Making the most of my food dollars

I was going to post this tomorrow but decided to go ahead and do it tonight because I have another canning project tomorrow and may not have much time for the computer.

I hate food waste. Every time I see one bite of food go into the trash I see money being thrown away. For years there was not to much I could do about some of the food that was wasted since I was working a full time job outside the home. Between work and travel time I was putting in 60-70 hours a week away from home either at work or on the road. Then back in 1994 I was hurt in a car  accident and was no longer able to do the work I had been doing for almost 17 years. And having teens at home eating when they wanted.

But all that changed when I could no longer work. I went back to the frugal ways I had learned as a child watching my grandma and my mom. My grandma could take little bits of this and little bits of that and make a mouth watering, belly warming meal that was also very filling. You never walked away from her table hungry unless it was your own fault because she was a great cook.

By watching my grandma I learned to always scrub vegetables before peeling instead of throwing the peelings away, save them up in the freezer until I had enough to make a big pot of vegetable stock which then was canned. She would save potato peeling, carrot peelings, celery tops, onion peelings and any other veggies she prepared for meals in freezer boxes in the freezer. When she had enough she would make a big pot of vegetable stock and then either can it as is or turn it into a big pot of soup which she would then can.

Lately I have been into canning more and more and in the last year have gotten into canning fresh citrus. I was heart broken every time I throwed all those peelings from oranges, grapefruit and lemons away until this last time when I had a light bulb go off in my head. Yeah that does happen to me every once in a great while. LOL

I decided this time I was going to try to dehydrate any citrus peelings from the fruit I canned this year. On Friday night when I peeled the oranges for canning I carefully peeled the peel off with a very sharp knife leaving most of the white pith still on the oranges. I put all the peelings in a bowl, covered then with lid and placed them in the refrigerator until yesterday morning. When I got up yesterday I took the peelings and laid them out in single layers on my Excalibur dehydrator. I filled up 8 trays. Set the temp for 135 degrees and plugged it in.

Don't they look so nice and pretty with their bright orange color?

This shows you just how little of the white pith I left on the peelings.

After drying for 6 hours I took them out of the dehydrator. They were nice and crisp but still had a lot of their orange color.

 

All eight trays dumped on to one tray.

 

After they all cooled I ran them a few at a time in the blender to grind them into orange zest for baking and cooking. After all the peeling were ground up I came out with almost a pint jar of orange zest. Seeing as a tiny bottle of zest in the store can be pretty pricey I think I came out on the better end of the deal for the little extra time I spent carefully peeling the oranges and running the dehydrator.

 

 

I was giving a bottle of vodka by my uncle when he moved in with us and since we don't drink I had put it up and forgot about it. I remembered I had it while I was peeling the oranges the other night so I pulled it out and pulled out three small canning jars. I put some of the fresh peelings into each jar and then pour in enough vodka to cover the peelings. So I shook it up a little and sat it in a cool dark place. I opened on today and smelled it. It already has a good orange smell so of course I had to take a taste. It does have a taste of orange but not as much as I want so am going to let it sit for a few more weeks before using it. I have a feeling this is going to come out tasting great!

Now if only I could find a use for all that white pith I threw away I would be very happy. Then there would have been no waste at all from my canning oranges. :)

Not bad from $9.98 of oranges is it. I got 4 quarts, 6 pints, one half pint of canned oranges, almost a pint of orange zest and a pint of orange extract for my money. Think I got my moneys worth on this deal?? I sure do!

The Big Waste Part 3

You slave over a hot stove cooking a nice meal. You put it on the table and here comes the family. Plates are being loaded down because the food looks and smells so good! Everyone starts digging in. Then the next thing you know they are pushing their half empty plates away saying their are full. You sit there in dismay looking at all that wasted food sitting on their plates. You think about how all those poor children in starving countries would give anything to have half the food that your family just wasted. You might even think of telling your family about those poor starving children and how they would love to eat just half as well as your family does. But its just a waste of your time, energy and voice to tell them.

You can preach to your family 24/7 about those starving children but they are not really going to get it. How can they understand what its like to really being starving to death when you are setting nice filling meals on the table day after day or they can go to a restaurant and order anything they like? Only another starving person or one who has starved for days or weeks at a time can really know what its like for those who are starving in the poor countries. We can show them all kinds of new feeds or read them all kinds of article about it but face it. They are never going to understand fully the concept of starving.

Since you find that using the starving tactic doesn't work you want to try something else but what? The solution is easy. You run your kitchen like a restaurant! Set the dining table with everything but the dinner plates, drinking glasses and salad bowls. Appoint some one to act as the server or use a tray. You fill the plates at the stove with the amount of food you know each person will eat. Do the same with the drink glasses and the salad bowls. By doing this you will cut the amount of food wasted at every meal and you are also controlling serving sizes so some will not be tempted to over eat. Its a win/win!

There are other add benefits to running your kitchen like a restaurant. You will have less dishes to do because you will not be using serving dishes. The food can remain in the pan on the stove. You don't have to carry leftovers back to put away. But best of all is that you won't be throwing away enough food to make at least one more meal.

The Big Waste Part 2

I use a lot of celery, carrots and onions in my cooking. The next day I clean them all and cut them up for the meals I plan on making for the week. I save the peeling from the carrots and onions and the leaves from the celery, toss them in a pan of water along with a little salt and parsley to make a nice veggie broth. If I plan on cooking potatoes that day I add the peelings from the potatoes to. I make sure to scrub all the veggies before peeling them to get the dirt off.  I then cool, strain and freeze the broth to use later in soups and stews.

