Category Archives: Household

Best Laid Plans

You’ve read my rants about the importance of menu planning before. What you haven’t seen, though, is such a detailed, step-by-step rundown. As you’ll see, Simple Mom walks readers through her Google Calendar-aided method. It’s quite a system, and one that I think could help many of you cut down on cabinet castaways and forgotten […]

November 3, 2008 | Also posted in Personal | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Who is feeding America? Not America’s Second Harvest, because they’re now called Feeding America. — — I recently interviewed Converted Organics’ CEO Ed Gildea on the company’s fancy pants composting process. They’ve just posted a video showing the first delivery of solid food waste to their New Jersey facility. — — While we’re watching videos, […]

October 31, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Food Recovery, Friday Buffet, International, Waste Stream | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Tacoma’s McNeil Island prison (Correctional Facility if you want to split hairs) is now composting food as part of a larger effort to cut both waste and their budget. — — Interesting discussion of when biodegradable bags don’t live up to their adjective.  Keep in mind that “compostable” trumps “biodegreadable.” And King County, Washington (Seattle) recommends three brands of […]

October 24, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Friday Buffet, Institutional | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

I enjoyed peeking into these food leaders’ fridges. Given the sparsity in most of them, I doubt there’d be much food wasted. For more voyeurism, check out Other People’s Pantries, a recurring feature on The Perfect Pantry blog. — — (With apologies to Shakespeare)          Get thee to a wormery! — — It’s not every day that you […]

October 17, 2008 | Also posted in Composting, Friday Buffet, Restaurant | Comments closed

A Different Dollar Menu

In the One Dollar Diet Project, two high school teachers ate on a dollar a day (each) for a month. (Insert your own joke about teachers’ salaries here.) Christopher and Kerri spent the month of September scrimping to stretch their food dollar (read their rules here) with this goal: We are interested in many of […]

October 16, 2008 | Also posted in Hunger | Comments closed

The ABCs of CSA Excess

In addition to having the coolest environmentalist handle going, Slate’s Green Lantern doesn’t duck the tough questions. Such as: ‘My CSA gives me more food than I can eat…is that bad?‘ In a thorough answer, The Lantern (a.k.a. Jacob Leibenluft) weighs the pros and cons of food waste stemming from bountiful community-supported agriculture (CSA) boxes. […]

October 15, 2008 | Also posted in Farm | Comments closed

Friday Buffet

Sometimes the best intentions–as in bringing food to those who’ve recently lost a loved one–can lead to waste. An interesting look at a specific instance of culturally-driven food waste. — — America’s Second Harvest is having a tough time. That’s not good news, as food banks are going to have more and more customers as the […]

October 10, 2008 | Also posted in Friday Buffet, History and Culture | Comments closed

Tasty Tips

If you’re like me, you can never get enough tips on how to make food last longer. The excellent Love Food, Hate Waste (LFHW) site has a whole bunch of helpful hints, from food prep to storage. I make periodic visits to LFHW, as the British site constantly receives user-submitted tips. My favorites are the […]

October 8, 2008 | Also posted in Storage | Comments closed

Dispose All?

Many of you have written in to ask about a common household appliance: garbage disposals. Specifically, do disposals provide a positive solution for the inevitable household food waste? Recently, Slate‘s Green Lantern examined whether it’s better to put food waste in the trash or zap it with your power ring a garbage disposal. For those […]

October 6, 2008 | Also posted in Waste Stream | Comments closed

Rotten Times

It’s too bad there’s nothing going on in our country, lately. Talk about some slow news days! Sarcasm aside, it seems like now more than ever is a time to be frugal with food. I’m renewing my commitment to get folks to repurpose their leftovers. In other words, find new uses for foods that might […]

October 1, 2008 | Posted in Household | Comments closed