Friday, February 4, 2011

Food Waste Friday

We have been keeping a close eye on what is heading into our composter and this watermelon is the only food waste from this week.  We looked into getting a juicer this past week off kijiji so we could use up all the left over fruits to make juice.  I am wondering if I could freeze the fruit that have bruised till I have enough to make a liter of juice?
We do this with our veggie's to make veggie broth after someone suggested it to us months ago.


Here is a picture of our first attempt at making the vegetable broth.  We haven't used it yet, but we've been told it is really good to cook your rice, quinoa and couscous instead of water.  My family loves white rice, and one day I will tell the story of my husband being a "vegetarian" when we met back in university which will explain why I am not such a big fan of it anymore!

Anyways, rather than adding more energy to produce tetra packs of veggie, chicken, and beef broth we are committing to making it ourselves from now on.  All we did was instead of throwing our vegetable peelings, and wimpy veggies in the composter we scraped them into a ziploc bag in the freezer to save till we were ready to make the broth.  We put the veggies in our slow cooker on low for 12 hours, along with water, salt, pepper and a couple of bay leaves.  Once cooked, strained the vegetables and were left with 4 liters of broth.
 

 So along with not adding more recycling to be processed we are keeping $ in our bank.  Appoximately $2.50 a tetra pack that we use about 6 a month vs $0 that we can use indefinately. Also, in the past few years I have had a hard time doing groceries because of fatigue and the strain in puts on my shoulder.  Lately without all the packaging I don't find it as daunting because there is little lifting of heavy cans and tetra packs.  There is always a silver lining to everything. Sweet.


Here is what I forgot to post last week, we were going to have pesto for dinner but when we went to use it realized that we had purchased a condiment without preservatives and it had expired 3 months prior..ewe.



Have a great weekend!  Hopefully we'll all get a good rest tonight so we can head out for a couple of hours at  Winterlude tomorrow.  Thank goodness for free entertainment in the Capital for 3 weeks!  We can pace ourselves and the kids can go back again (and again).  We'll have to remember our reusable mugs for hot chocolate with our Beavertail's so we don't miss out on their favorite snack too.

Erin

2 comments:

  1. We do the exact same thing to make broth (well, my husband does...). I freeze fruit a fair amount too. We just cut up a papaya for the first time, but the kids aren't big on it, so I threw it in the freezer to make smoothies with later. I've frozen watermelon before too, both in pieces and as chunks. Hope that helps a bit!

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  2. Bravo for doing all this and to share with all of us.I'm wondering, don't you find it hard to do this on a regular basis? I recycle almost everything...now I need a compost bin in my backyard so I can do even more for our environment. Wishing you the best and hopefully one day I do the same thing as you.

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