Challenge Update

Between trying to get Abe Lincoln through the Civil War in "Team Of Rivals", and allowing the live coverage of the impeachment trial in our state Senate to distract me from my housework, I'm not getting much blogging done. I have been working on the Food Waste Reduction Challenge, though, and I thought I should post a quick update.

My family is reasonably on board with this one, especially my husband, who is notorious for eating just about anything. My daughter is a bit more selective, but has helped finish up a few of my "messes".

I thought last night's supper was a genuine success. I had the following things that needed to be used before they went south: several slices of roast beef left from Sunday dinner, four cloves of fresh garlic that were starting to shrivel, a handful of raw baby carrots that looked suspicious, about 1/4 c. uncooked brown Minute Rice, and a cup or so of uncooked barley.

I diced up the beef, garlic, and carrots, plus an onion. In a pot with some water (sorry, I don't know how much water- maybe 6 cups?) I cooked that with the rice and barley, along a can of beef broth, the last three cubes of beef bullion, and a can of stewed tomatoes in vegetable broth.

This made a beef and barley soup that was great! It was rich and thick, not quite a stew, and just the right combination of flavors. The three of us ate heartily at supper, and there were two good sized helpings left over for lunches.

Usually, those carrots would have sat in the fridge until they were relegated to the compost heap. The roast was very good meat, but what was left had a couple of streaks of gristle that kept it from being good for sandwiches, so that might have been wasted, too. I'm pretty pleased that we made such good use of this food.

Taking On The Food Waste Reduction Challenge

I've signed up for The Food Waste Reduction Challenge being sponsored by The Crunchy Chicken blog. Here's the funny thing: I had decided to go easy on the challenges this year, especially if they were things that involved other household members having to get on board with me to do them. Just because I'm interested in something, doesn't mean I should be twisting their arms to do it too.

But right after the holidays I had begun thinking about how I could get back to some of my old habits of frugal cooking, both to save money, and to show my daughter how to do some of it before she moves out. She's a good cook in her own right, but it's been a while since she saw me serve some of the very basic cheap meals I used to make when I was feeding the whole hungry tribe. She might benefit from a review, and I would like to save money towards some home improvements, etc. So, this challenge just kind of dovetails with some thinking I'd already been doing.

The main purpose of the challenge is to make sure you don't let things spoil, or wind up throwing food out. Crunchy has some statistics on her blog that I had seen before that are kind of appalling. If you click on the button in my sidebar you can read the article. Americans throw out so much food it's ridiculous! We are so fortunate that we can generally afford to do this, but isn't it just kind of immoral, in a way, when there are hungry people in the world? If we were more careful, and spent less on food, we could be giving more to those less fortunate, even those right here in town. Our church has a food pantry, and makes deliveries to hungry people all the time. I could give more to that, if I spent less on our own food.

Even though the challenge doesn't start officially until February, I'm ready to get going on it. Today, I went through my big pantry cabinet and made a list of every single thing in there, including the approximate amount of each item. How did we wind up with three open boxes of graham crackers? Or that can of beets? (Now that one will be a tough sell. Why did I buy it?)

I also looked through the fridge and found a few strange orphans in the very back- a big jar with one large pickle, several yogurts that have been there a while because they were too hard to see behind other things. I did some rearranging. Fortunately, nothing's too spoiled to use, if I get busy.

Then I sat down and, using the list, came up with some dishes that could be made without having to go to the store for more ingredients. It's a little bit of a strange mixture of things, but we really could eat pretty well for almost two weeks with out grocery shopping at all! After that, there would be a few items needed to complete ingredients for a few more dishes. I'd like to eat it all up, until the cabinets and fridge are basically bare, and then start from scratch to restock with a better mix of things. I'll keep you posted on how this goes.

So, look out, family! You may be seeing some "Dinner Surprises" coming your way! Keep the groaning to a minimum please.