Eating bad food in order not to waste

After reading Mrs. Green’s blog about not wasting food and her count down to September 2nd-8th Zero Waste Week, I attempted diligence all summer long.

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Making baby food

Just wanted to share this with you. Mostly because it is so colorful and pretty. Though Miss Precious has  now moved on to eating real food with tiny fingers, this was a most interesting little ride. My cousin bestowed upon me a baby food book and it mentioned pureeing the food and freezing it into ice trays.

In this one I mixed corn and broccoli.

Norfolk, VA Farmer’s Market

We hadn’t been to the Five Points Community Farmer’s Market in Norfolk for a full year. Realizing that not every town has  a huge farmer’s market like the one I grew up with in south Georgia, I decided to revisit it with a fresh attitude and stop being prejudiced against small, overpriced markets that are doing the best they can. After venting in the organic food post about what Norfolk didn’t have, I decided to write about what they do have.

Packaged food

Packaged food

I’m most surprised by how much packaging we use, especially with food. We compost almost all food waste and paper. We recycle everything else, but the small amount of trash we generate is plastic from packaged foods that cannot be recycled. Not in this area, anyway.

Trash for the week....granola wrapper, cereal liner, dental floss case, bacon packaging

Buying Organic

Buying Organic

Honestly, I have a difficult time buying fruits that are twice as expensive just because it says “organic” on the labeling. Is it really organic? How do I know? Is it an investment in my health or a marketing ploy to get my money?

Making your own food

Making your own food

What we recycle and how to reduce it.

Trying to rid ourselves of the glass jars and cans that we bring into the house, I’m attempting to make as much food as possible rather than purchase it. I’m now making my own peanut butter, bread, hummus, soups, juices, Greek yogurt, muffins, pesto, cappuccino, beans, nut mix, and salsa. I shall next attempt marinara sauce. If I could figure out how to make my own cheese, I would. I’d like to figure out how to make crackers! Besides cutting back on packaging, we’re getting less preservatives, sugar and other goop in our systems we don’t  need.

My man wants to learn how to brew his own beer. Think of the glass bottles we’d save! A friend of his gave us a tour of a self-brewery in his basement and showed us how it was done. The beer, however, hmmm…how could I say it in a nice way? It tasted like lukewarm yeast. But that was years ago. I’m sure he’s perfected it by now!

Gardening

Gardening.

Zucchini for zucchini bread!

Our first garden together was last year. As children we watched our parents garden, but neither of us had ever tried a garden ourselves.

When you rent, you must ask permission. Some owners are more open than others. We’ve been lucky. Not wanting to destroy the yard, however, we took up only a small space. We bought two raised bed sets  so that we could break them down and take them with us when we moved. We didn’t harvest much food. The cherry tomatoes did okay. We had cucumbers out our ears. We had one tiny cantaloupe and a few jalapeno peppers. We planted the seedlings in the peat pots, which didn’t break down and caused the plants to grow root bound. And apparently, you need two of most plants to cross-pollinate. Now we know.