According to the USDA almost half of the food transported, grown, and processed in the USA goes to waste. With so many hungry people out there, and the human population putting such a strain on the environment, it is such a waste of our resources to be throwing away food. What is one thing you can do to prevent food waste? Use your freezer.
Let’s say you buy mushrooms from your local grocery store with every intention to use them in your next meal. But you get busy, and you continuously see them in your refrigerator and think “I need to use those mushrooms before they go bad”. Before you know it it’s been two weeks and you find them in the back of your vegetable drawer, moldy and unusable. They end up in the trash or compost. Big bummer for you, your wallet, and the environment.
Let’s say that instead of pushing the mushrooms around in your vegetable drawer, you throw them into your freezer after a week. The mushrooms wait in the freezer patiently, ready to be used. And when you go to make that amazing lasagna with mushrooms, you just grab them out of the freezer and throw them into the dish. Voila! You saved yourself a trip to the store for mushrooms and combated food waste.
You can freeze most foods, including vegetables, fruits, beans, etc. Here are a few examples of my favorite things to freeze:
- Kale
- Spinach
- Grapes
- Mushrooms
- Cooked beans
- Rhubarb
- Zucchini
A few tips:
- I like to “prep” anything that I freeze by washing it and slicing it to whatever size I need for the meal I plan to use it for. For example, if I am going to freeze zucchini for a stir fry, I chop it to the size I like for that dish.
- Sometimes, when you freeze food, it freezes together in one clump. If you want to be able to pick out individual pieces of a frozen food, check out this YouTube video from Going Zero Waste on how to use a baking sheet to freeze items individually.
What are some other ways you like to combat food waste?