Grocery Spending & Reduced Food Waste

As a way to be a bit more accountable and to keep better track of my grocery budget, I’m going to try to have an update every week with any grocery spending. This week we spend $38.91:

Produce

    5 pound bag of carrots - $2.50 (sale)

    1 red onion - $1.67 (sale)

    2 lemons - $1.98

    1 bunch celery - $3.99

    3 organic avocados - $10.47 (… yeah, all the store had was organic - thinking about this now I should     

        have seen how much the pre made guacamole was…)

Diary

    Vanilla bean gelato- $9.99

Meat

Pantry 

Misc

    Romaine lettuce seeds - $2.09

    One of those microwave lunches - $5.99 (I needed to eat something quickly before my dentist     

        appointment so I grab one of these that day)

Household  

I’m excited to see how the rest of the year will play out for us in this area of our budget! It’s the area I feel I can definitely improve and be more mindful - but also an area I feel personal in control. Even with rising food prices and inflation (out of my control), I can choose to be a different consumer (great example above being the avocados and not looking how much the guacamole is). I don’t like assuming anything so I want this data!

A huge focus for us is reducing our food waste. Yesterday, we were invited to a friends for dinner. I made a Skillet Mixed Berry Cobbler  for bring for dessert. The past month or so, whenever we purchase any berries, while I’m cleaning and prepping, I sort my berries. I used to throw out the berries that were subpar or starting to go bad. Now, instead of throwing them out (with some exceptions) I freeze those berries instead. Two weeks ago, G and I had forgotten about some strawberries in the fridge and we had a ton of other fruit to eat up. So I diced up the strawberries and added them to the bag I already had going. Obviously, we try to eat this all fresh but sometimes it doesn’t happen. I feel much better repurposing in a different way than throwing it out. It’s similar to my bag of veggie scraps I have frozen to make stock. Anyways, so I was able to use up all that fruit in the freezer to make the cobbler. The only thing I had to purchase was the gelato!  

A few weeks ago G made a baked spinach artichoke dip. He purchase a giant bag of spinach and didn’t need all of it. We mixed some in for our salad during the week but we still had too much to use. I dehydrated 6 trays of spinach to grind into spinach powder. I’m excited to use this to colour pasta next time we do a big batch! G has also been mixing some into his smoothies. 

Today I roasted a chicken for this weeks lunches and dinners and saved the carcass/skins to make stock later!

I’m lucky I have a lot of space in the freezer to keep all these items for later use but I love getting creative :)

Any tips you want to share about food waste let me know!

- M