Every week I talk about food waste. Why? Other than it’s so cool and fun? In the hope that it will make me aware of how much food (and money) I’m throwing away when something gets tossed in the garbage and not eaten.
Americans waste more than 40 percent of the food we produce for consumption. That comes at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. via Wasted Food
Kristen, over at The Frugal Girl started documenting her food waste in March 2008, added pictures and then challenged her readers to join the fight. Don’t be a Grouch, keep it out of the can.
This week’s waste gave me the hee-bee gee-bees. For real. First was the rice. I thought a bug had found his way into the bag. Then I picked it up and found lots of little flying bugs in what appeared to be a sealed bag. I can only imagine the eggs were already in the rice. Gross. Gross. Gross. The only flaw in my theory is the same bugs were found in my wheat germ. And here they were trying to escape. Straight to the garbage, do not pass GO. I’m not that squeemish but lots of bugs in my food puts me over the edge. I don’t know what the bugs were, where they came from or what they eat. They don’t seem to like dried beans or coconut as those twist-tied bags are bug free and everything else seems clean as well. Could the manifestation in 2 bags simply have been coincidence? I guess I don’t really care as long as they are gone.
Unfortunately there was more waste. Rice pudding. Again. I felt so bad the husband threw out his rice pudding last week, so I used some leftover rice and made a batch. It wasn’t bad the first night. Some days later I opened it up and it was definitely bad. Note to self: eat more dessert. (Yeah right, just kidding. I don’t need a note for that.) And finally a piece of cornbread that had been in the freezer for months. It tasted terrible the night I made it and I kept hoping for a recipe that would mask the taste. No such recipe has yet to appear so I finally tossed it.
I’m not proud of this week and after having to put it all up here I feel like a bit of a (gourmet) loser. Congratulations Frugal Girl, public humiliation achieved for another week.
