I buy stuff that lasts. For bread, I find that rye takes weeks longer than white or wheat to start going bad, and bagels last ages too. I make smoothies with mostly frozen fruit. For dinner stuff, if I’m not feeling like cooking I either buy things I’m going to eat in the next few days or I get these sealed precooked things from Aldi that are great and keep well. Coconut milk also tends to keep better than cow milk and lately I’ve realized I greatly prefer it.
About the only things that are super perishable that I keep around are bananas and avocados, and I just tend to eat these a lot. I also keep spinach or kale around for my smoothies, but I rebag them into separate smaller bags as soon as I get them. If my bananas are getting overripe, they get frozen for smoothies.
I also tend to buy canned soups, which last ages.
When I was cooking regularly I’d make a lot of chilis and pasta sauces. They’re good to freeze and they keep well on their own. Chili is arguably better after freezing and having more time to develop.
You can definitely eat pretty healthy and keep plenty of food in the house without constantly chasing waste.
I’ll only buy something perishable when I need it. I tend to cook for 3-4 days in one go in order to make cooking for only myself somewhat economical. I tend to visit the supermarket every other day so I don’t really have to plan too much.
If you don’t have a good sized freezer, buy one. There are small ones that fit in any home.
Too many veggies? Chop them up and put them in quart sized containers. You can add them to any soup or stew.
I have a five quart pot; make chili/stew/soup and freeze in pint size containers.
My house has a good freezer, here’s the first i searched out as an example.
Meal planning is overwhelming to me, so I made a habit of rotating a selection of staple meals with fewer, more stable ingredients. PB or eggs scrambled with cheese on toast for a breakfast. A salad of chickpeas, carrot, broccoli and avocado with a whole-wheat roll, or a lentil/rice bowl, for lunch. Precook larger batches of freezer-friendly staples like chickpeas, lentils, rice, turkey burgers, meatloaf, tomato gravy - reserve 2-3 days’ supply and freeze portioned batches of the rest. Allow yourself less experimental ingredient buys per grocery run - so if it turns out they don’t synergize with your staples, you’re not accumuating a lot of dead-end ingredients.
Clean-up is what stops many people. Get a good titanium no-stick pan - I like “Our Place” pans. Get individual portion meats or frozen meats or buy bulk and freeze in portions. Do the same with vegetables. Heat your seasoned pan up then put some oil in just before you put meat in. Cook meat until almost done, then add vegetables to same pan - heat them up. Serve. Let pan cool while you eat. Refrigerate left-overs. Rinse and wipe pan down. Wash dish. DONE.
Meal plan. Write what you’re cooking for the week, buy only ingredients for that.
Anything uncooked goes in the freezer, you can defrost and cook/reheat a lot of food, stop throwing stuff away.
Problem is that some of us have freezers the size of matchboxes, so it is very limited what leftovers we can put in the freezer. It’s something I have attempted to tell my parents who have big freezers and lots of good ideas to how you can buy this and that in bulk and just freeze it for later and save so much money!! Cool. But my freezer is still the size of a matchbox.
That doesn’t stop you from Meal Planning ahead and only buying what you need for that week.
And leftovers can often make great soups, stews, and curries. They can last in the fridge for about a week.
Sure, but I just wanted to point out that some of us do not have freezers that can store a lot of food. Whenever I see people being like “just freeze the leftovers” I look at my freezer like “how?”. If I put a bag of beans, a bag of ice and some springrolls in there, it is filled to the brim.
People shouldn’t assume that everybody have tons of space to store perishable foods. That’s all.
In my household we usually go for small packs of food when we shop groceries. Meats and vegetables etc. We go for small sizes because we don’t want to end up throwing out food. It’s not cheaper, but it is less wasteful in the long run.
Protip: Save up, buy a dedicated freezer. Like a “redneck hunter’s garage” style one. Nothing fancy, just a white box with a dial on the front for how cold you want it. Cheaper than the fancy flashy fridge freezer combos, and much more usable space (although you have to stack stuff inside). A lot cheaper than you’d expect. They also come in a variety of sizes, from small to “I need space for three bodies”.
Awesome. Where should I put it? I live in a small apartment. My kitchen is the size of a shoebox.
Drawback, you’ll likely have to defrost those regularly.
Defrosting isn’t a big deal. I decide what I want to eat tomorrow, I take it out the freezer and put it in the fridge, by the time I want to eat its defrosted and good to reheat.
with pen and paper
I sought an ADHD diagnosis.
instructions unclear, my prescription erased my appetite and now all my food goes bad
Please don’t waste food.
fun fact: we grow enough food to feed 15B people. It’s just that we feed it to the animals, then eat the animals.
We also throw away approximately half the perfectly good food we produce in the U.S.
Most of the food we grow for animals is not edible by humans.
Also the soil we use for growing that food is not suitable for growing human food, permanently or temporary.
One of the basics of agriculture is crop rotation. And this crop rotation usually need for foods that are good for animals but not so good for humans.
That while talking about food that is grown specifically for animals. A good part of animal food is just residues from human food. For instance, in my grandmother’s house I remember the chickens were basically a walking bio-disposal bin, at not point food was grown specifically for those chicken.
