugal Girl stays accountable by posting pictures of any food that has gone bad as part of her Food Waste Friday series, which I think is a great idea. Saying your goals out loud helps assure you'll actually achieve them.

With that being said, I think I'm doing pretty well so far. My successes are both breadcrumb related. First I made some breaded chicken, but misjudged the amount of breadcrumbs I needed and ended up with a lot left over. Of course, at that point they were contaminated and couldn't go back in the tub, but I decided to save them in some Tupperware and make Chicken Parmesan a couple of days later. I wondered if this was a good idea, since technically all sorts of deadly germs could be sitting in there, but I figured the heat of cooking the next meal would suffice.

We're still alive, so I think it worked out alright.

My husband also made some delicious corn bread when he realized we were out of yeast and couldn't make his trademark focaccia. I ate it for breakfast lunch and dinner for a couple of days, but the last little bit got pretty stale. I decided to throw it in the food processor, and now I have a bunch of cornbread crumbs! I'm thinking they might be delicious on some pork chops next week.

The bad news was mainly lunchtime related. There were a few slices of Havarti cheese remaining before we went away for the holidays, and they started looking pretty bad. I also had about half a bag of salami from Costco that started to look.....gray. Horrors! I have never in my life let a Costco bag of salami go bad. I don't even know how it's possible, especially with cured-meat-loving Me around. It never would have happened if we hadn't been out of town for 3 weeks.

The last little bit of my milk went a little sour. I drank about half a glass of it before I decided it was gone. I poured the last of the glass back in the jug, and I'm going to scour the internet for some recipes this weekend. I'm determined not to let it go to waste!

If you've ever read anything about food waste you know that this is just one of the ways in which frugal living is also sustainable living.