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.