The No-Waste Challenge

This week, before I came home, I mostly cleaned out the old food from my little fridge. Tomorrow night, I am going to finish cleaning it out and make a thorough accounting of what is in the refrigerator. The food the prior tenant left is definitely going out. The non-frozen stuff anyway. There is some frozen broccoli, a frozen onion and pepper mix, and some frozen fruit that I will use. I also have a pound of ground turkey and a few chicken breasts in the freezer. I want to take stock of what is in my little pantry as well, which isn't much at this point. My milk has definitely gone bad, and I have eggs I need to use. I know what I want to make this week: deviled eggs!

I am severely limited on food storage space, and I abhor the waste created by not being able to buy only what I need at the store. I don't need a whole bag of mini cucumbers every time, and I often have cherry tomatoes leftover after making salads. There is an easy fix for that: cucumber and tomato salad. Sometimes I only need half an onion. Sometimes only a half-bag of cheese. Bread is another big one: I doubt I'll go through a whole loaf before it starts to get stale and/or moldy. The biggest waste of all tends to be fruit. I love mandarin oranges and tangerines, as well as apples, but I only eat so much fruit a day, and I don't always want a citrus fruit. I often end up with half a bag of no-good citrus, or an apple that is starting to get pretty mushy. Once in a while a zucchini gets nasty on me. Something has got to give.

I have a brand new challenge for myself: cooking without wasting perishables.

Keeping in mind that I don't want to eat in a completely unhealthy way, nor do I want to eat out all of the time, I am back on the recipe hunt. The criteria for a "winning" recipe is actually pretty easy. I need to be able to use most or all of the ingredients I buy for it, or the ingredients need to go hand in hand with a secondary recipe for meal prepping. Boring is out, flavor is in. Color is a plus. The recipe has to be fairly simple, easy to make, and require little to no specialty kitchen equipment. Also, I would like the ingredients to be fairly seasonal. I love sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, and collards, but I would also like to try the squashes before they go out of season!

In any case, it is going to be interesting to see if I can pull this off... I'll keep you posted!