Timing Out Your Groceries So You Waste Less
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Don’t you hate to throw away food? You may as well light some dollar bills on fire while you’re at it, because that’s essentially what you’re doing when you toss food into the trash bin. Food is fuel, you need fuel, fuel isn’t free, and so, you just tossed out something you definitely could have used and will need to replace. That’s frustrating. Some groceries can be a mystery though.
You bring home your paper or plastic bags (or reusable cloth ones, if you’re good about remembering those) full of food that’s fresh and bright. You store it in its respective places. Then, a couple of days later, you open that crisper drawer or that pantry door, ready to try a recipe and find that your ingredients have gone…bad. Soggy. Moldy. Soft. Brown. Floppy. What happened?! It’s only been a few days! If you don’t know how to store groceries, they can go bad before their time. That’s one part of the equation. But if you don’t know how to time groceries, there’s almost no avoiding wasting food, even if you store them correctly.
I’m in a place where I need to save all the money I can, so wasting food simply isn’t an option. I’ve started paying close attention to what foods go bad and on what timeline, and there’s less and less compostable goods winding up in the, well, compost. Or trashcan. Or bush outside my front door because I got upset and tossed it there. I often feel like I’m in a race to eat my food before it goes bad, but if I compete in that race, then that means I eat to the point of stuffing myself, and that is a form of wasting food, in and of itself. The secret is timing out those groceries. Here are some tricks.
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Buy a range of bananas
When you buy bananas, buy a range of colors. Buy a few that are still green. Buy a couple that are light yellow. And buy a couple that are bright yellow, and ready to eat. Don’t just buy a bundle of yellow bananas, as you’ll only eat a couple while they’re still in good condition, while the others go brown. You may need to be that annoying person who grabs one banana off one bundle and another off a different one, but at least they’ll ripen at the pace you’re ready to eat them.
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Buy a range of avocados
When buying avocados, buy a range of firmness. Buy a few that are rock hard. Don’t overlook those thinking, “I can’t eat these.” You can in about a week. Buy a couple that barely have some give to them. Buy a couple that are in perfect condition. These, like the bananas, will ripen at the pace you’re ready to eat them. Eat them in order of ripeness, and those rock hard ones will be ready just in time.
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Put soft avocados in the fridge
Put any soft avocados that are ready to eat but that you aren’t ready to eat in the refrigerator. They nearly stop ripening for several days in there, so you can freeze them in time until you’re ready to eat them. Do not put avocados that aren’t yet ripe in the refrigerator as those will also stop ripening, but when you remove them from the refrigerator, rather than continue to ripen, they’ll simply turn brown. They’ll skip right over the ripening phase.
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Pluck out moldy berries
Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to get a box of berries that doesn’t have a bad egg in it. Or, well, a bad berry. Berries are so prone to mold. Unfortunately, once one is moldy, it spreads its mold to the others fast, and a batch of berries that was otherwise perfect turns blue and fuzzy in a matter of days. When you bring your berries home, check the box for moldy ones and pluck those out immediately.
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Make large batches of pasta
Pasta sauce goes bad quickly, developing a little film of mold at the top. It also comes in such large jars that it’s nearly impossible for a single person or a small family to finish one at one meal. I’m constantly throwing out jars of sauce that are only one-third finished. When you make pasta, commit. Make a giant batch, and just eat the leftovers for days until it’s done. If you make enough just for today, and wait until you feel like having pasta again, your jar of sauce will be moldy.
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Eat fresh protein now
Your fresh meat, fresh chicken, and fresh fish. Eat these as quickly as possible, because you cannot risk pushing the best by date on these. Plan your week out and don’t buy more fresh protein than you can get to before it goes bad. There’s no point in buying five days worth of fresh protein if it all has a shelf life of just three days. How will you solve that riddle?
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And this protein later
Once you’ve blitzed through your fresh protein, move onto the non-perishable or slowly perishing stuff. Think canned tuna, canned sardines, beans (canned, or dried), eggs, frozen turkey burgers, etc. But don’t touch this stuff if you still have a perfectly good fresh piece of fish in the fridge and it’s your last day to eat it.
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Put apples in the fridge
Apples can last for months in the refrigerator. In fact, that’s often just what they do at the grocery store. And while you don’t want to push it as much as your chain market does, you can keep these for quite a while in the fridge. Get to the basket fruit (like bananas) first, then eat your berries before they develop mold, and then hit your apples.
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Freeze bread on this day
If you live alone or have a small family, you may not make it through half a loaf of sliced bread before it goes stale. So don’t let it go stale. Store it in the freezer one day before it’s best buy date. When you defrost it, it will be fluffy, just like the day you froze it. And it’s easy to defrost for about 20 seconds in the microwave any time you want toast or a sandwich.
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Eat spinach and other greens ASAP
Spinach goes bad quickly and when it goes bad, it can develop bacteria. Kale doesn’t go bad quickly, per say, but it becomes floppy fast. Same for romaine lettuce. Eat these as quickly as possible. If you don’t know what to do with your spinach, remember that it sautees down to about one fourth its size, so when in doubt, make it hot and it’ll be gone fast.
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Eat mushrooms ASAP
Mushrooms are a form of fungus, so they certainly develop fungus quite fast. Mushrooms love to grow mold, and they can be dangerous to eat once that has happened. If you notice your mushrooms feeling slimy, throw them out. But, hopefully, you just eat them right away so that doesn’t happen. You can’t sleep on mushrooms.
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Floppy zucchini is still okay
Zucchini is surprisingly fine to eat once it’s gone a bit floppy, and it goes floppy quickly, so that’s important to know. If your zucchini has become just a tiny bit soft, you can typically cut it open to find that the inside is still bright white, crisp, and ready for use. So don’t judge your zucchini by its firmness: look on the inside.
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Transfer snacks to zip lock bags
Chip clips, rubber bands, hair ties (or whatever else you use) are good enough, but they still always let air into your snacks, and make them go stale. Buy large ziplock bags so you can transfer things like chips, pretzels, and dried fruit that don’t come in re-sealable packages, into these bags. They should keep these snacks fresh for weeks longer than the original packaging.
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Leave root vegetables for later
Turnips, parsnips, carrots, beets, radishes, and the like—these can stay in good shape in the refrigerator for weeks. When it comes to your veggies, eat these last. They aren’t turning any time soon. So long as they still feel firm, you can eat them. Eat your finicky greens first, and later, roast these root vegetables in the oven with some olive oil, French herbs, salt, and pepper.
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Don’t be picky
Finally (and you may not like this one), if you’re going to stop wasting food, you’re going to have to stop being picky. That will mean often eating what you need to eat (aka what’s about to go bad) rather than what you want to eat. So even if you’d rather have that frozen pizza, you should eat that fresh piece of fish that turns tomorrow.