I save cookie crumbs from the bottom of the cookie jar to sprinkle on top of pudding or ice cream to get a little extra flavor for a treat. I use to do the same with leftover bits and pieces of cold cereal when the kids were still at home. Now that the kids are all grown I don't buy cold cereal very often.

Then end pieces of a loaf of bread that no one wants to eat I take out of the bags and place on a cookie rack on top of the counter to dry out over night. Then I run them though the food processor to make my own bread crumbs which I use to bread meats before cooking them. I buy day old bread cheap at the store and use it to make bread pudding. If a loaf of bread that I have bought fresh gets stale I use it to make bread pudding or croutons.

I keep a freezer container in my freezer and when ever I only have a spoon of veggies left over for a meal but is not enough for me to make my own tv dinners I put it in the freezer container. When the container is full I take it out and make soup.

When ever there is a little mustard, ketchup or barbecue sauce left in a bottle I open another bottle and once we have used some of it I put a funnel in the new bottle, turn the old bottle upside down and let sit to drain into the new one. If I am not opening a new bottle any time soon I just add some water to thin out the contents and then dump in a recipe calling for that item. I also do the same with spaghetti sauce and tomato sauce. By doing this I get almost every last drop out of a bottle.

If I happen to buy a tub of cake frosting and don't use it all I use the left over frosting on graham crackers for a snack.

Hubby and I are both diabetics. We love cake but know not to eat a lot of it. If I make a hm cake from scratch I divide the recipe in half. If I use a store bought mix, I mix up the whole cake mix, split the batter between 3 loaf pans, bake and cool. We use one and the other two I wrap in plastic wrap and then foil and freeze. This saves us from eating to much and yet we have no waste. I do not frost the cakes before freezing and since they won't use a whole can of frosting I either dust the pieces with a little powdered sugar before serving or put a little pie filling and cool whip on them before serving.

Well that's all I can think for now. I will try to post more later.

The Big Waste Part 1

I watched a show on Food Network today that was called The Big Waste. I could not believe that the four chefs on there were so surprised over all the food that gets thrown away each day here in America. What have they been doing? Hiding their heads in the sand?? Have they never even stop think about the food that gets thrown in the trash ever time they record a new show? What about the food that gets thrown away in their restaurants every day of the week? Do you ever see them using bruised veggies and fruits or sub standard cuts of meat on their shows? I know I never have. I only see them using the best cuts of meat, the prettiest fruits and veggies. Oh but wait. They have to make sure their food looks perfect so that they can sell their shows, books and merchandise. Who is going to buy inferior foods cooked in fancy expensive dishes?

Have you ever noticed that most of tv chefs have a garbage bowl sitting close on the counter and as they are doing all their chopping they are throwing way parts of food that could be used and not wasted? How many of them ever talk about saving those discards from one meal to make a nice rich veggie broth to use in another meal? When they debone meat how many times do you see them take the bones and roast them to make a nice broth? Not often do you? It would be great if they actually put their money where their mouths are and talk about not wasting food when they are recording their shows. They could go a long way in cutting food waste in America just by showing inexperienced cooks what to do with the leftover by products of the foods they use in their shows.

While I commend them for trying to wake up America to the tons of food that get wasted in this country  every year, this one show is not going to make a real big difference in the amount of waste. If they want to make a big difference then talk about it on their shows. Do public service adds about it. Try to set up programs to help get the food to those who could really use it. There are children and adults going to sleep every night in this country because they don't have money for food. The food that is going to waste good help end their hunger.

And then look at all the food we are shipping overseas to other countries where the people are starving. If the American government would set up a program to gleam the food that thrown into compost piles of farms and those imperfect cut of meat, poultry and seafood by products look at all the food that could be processed and sent to help the starving countries.

A by product of setting up a program like that would be the generation of thousands of jobs for the people right here in America. From farmers workers, to food processing people to health inspectors to packaging and shipping. Wouldn't it be great to see more people getting the food they need so badly and jobs to go with that food?

Of course in this sue happy country things would have to be set up so the food could be gleaned. Years ago farmers would let people glean then fields after the harvest. But most have stopped doing that because people were trying to sue them over the least little thing. They figured just because a farmer might have a couple of hundred acres of land to grow food on then they must be rolling in money. They never stop to think of all the expense that goes in to owning a producing farm.

Then of course there is the government who intervenes and pays farmers not to grow food so they can keep prices up and demand high. I could go on and on about the government but I am not going to. Enough said about them.

As for the food waste in America the American people have been conditioned to waste food. From restaurants who pile plates high to charge higher prices and in the process forcing people to over eat because they do not want to waste food. Tempting people to eat more because they think those over priced over filled plates are regular normal serving sizes. They tempt us not only with serving sizes but also appearance in the ads they use. Have you ever noticed that when you go to a restaurant that the food never looks quite as good as it does in the ads or the pictures on the menus?

Fast food places are the worse. They teach our kids that they must get a new toy with every meal they eat out. They tempt people into eating way more then they should by making super size meals and adding more salt and empty calories to those meals. Some of those meals have almost a whole days worth of calories that an average person needs each day in a single meal. Then they have all these ads with foods that have been doctored to look better than what they really are to brain wash people into believing that they must have that meal and children into believing that they can't be happy with out the toy.

Yes, we Americans need to wake up to the food waste in our country but so does the government and those who are in the food industry. The government needs to come up with programs to save the food that is wasted in the fields each and every year besides paying farmers not to grow food. The restaurants need to find away to save the food waste and donate it to food pantries, soup kitchens and so on. An the American people need to rethink how they buy, prepare and store the food they buy.

So far I have talked a little on this blog about how I reduce food waste in my own home. The next time I post I will talk about some more ways I cut food waste in my own home.