Waste Not, Want Not

Do you ever find that you've been a little overzealous on your recent trips to the farmer's market?

Do you ever open the fridge to find there are five or six different types of veggies that are not going to last another 24 hours?

That was me last night.

I went looking for a snack a few hours after dinner and realized that I had a large amount of produce facing the garbage bin if I didn't use it immediately. Uh oh.

I pulled all of them out, everything that looked like it was close to gone, and decided it was time for a fritatta. Fritattas are the best way I know to use up fresh veggies.

I found that I had celery, carrots, cauliflower, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, spring onions, and speckled butter beans. I decided to cook the beans separately and refrigerate for dinner the next night. Everything else got chopped up in order of hardest to softest and sauteed in butter in a cast iron frying pan.

While my daughter tossed the veggies occassionally with a spatula, I mixed a dozen eggs with a little milk and some sea salt, black pepper, and crushed garlic.

As soon as all of the vegetables were tender, I turned off the burner and poured the egg mixture over them. All that was left was to place the entire pan in the oven on 425 degrees until a fork inserted in the center came out clean. This was a large one so it took about 35 minutes to cook fully. Didn't it come out beautifully?

What I love most about fritattas is that I can do all of the cooking at night and stick the whole pan in the fridge to reheat and serve the next morning. Leftovers from breakfast make a great lunch!

Of course, for dinner tonight we had those butter beans and there was nothing to do but heat them. Served with some leftover chicken, who needed anything else? Yum!

World Environment Day (WED)

In 1972 the United Nations decided to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment by establishing World Environment Day. WED is celebrated on June 5 every year and is the final day of a year-long campaign. 

This year's campaign slogan is Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Footprint and is aimed at getting people to be aware of and act on food waste.

Think: Be a concious consumer by making shopping lists, planning meals, preparing appropriate quantities to avoid waste. Don't shop hungry and you'll avoid buying more food than you can eat before it spoils. Know the companies whose products you purchase. (A great resource are the many product guides available from Ethical Consumer.)


Eat: Eat smarter. Grow your own because you'll be less likely to waste food that you put so much effort into producing, serve leftovers before they spoil, and use fresh foods before using frozen or canned. Buy local to ensure a shorter time from field to table and food that lasts longer in your home.


Save: If you don't need it, don't buy it. And don't insist on cosmetically perfect food. You'll be helping people around the world, as well as your health, the planet, and your pocket book. 

A few stats to think about before you throw food in the trash:

• There are 7 billion people on Earth now, and that number will be 9 billion by 2050. That's a lot of people to feed.
• 1/3 of food produced in the world is wasted or lost before it reaches consumers.
• There are approximately 870 million undernourished people in the world. 
• Wasted food means hungry and undernourished people, as well as wasted natural resources (land, energy, water used to produce it) and money.
• Rotting food in landfills accounts for a significant amount of methane emissions, which contributes to global warming.

Why is so much food going to waste?

• Pests often get food before consumers do.
• In poor areas, storage facilities are often inadequate to keep food for very long.
• Ineffeciency in the supply chain often means food is spoiled before it's eaten.
• Buyers look for cosmetically perfect food so retailers throw out specimens that are less than perfect.
• Carelessly allowing leftovers and fresh food to spoil at home accounts for much of the food waste in developed countries. 
• Caterers and restaurants throw away excess food that is prepped but not ordered.

For more info on the Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Footprint campaign, click here to download the WED booklet in PDF format.

The United Nations is encouraging anyone who participates in World Environment Day to share your events, photos, etc. Just click here to go to www.unep.org/wed and upload your WED news. 

I'd also love to hear what you are doing to increase awareness and/or take action on food waste. Please leave a comment below if you're doing your part or planning to do your part!

A Little Styrofoam To Go Please

Last night my daughter wanted to eat at the local Mexican restaurant that sits at the entrance to our neighborhood. We patronize them often because the food is good and the family that owns and operates the restaurant live in our subdivision, walking there and back every day. I love supporting local businesses. HOWEVER...

Last night we got our food to go. Somebody please tell me why each of the quesadillas needed to be wrapped in paper and then placed in there own individual styrofoam containers. Each of the quesadillas came with a salad and each salad had its own container, too. The pixo de gallo that I ordered had its own container, as did the guacamole that my daughter wanted on the side instead of on her taco salad. Add all of that to the plastic container for her taco salad, the styrofoam cups for the two salsas, and the paper bag for the chips.

