Food Waste Friday: The Pantry Raid

I am improving my efforts at reducing our food waste. I've changed the way I shop for food. I ONLY buy what I know we will eat. If I need something that I decided against buying on grocery day, I do with out or run back to the supermarket. There is no law saying I only can go to the market once a week, yet somehow that is what I've always done.

Thanks to this change, my refrigerator is pretty sparse, and at the end of the week our fruit bowl looks like this.

This is a big step for the girl that once bought a crate of oranges simply because they made a pretty still life in her dining room when arranged on a contrasting aqua table runner.

That is not to say there was no food waste this week. My pantry had become a nightmare to use since the baby was born. I just let things pile up for seven months, so I gave myself an hour yesterday to clean it out and reorganize it.

The contents of the pantry filled every bit of counter space in my kitchen.

I figured I would be ruthless with what I kept and tossed, and that I would work quickly to clean and refill the pantry. I even set a timer for myself so I wouldn't exceed the one hour mark.

In the end the whole process took me...

SIX HOURS.

Why?

Every time I would put the baby down, she would do this:



I'm pretty sure research suggests that listening to this sound for more than twenty minutes causes facial tics.

So up she would come for a feeding, or a cuddle, or a dance around the cans I was trying to put back in alphabetical order, and then back into the exersaucer she would go for some more twenty minute lung expansion exercises.

I was lucky that she napped twice yesterday, giving me about a half an hour of baby free time to work. This girl doesn't want to miss out on anything, ao she recharges herself with the teeniest of cat naps.

Kirby also felt I should be devoting more of my time to entertaining him, and less of it to restoring order to my pantry.

His methods were a bit more subtle than the baby's. He left his toys among the cans and would then look up at me expectantly.

I decided to throw out anything that was sprouting, past it's best buy date, or that was served to guests last Thanksgiving. So here is my picture of this week's food waste:

With these guys out of the picture I can now open my pantry without worrying about a sack of flour falling on me. I don't have to feel guilty about not putting that sprouting onion in a pot. It is glorious!

I left these folks on the counter. They are food items that have been sitting in my pantry for over a year, that I am determined to use up THIS WEEKEND. I never again want to open the pantry and see them mocking me for wasting money and space on them.

Please tell me I am not the only one out there anthropomorphizing my canned goods. 

And that you have an excellent recipe for beet apricot sweet potato casserole.

Read other stories of food waste at Frugal Girl's fabulous blog.