July 2014

Periodically, because it's good household management but usually because we're in a budget crunch, I go on a campaign to eat the food that we have. Those items that have gotten pushed to the back of the pantry or freezer. Anyone else have this issue? I consider it the fat corn years intended to supply the lean corn ears (see Genesis, the story of Joseph and Pharaoh), but just like the biblical story, it takes some creative management.

I'm going to keep a journal, hopefully during the entire month of July, of my own efforts to economize as I clean and organize my food. My journey is happening in 2014, a time when Americans waste about 25% of what we buy (see newsstory here). That's appalling, but it easy to do. When my culture fails this way, it pains me. When I am too lazy to eat the rest of the spaghetti sauce in my fridge, hey, what do you know about my life? Stay off my back.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Day 1: inventory

It seems wise to begin with inventory. In the little notebook that contains my life, I have a section called "food." I'm making lists of meals and snacks that are available from what we have. I'm also making a list of food to use up, and working this afternoon on the most perishable items. Every time I buy produce from my produce club, I make this kind of list so I can use up my treasures, but (again) there are things that get ignored, pushed to the corners in all my busy-ness. This inventory is an attempt to attack those things.
Truth-telling: I never got to this list yesterday! I worked all afternoon in the kitchen, but only on using up produce from my regular list. Sigh. Feeding people is time-consuming. The upside of my afternoon work is I did hit upon a solution to a persistent problem. I often get citrus from my produce club that I don't know how to deal with. Citrus doesn't always make my stomach happy, and the kids don't gobble it up. If you want to read about my new fruity ideas and how they've boosted my desire for water, see my food blog, specifically the entry Wow Waters.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)