In the matter of wasted food, resources. A lot of it have to do with transportation from very far away places.
This is weapons grade copium.
The main ingredients in almost all animal feed for industrial farming (90+% of meat production) is grain/cereals. Like corn, wheat, oat, etc. humans eat those things. The protein sources for animal feed is usually soy… humans eat soy.
Please explain why “the soil we use for growing animal feed is not suitable for growing human food”
The only factual part of your comment is about your grandmas chickens eating food scraps. But I’ll bet you they didn’t live entirely on scraps. They still get grain to survive. Also, as stated before, 90%+ of meat doesn’t come from sustainable grandma’s chickens. It comes from hell on earth factory farms.
Do you know what “alfalfa” is?
I don’t know if that’s the correct english translation.
Widely used as a source of animal food. Good luck trying to eat that.
Search which cultives tend to be part of healthy crop rotations and most of the times you’ll find a crop that’s used for animals and cannot be eaten by humans.
Also not are grains and soy are created equal or are as suitable for human consumption in a healthy diet as other plants. Or almost most planta that are used for animal consumption. There’s two fact here, first that many times there’s a mixed use (part of the plant goes to the animal and part of the plant goes to the human) and other times even when everything is for the animal, there tend to be different varieties. The corn dedicated to human consumption is not the same corn dedicated to animal consumption. It grows different and can take different amount of nutrients for the soil, or take different economic requirements. Human food tend to be much more expensive overall, because our stomach cannot digest plants as easily as herbivores.
Do you think human beings have been farming animals and those “extra crops” just for funsies. It’s the most efficient way to feed human population. That’s why it have been done for millenia.
Yeah, alfalfa is the correct translation. I tried to do a quick search for how much land is used for forage crops (like alfalfa and hay) but didn’t come up with any decent stats. However, I looked for the global crop production stats and the top 4 globally are sugarcane, corn, rice, and wheat. These 4 contribute almost 50% of total arable land use. On the graphics for production— forage crops don’t even get an honorable mention. So unless you have some info on how much wasted land alfalfa grows on, I’m going to say it’s not all that important (land use wise)
Second, using different cultivars for animal feed and direct human consumption is true. We don’t eat dent corn. We eat sweet corn. Two very different varieties. However, saying that one variety can be grown on this patch of land and the other varieties cannot is simply false. Yes there are differences in adaptability of different varieties, but they aren’t massive. Especially when you read about how much fertilizer and water we dump on our animal feed crops each year. Any damn plant could grow with those kind of inputs.
And lastly, your “appeal to tradition” argument is a classic logical fallacy. So I won’t try to refute it.
But do we really want 15B people?
it’s probably gonna happen eventually. We really can’t sustain too many more people on an animal based diet :/
The billionaires do, otherwise their tiny little egos will shatter for not feeling speshul
So that’s why Elon makes all these kids …
My problem isn’t that I don’t use what I buy, the problem is that I buy too much. Like the recipe I need calls for one stalk of celery, but I can only buy an entire celery plant, like 11 stalks in a bundle because that’s all the store offers. What do I do with the remaining 10 stalks?
• Eat it raw
• Make mirepoix
• Throw it in a salad
• Throw it in a stir fry
• Use it as garnish for your Caesars
• Pickle it
• Omit it from that recipe before you even buy it if it isn’t contributing much
• Scale the recipe up to use more celeryThat’s your Mel planning, although I’d eat celery by itself.
For example I just bought a bunch of fresh dill because I needs it for one recipe. However I found a side dish that also used dill. Then the next morning I made bagels and lox with fresh dill, and successfully used it up.
I have a harder time with spices and sauces: so many sitting on my counter because they don’t fit in the spice cupboard. However at least they last a bit, giving me more chances to finish them
Keep them in the fridge. Find other recipes that use celery. It’s quite versatile and keeps for quite a long time in the fridge! A lot of French recipes call for mirepoix (celery, carrots, onions; all diced) and Italian dishes call for soffritto which is the same thing. A ton of soups and pastas use mirepoix/soffritto as a base.
Now get out there and cook some celery, carrots, and onions!
only buy stuff for what you want to eat? like if you plan on making burgers, buy the stuff. you don’t need to plan for every day, because you’re going to have left overs for the last two or so days.
Be organized, have a weekly menu. I’m sorry this is the solution. My bad.
“the only solution is being responsible” well fuck guess I’m SOL
This isn’t “THE” solution though. Plenty of other options. My favourite is meal prepping - spend three hours cooking for the entire week, put it in the fridge. Instead of an hour / hour and a half each day. You only have to clean up after yourself once too.
Issues are you need to prepare things that reheat well, or that you can quickly “cook up” each day without it taking too long. I.e. “just add the sauce to the salad” type of deal.
Buy more fruit in summer and cereals in winter.
My SO has ADHD and used to do this. I just cook for the both of us now so it’s less food waste. The only issue is sometimes he doesn’t like what I make :/
I cook the food
Then eat the food
don’t mind if i do!
Then poop the shit
Then recycle the… Wait… I think we better stop at that.
