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- cross-posted to:
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Buy food that has a long shelf life - lentil, rice, beans, canned vegetables, salsa jars. As a bonus it also doesn’t have to be refridgerated.
You now have gout from eating too many preservatives.
That’s … not what causes gout.
High sodium intake from too many processed foods can absolutely cause gout.
Utter nonsense.
If you say so, I’ll just keep taking my allopurinol so my foot doesn’t swell up again.
That! And then forget you have them for three years because ADHD.
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My problem isn’t that I don’t use what I buy, the problem is that I buy too much. Like the recipe I need calls for one stalk of celery, but I can only buy an entire celery plant, like 11 stalks in a bundle because that’s all the store offers. What do I do with the remaining 10 stalks?
Keep them in the fridge. Find other recipes that use celery. It’s quite versatile and keeps for quite a long time in the fridge! A lot of French recipes call for mirepoix (celery, carrots, onions; all diced) and Italian dishes call for soffritto which is the same thing. A ton of soups and pastas use mirepoix/soffritto as a base.
Now get out there and cook some celery, carrots, and onions!
That’s your Mel planning, although I’d eat celery by itself.
For example I just bought a bunch of fresh dill because I needs it for one recipe. However I found a side dish that also used dill. Then the next morning I made bagels and lox with fresh dill, and successfully used it up.
I have a harder time with spices and sauces: so many sitting on my counter because they don’t fit in the spice cupboard. However at least they last a bit, giving me more chances to finish them
Freeze stuff
Walk yo and from the grocery store
Buy stuff that will last a while
Grow your own produce
- Get a big freezer. It’s really surprising how much delicious stuff you can make just from frozen stuff that can last you forever. Frozen food is also often more fresh and with microwave and air fryer the prep of anything frozen is actually not very difficult.
- Outsource as much as possible. Often it’s really hard to outcompete efficient kitchens. I don’t mean order Uber eats or something but there’s likely a place in your vicinity that does food prep where you can take your food containers and stock up for 2-3 days. You can even freeze some dishes.
Wife and I really did the math because we feared of becoming lazy and it makes absolutely zero economic sense to cook everything at home right now unless you want to treat yourself or live in a very economically unusual places where #2 is not accessible.
Meal plan. Write what you’re cooking for the week, buy only ingredients for that.
Anything uncooked goes in the freezer, you can defrost and cook/reheat a lot of food, stop throwing stuff away.
Problem is that some of us have freezers the size of matchboxes, so it is very limited what leftovers we can put in the freezer. It’s something I have attempted to tell my parents who have big freezers and lots of good ideas to how you can buy this and that in bulk and just freeze it for later and save so much money!! Cool. But my freezer is still the size of a matchbox.
That doesn’t stop you from Meal Planning ahead and only buying what you need for that week.
And leftovers can often make great soups, stews, and curries. They can last in the fridge for about a week.
Sure, but I just wanted to point out that some of us do not have freezers that can store a lot of food. Whenever I see people being like “just freeze the leftovers” I look at my freezer like “how?”. If I put a bag of beans, a bag of ice and some springrolls in there, it is filled to the brim.
People shouldn’t assume that everybody have tons of space to store perishable foods. That’s all.
In my household we usually go for small packs of food when we shop groceries. Meats and vegetables etc. We go for small sizes because we don’t want to end up throwing out food. It’s not cheaper, but it is less wasteful in the long run.
I gave multiple ways to reduce food waste. You only responded about the freezer and clung to it, you’re still talking about it. If you have your own method to not waste food then this post and my comment aren’t about you, stop playing the victim.
I’m not playing victim. I’m just pointing out that some people have tiny freezers.
Then use any other of the methods suggested, stop going on about freezers!
You really do not have to be this aggressive, my dude. I don’t have meal planning issues, I just wanted to bring up one aspect of meal planning that doesn’t always work for everybody.
People work with what they have, I just wanted to mention the thing about freezers because people tend to always assume that everybody has a lot of freezer space, which isn’t the case. That is all. No need to get all bent out of shape over it.
