What food items usually go to waste/go off in your house...?

[faithfulbird]

By the end of the week/bin day/before ur next shopping trip?

All bought on by some lettuce that's turned a bit pink and soggy which we bought last Thursday.

@yearinyearout

Half bags of salad, couple of slices of sandwich meat (because instead of eating all of one packet before opening another DH likes to alternate beef and ham 🙄)

Lakeland sell a great container for cooked meat

Bananas, I only like them green and I don’t want to make banana cake all the time. Plums. I wish the OH would stop buying me them! I’m not very fond. Cucumber ends, definitely. Must try the tinfoil trick. Grapes. I like them but just don’t get round to eating them.

@faithfulbird

Can relate to the bread/bananas either disappearing or rotting away. Same with baps. Eggs either get finished mid week or lay there for weeks.

Carrots are the worse. They go black regardless. Any advice? I can only give my toddler carrot sticks the first 2 days....

Totally relate on the bread and bananas. Either they vanish or we're ending the week with 5 black bananas and half a loaf of rock-solid bread. I hate food waste, so I always end up trying to make them into things that nobody wants to eat!

Jars of stuff...pesto, whatever. You have pesto pasta once and use half the jar, but you don't really want it again that week. And oops, the next time you open it, it has grown mould. Which I have been known to scrape off.

Honestly, it's a wonder my kids haven't been poisoned from eating black bananas and mouldy pesto!

@Shizzlestix

Bananas, I only like them green and I don’t want to make banana cake all the time. Plums. I wish the OH would stop buying me them! I’m not very fond. Cucumber ends, definitely. Must try the tinfoil trick. Grapes. I like them but just don’t get round to eating them.

Plums, you can boil them up with a teeny bit of water and sugar (I use vanilla sugar) and it makes awesome plum compote which you can keep in the fridge for ages! I did this last week when DH bought a kilo of very uninspiring plums (like, why???) and we had it with yoghurt and/or granola for breakfast. Well, I also had it by itself

Cucumber, bagged greens, Hummous, avos.

Whole Milk, DD only has a small amount and try as I might we never get it quite right. I buy filtered but there’s always some left.

Usually a few salad items and some fruits eg berries. Things like Apples and Carrots go to the horse and my hens will eat some things so it’s not too bad but there’s always something.

Parmesan and odd bit of creme fraiche, yoghurt, cream etc

Coleslaw, only DH likes it but never finishes it.

Philadelphia!

Bananas. Either they all disappear within 2 days or they sit there going blacker and blacker until they get lobbed out.

We also suffer from malingering nanas.

Today I tried banana oat cookies for the first time. From this day forth, all bananas will have an honourable end

www.kitchensanctuary.com/banana-oat-cookies/

Send it to us... DH and DS slather it onto bagels with a 1:2 ratio. No one else gets a look in! I call their recipe Philadelphia with bagels...

You can freeze hummus, mine gets flung in the freezer and I just defrost t over night in the fridge.

Salad bags, carrots, wrinkly and saggy tomatoes, sprouting potatoes!

We have tortoises so all the slighty mushy things go to them. They prefer it like that especially bananas. Only hiven once in a blue moon though.

I hope that people aren't throwing things away because 'they're out of date' because that's where madness lies
Why?
I wont eat stuff that is past 'use by'. Food poisoning isnt fun.
I also wont eat something out of 'best before' date if the taste is off, even if it still technically ok, i dont like that stale flavour.

We don't bin a lot, I'm really careful with checking what needs to be eaten when. But we do bin the occasional bit of salad that's gone soggy, or a couple of bananas. Only DS2 eats them, and they have to be brown but not too brown. So there's a 2 day (ish) window when they are 'acceptable'. Luckily he will eat 2 or 3 at a time.

Very little. We have teenagers, a cat and chickens plus I don't buy avocados.
I coordinate cabbage buying with a friend so we have half each.

If you have too much spinach or lettuce, you can add it to blended soups. It makes the texture silky.

@Pascha

Bananas. Either they all disappear within 2 days or they sit there going blacker and blacker until they get lobbed out.

