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.
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 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.
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.
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”.
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.
Awesome. Where should I put it? I live in a small apartment. My kitchen is the size of a shoebox.
with pen and paper
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.
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.
We also throw away approximately half the perfectly good food we produce in the U.S.
I sought an ADHD diagnosis.
instructions unclear, my prescription erased my appetite and now all my food goes bad
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.
Buy more fruit in summer and cereals in winter.
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.
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.
I only wish I could buy half loaves of the breads I like.
I can’t get through a whole loaf alone to save my life unless I eat the same thing for 3 meals a day and I’d prefer not to.
I had enough nice bread go bad to come up with a strategy.
Freeze half the loaf if you can. With a Toaster you can defreeze and toast at the same time. For my toaster i vary between full blast for whole grain like spelt or rye and mid/high for softer types like multigrain with more wheat, may even go lower on those soulless wheat loafs that don’t taste like anything except empty calories. Leave the rest out and it will be ready to eat the other day or next meal. I mean, the bread is stale by day 2-3 anyway so toasting it is kind of a no brainer for me.
Buy the loaf, slice it, freeze the excess. Take out only what you need. You can microwave it to unfreeze it quickly (but it does take some practice to not overdo it and ruin it) or just leave it out and be able to eat in like 30 mins. Comes out fresh and you don’t waste it ever really.
Do you store it in the fridge, btw? And also you can additionally place bread paper bag (with bread inside, of course) into a plastic bag after a couple of days. That will keep the correct level of moisture
A freezer and a pantry full of canned and dried foods.
Only buy fresh meats and veggies when you are actually gonna cook.
Freeze leftovers in single portion sizes.
Eventually you’ll have a bunch of homemade frozen dinners to choose from.
