Wasting Food...

Today's New York Times had an eye opening article about how much food we waste. An estimated 27% of the food available for consumption is wasted by Americans! I have to admit I am guilty of this way more than I should. Poor planning on my part and I would guess a lot of other people is a big reason. How food is packaged does not help. It is only my wife and I and we do not always need such large sizes of things. Especially when a recipe only calls for a small amount. The problem then is what to do with the rest? Better planning would definitely help by picking recipes that use some of the same ingredients. I also have to learn how to cut some recipes down. Too often the recipe will serve 4-6 people and with just my wife and I even planning on eating it over two days we still will have leftover food. One thing we don't do and probably should is plan out our meals a week at a time. Especially since we both work full time that would make things easier on us by knowing in advance what food items we need. Right now we only plan out meals a couple days at a time which means multiple trips to the grocery store. I don't really mind that because that way we can buy the freshest ingredients. Somehow we need to combine buying the freshest best ingredients we can with better recipe planning so we use up all of what we buy. That would be a win-win situation because it would mean less waste ending up in landfills and less expense by using up what we have instead of always needing to buy more. Now I just need to do it...