Same here.

Bread, if it's not sliced bread that goes straight in the freezer. DS doesn't eat it and I struggle to eat a small loaf before it goes stale.

I wont eat stuff that is past 'use by'. Food poisoning isnt fun
A lot of things you can tell if it's off from sight and smell, same as you'd check if it had gone off early. I just ignore dates, things don't dramatically change at the stroke of midnight

Always bananas here. If I dont buy any, the kids will all want to eat one. But if I do buy some, they'll sit untouched until they go brown.

In some ways I think living alone makes things much easier. None if this buying for others and them deciding they don't want it after all, and no one coming home with stuff we don't need. So I'm pretty good at avoiding food waste. Bread goes straight in the freezer and when I fancy toast, which is the only thing I want bread for, I take out a couple of slices and toast them from frozen. I eat lots of salad so can easily get through big bags of spinach, and if there's fruit and veg that I'm struggling to get through I'll make a juice/smoothie out of it. I freeze the excess curry sauce from take-aways so I can make my own later. Most veg I buy frozen which cuts down on waste, and making meal plans and shopping lists is another good way.

The only things I do struggle with though are beansprouts, which often go off before I've finished the bag, and yoghurt/creme fraiche that I use for recipes but otherwise don't eat. I'll have to see if they're freezable 🤔

I use full fat Greek yogurt in place of sour cream and even cream in things like curries. It might not work for everything, but it saves buying a whole pot of something to only need a spoonful of.

Anything left over I can always eat with muesli. Just experiment with what sorts of dishes you make as to what you can substitute. Or if you're really determined to use a whole pot of sour cream and don't mind a slightly repetitive diet, have your meal plan so you eat a few dishes in the same week with that product - this week is creme fraiche week, next week is yogurt week etc.

Also worth remembering that it lasts for a couple of weeks at least after the use by date and you don't need to eat it within a few days of opening no matter what what the pot says. If any mould grows, just bin that bit and carry on using the rest of the pot.

In some ways I think living alone makes things much easier.

Oh yes in some ways

At least I'm no longer buying in things for dds latest healthy eating fad only for it to go to waste as she doesn't actually like it and either I don't like it or it's not veggie

Numerous "discussions" along the lines of

'If i get it you HAVE to use it because I can't"

' I know!'

'And you've definitely had it before and liked it'

'Yes'

Cut to week later when I'm sorting kitchen ready for next delivery

'You never ate x and it's off/out of date now you said you'd use it!'

Cue long list of excuses

'It wasn't as nice as I remembered/I forgot about it then it was out of date/I had nothing to go with it (there was plenty of items that went with it)'

She also seemed incapable of buying a SMALL amount of anything so my fridge would be chocka with unused leftover takeaways, milk or yoghurt based drinks (don't even get me started ), partially eaten fruit etc

She was also a bugger for taking things I'd earmarked - and told her! - for a specific meal or occasion inc MY dark choc/cream cakes etc that she doesn't even like!

Thanks to the frugal foodies I'm slightly more confident in using things past the date/recommendation but I'm still cautious with some things as I have a ridiculously sensitive stomach and I've learnt over the years to not take the chance most of the time.

@BarbaraofSeville you sound a lot like my parents. I used to think there was something wrong with the way we lived but now with a family of my own, making mistakes etc I appreciate the way we lived. Less hassle, less time wasted shopping, sorting it out etc and less food waste! Thanks to you and everybody else and keep the posts coming... all helpful!

Rarely anything other than lettuce.

I shop fortnightly and find that peppers, tomatoes, cucumber will keep in fridge quite happily and used up as we go, but I'm not organised enough to use lettuce quickly enough and in struggle getting them to keep nearly as long - going to try putting them in water.

Most other things get eaten, cooked with, frozen - but there seem to be fewer options with lettuce.

We do sometimes struggle with bananas but I freeze any overripe ones and make banana loaf or muffins when we get time. The muffins are good because you can freeze them too, and just warm up a few at a time when you fancy, rather than having to use a whole loaf.