Friday, April 06, 2012

Saving theUniverse

Have you seen that TV commercial for "Seal a Meal"? I think the sales pitch begins with, "The average person throws away $5,000 worth of food in a year." I may exaggerate, but it is an astronomical amount that makes me whistle. I hardly spend that much in a years time! Let alone throw it away!

That gave me pause. How much do I actually spend? How much of that do I throw away?

Case in point. Strawberries were 69 cents a pint last week! I bought two! We had strawberry pancakes Saturday morning. I just threw out the other pint and the left overs. Such a waste.

Maybe I need to research that Seal a Meal thing.

I have about $15 worth of veggies and fruits I just tossed out. I read recently that that will emit methane gas into the atmosphere which is more damaging than carbon dioxide. That made me ask, what is my methane footprint?

So with careless abandon I used up the spinach I bought at Farmers Market. In addition I chopped up one of the yellow peppers, peeled the Japanese Eggplant, washed the cauliflower, chopped vine tomatoes and made a colorful skillet dish. Since I was such a roll I tossed the thawed ground turkey I was suppose to have for dinner last night, but opted for a frozen pizza, into another skillet with a chopped up onion. I will add tomato sauce in a few and simmer a nice gravy for the eggplant. After all I still have half a container of ricotta cheese from the week-end.

I have about five lemons from the sale two weeks ago (or longer) where they were 49 cents a bag. You gotta love ALDI. They are on the counter looking at me asking me if I want to make some methane or do I want some lemonade?

At the back of the frig I emancipated a jar of Ice Coffee! In the past I could honestly say I was not a fan of ice coffee. I mean, before Starbucks they brought to you regular coffee poured over some ice cubes. Ugh. But this ice coffee recipe was born from a need to experiment and One Up the Pioneer Woman, who is my nemesis.

Her recipe was so involved and labor intensive. But it looked divine.

What did I do? I made a very strong pot of coffee and poured it in to a large container then dumped in about 10 packs of fake sugar and approximately (as an after thought) three generous tablespoons of my chocolate cappuccino double mocha latte mix (from ALDI also).

That stuff is good! I am not much on milk in my coffee. Had a bad experience with evaporated milk as a child as in my mother was always slipping it into stuff and my young palate was opposed. I suppose it still is.

The chore of cleaning out the refrigerator has evolved into saving the universe and getting a caffeine buzz.

3 comments:

Lori said...

Sounds like you accomplished your mission!

Nelle said...

Several months ago I began to take notice of how much food we were wasting and I was appalled. When I worked I didn't pay attention to these things. On Saturdays I just cleaned out the fridge while making a new grocery list. I now do this mid week and take note of what I have that is getting older. I then make plans to use those items. The fruits or veggies that are too old to use go out in a compost pile. I try not to overbuy these items as not to waste. I try to plan out meals. I feel so much better than when I had to throw out so much. My neighbors have the seal a meal things and use them. I don't normally prep and freeze much so I forget if there are meals in there. Great food for thought for others though...get them thinking.

Lisa :-] said...

I only buy fresh vegetables if I have a recipe for that night's dinner. Otherwise, I have a constant parade of science experiements going on in my crisper drawer! And I finally got the message that a a great sale price on something is that much money wasted if you don't use the item and end up throwing it out!