I have a reasonable sized freezer, not a huge one, but I feel like if I put a bag of ice in it I’d have very little space. Ice cube trays will leave you with more room.
Very true! It does feel like playing tetris with that little box sometimes, haha.
This is valid and identifiable!
Protip: Save up, buy a dedicated freezer. Like a “redneck hunter’s garage” style one. Nothing fancy, just a white box with a dial on the front for how cold you want it. Cheaper than the fancy flashy fridge freezer combos, and much more usable space (although you have to stack stuff inside). A lot cheaper than you’d expect. They also come in a variety of sizes, from small to “I need space for three bodies”.
Awesome. Where should I put it? I live in a small apartment. My kitchen is the size of a shoebox.
Pro tip
Move to a bigger house
Can’t afford it atm. Not everybody is rolling in money xD
Pro tip: earn more money
What a wonderful community this is.
Drawback, you’ll likely have to defrost those regularly.
Defrosting isn’t a big deal. I decide what I want to eat tomorrow, I take it out the freezer and put it in the fridge, by the time I want to eat its defrosted and good to reheat.
Pretty sure they mean in terms of scraping out ice that can build up on the walls of the inside.
Oh of course! Now I feel dumb.
I’m lucky my freezer has some anti-frost thing built in so I haven’t had to yet, but yeah my old freezer was a pain for it.
Buy more fruit in summer and cereals in winter.
I’ll only buy something perishable when I need it. I tend to cook for 3-4 days in one go in order to make cooking for only myself somewhat economical. I tend to visit the supermarket every other day so I don’t really have to plan too much.
Meal planning is overwhelming to me, so I made a habit of rotating a selection of staple meals with fewer, more stable ingredients. PB or eggs scrambled with cheese on toast for a breakfast. A salad of chickpeas, carrot, broccoli and avocado with a whole-wheat roll, or a lentil/rice bowl, for lunch. Precook larger batches of freezer-friendly staples like chickpeas, lentils, rice, turkey burgers, meatloaf, tomato gravy - reserve 2-3 days’ supply and freeze portioned batches of the rest. Allow yourself less experimental ingredient buys per grocery run - so if it turns out they don’t synergize with your staples, you’re not accumuating a lot of dead-end ingredients.
This is actually a real issue for a lot of people. The solution that I found is that you should sit down and write out a meal plan for the upcoming week. Like actually sit down and plan out your every meal and include snacks as well. Then write down the things you need to buy for those meals and snacks. Make sure you only put down things that you actually like eating.
When you go shopping take that list with you, and only buy the things you wrote on there and only buy amounts for the meals you’re planning for. If by the end of the week, you bought too much, then that means there are meals in your planner that you don’t really like. From there, you can refine your list and make improvements every week.
Only buy stuff you’re excited to eat
That’s how you get diabetus
A slow cooker helps. You can use random ingredients before they go bad easily enough, and you will have left overs so cooking one time results in not having to cook for multiple meals.
If you don’t have a good sized freezer, buy one. There are small ones that fit in any home.
Too many veggies? Chop them up and put them in quart sized containers. You can add them to any soup or stew.
I have a five quart pot; make chili/stew/soup and freeze in pint size containers.
My house has a good freezer, here’s the first i searched out as an example.
Clean-up is what stops many people. Get a good titanium no-stick pan - I like “Our Place” pans. Get individual portion meats or frozen meats or buy bulk and freeze in portions. Do the same with vegetables. Heat your seasoned pan up then put some oil in just before you put meat in. Cook meat until almost done, then add vegetables to same pan - heat them up. Serve. Let pan cool while you eat. Refrigerate left-overs. Rinse and wipe pan down. Wash dish. DONE.
I just hunt and eat the homeless. I work for the municipality so I just leave what I don’t eat around park benches, bus stops and the front of stores to scare the rest away.
I do this sort of thing with pets from the animal shelter
