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Food waste is the biggest bummer. Not only is it sad to throw food away, but you’re also throwing money away, too! Whether it’s stuff that gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten or leftovers that pile up without a purpose. Let’s go over some ways you can avoid food waste and use up some of the ingredients you have at home.
1. Meal plan
First and foremost, if you’re wasting a lot of food and you’re not meal planning, the best place to start is by creating a plan. A meal plan gives all the items you buy at the store a job. You don’t buy a bag of spring mix without having a salad planned for the week! You don’t buy ricotta with the hope you’ll make lasagna, but because you actually have lasagna on the meal plan. A meal plan means your grocery purchases are intentional, not random, because the ingredients will be used in specific recipes.
Bonus tip: double-check your fridge, freezer, and pantry before you go to the grocery store to prevent buying ingredients you already have at home!
2. Plan less
Once you’re creating a meal plan, if you still have too much food waste, you need to plan less. Planning less looks different for every household, but it needs to match your schedule, energy, or your family’s needs. If you’re not sure where to start, cut back your meal plan to only four dinners a week, which gives you room to use up leftovers one night, pull something out of the freezer, or go out to eat spontaneously. When you plan fewer meals, you have space in your week to use up the food you have.
3. Coordinate your meals
Coordinating meals in your weekly plan takes a bit more effort, but it can reduce food waste and save you money. If you’re buying chicken, have more than one recipe that uses chicken, so you’re not left with extra. If you’re buying cabbage, have multiple uses for it, so it doesn’t sit in your fridge and rot. This concept is more important for ingredients that don’t freeze as well, like tomatoes, lettuce, and dairy products, because other items freeze and reheat better.
4. You. Can. Freeze. Anything.
On that note, we learned through Carol Ann Kates’s book, Grocery Shopping Secrets, that almost any food can be frozen (even cucumbers!). The way you use the ingredient might not be the same after freezing, but it will prevent it from going into the garbage. Fresh tomatoes can go into a soup after freezing, or dairy can be used in a sauce. If you’re not sure if something can be frozen, check out Carol Ann’s book!
5. Avoid obscure ingredients
It’s fun to try new recipes, but sometimes they call for obscure ingredients that you might be unfamiliar with, and these items often end up as food waste. Especially when the recipe only calls for a portion of what you had to buy. For example, on the Plan to Eat Podcast, we had a dinner dilemma from someone who wanted to try a recipe using a daikon radish, but the recipe only used half of it. Our listener didn’t know what to do with the other half, and it ended up going to waste. If a recipe calls for an obscure ingredient, try to coordinate with another recipe that week to use up the entire amount or see if you can substitute it for a more common ingredient you know you’ll use up.
Ideas for repurposing ingredients and leftovers
When I buy a head of cabbage, I rarely use the entire thing in one meal, but I do like to use the rest of it in a versatile cabbage slaw. I make a simple slaw with cabbage, shredded carrots, cilantro, lime juice, salt, olive oil, and garlic. It pairs well with tacos, on a sandwich, or just as a crunchy side dish.
If you buy Greek yogurt for tzatziki, you can also use it in a chicken marinade, in a jalapeno ranch dressing, in scones or other baked goods, or as a creamy addition to soup.
Fruit can be frozen and used in smoothies or desserts. Dark leafy greens can be frozen and added to soups or casseroles.
Leftover herbs like cilantro and parsley can be repurposed into sauces like chimichurri and chile verde or you can freeze them in oil for future cooking.
Leftover rice can be turned into fried rice or used in a brothy soup.
I tend to plan a “leftover night” on my weekly meal plan, where we simply eat up all the extra servings and odds and ends we have in the fridge. Sometimes it’s a smorgasbord, but it prevents leftovers and one-off ingredients from going in the trash.
If you’re looking for more ways to avoid food waste and repurpose ingredients, check out our podcast episode on this same topic!