My trash can had just gotten a new and empty bag. It is now full. I was infuriated last night and when I got up to make coffee this morning I was reminded.

I want to tell them but I want to suggest they come up with a better system, not attack them for being wasteful. Remember, these are my neighbors and they are very friendly people. Any ideas on a good way to let them know about this opportunity for improvement?

Summer Blog Challenge: Day 39

Today's Challenge: What are a few of your biggest pet peeves? 

Oh, so is that an invitation to gripe? Not a genius idea because I am a master griper.  But okay. Here are some of my pet peeves...

• I hate wastefulness. Like when I see someone grab 10 napkins for 2 people in a restaurant, knowing that 8 of them will end up unused in the garbage. Or when I see my kids write a few lines on a sheet of paper and move on to the next sheet. Heck, I wrote an entire post recently on all of the disposable "convenience" items in the grocery store (see it here). I mean, who needs a disposable toilet brush? Really! 
• I despise a nasty dish cloth. For some reason, I am the only person in my house that can hang up the dish cloth or put the sponge and scrubber in the soap dish that sits beside the sink. No, the rest of them leave all three items in the bottom of the sink. And, even better, they will then proceed to put dirty dishes on top of them. And oh heaven forbid they scrape or rinse those dishes first! Yuck!
• It really gets on my nerves when I see items that are labeled as green or natural that have artificial preservatives or color or fragrance. Or the items that are labeled 98% natural...yeah because the other 2% is all the crap you don't want. It shouldn't be so difficult to find the truly organic/natural items.

Okay I warned you. I could go on and on and on. In fact, I work on bettering my attitude constantly because it would be easy for me to fall into a pattern of negativity. LOTS of things are pet peeves for me. I will leave you with one more, which is probably my #1 biggest pet peeve of all...

• Do not lie. Period. I didn't say don't lie to me. I don't want to hear you lie to anyone. Sure I tried telling lies when I was younger. Luckily, I discovered early that I was not a very good liar. In fact, I am a terrible liar. I always get caught because I stink at lying. So I quit. I am not perfect, but I can not think of the last lie I told. Seriously. I know better. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I now cannot stand to hear others lie. My kids will testify to this...lying is the ultimate no-no in our home. 

I promise I am not a [bleep]. Haha. But don't get me started! See what happens?!!!

What would you say is your #1 pet peeve? I'd love to hear!

Waste Not, Want Not?

Waste not,want not....Is that saying really true anymore? I see so much waste everywhere I turn and as we learn more about the effects of our wastefulness on the environment, companies are marketing more and more products that are wasteful of resources. And people are buying them without any thought for the consequences! It seems more like want more, waste more!

Let's go through a few examples.

K-Cups require a special coffee maker that costs lots of money and requires a separate little plastic "k-cup" for each cup of coffee you brew. Talk about wasteful packaging! A number of these little plastic cups are packaged together in a cardboard box. This, when you could buy one package of instant or brew coffee and make pot after pot after pot.

Why is it so hard to use an old fashioned toilet brush? Now Scrubbing Bubbles is selling disposable toilet brushes! Clorox makes one, too! Really? And don't tell me about the germs on the toilet brush that sits in your bathroom because those germ-y brushes have been sitting in bathrooms for decades and not bothering anyone. As long as you don't play with it or put it in your mouth, just leave it sitting in its little holder, it isn't going to hurt anything.

Disposable Clorox wipes and Lysol wipes are wasteful and unnecessary, too! Scrubbing Bubbles has their own line of bathroom wipes. Why not just use a washcloth? Worried about it getting ruined? I was raised by a frugal and green mama who taught me to tear old t-shirts into rags that can be used for any job without worrying about the condition of the rag. Old socks are good for this, too. And if you really need something disposable sometimes, use a paper towel, but you don't need something disposable for every time you wipe off the kitchen or bathroom counter!

I would like to see some of these corporations taking responsibility for the environment, not just in the way they are manufacturing products, but also in what products they manufacture. Considering how much we know about good environmental practices and global warming, I would like to see government regulations on packaging, as well as disposable items.

What items make you angry when you walk the aisles of the supermarket?