food waste

Are you tired of hearing about this yet?

This week saw a few things going into the trash:

• a full bottle of sage. I'm not sure if it started out as ground sage or sage leaves in 1995, but when I pulled it down from the back of the very tip-top kitchen cabinet, which is at least 3 feet over my head, it was sort of fluffy and dusty and had no more fragrance.
• a full bottle of honey mustard. I thought about this before I threw it out because I'm not sure either honey or mustard ever go bad but it had turned dark brown in the bottle and looked more like barbecue sauce. It must have other stuff in it besides honey and mustard.
• a handful of squishy grapes.

Things bought by Mr. Dub who promptly went to France for a week without them, and which I must now deal with:

• a package of fresh spinach
• 1 1/2 bananas

I already put the bananas in the freezer before they had a chance to get freckled, and I am looking into how to freeze fresh spinach. Maybe if I lightly steam it, then squeeze it dry and put it in a freezer bag? It would be good in quiche or lasagna.

On the menu this week:

• Try to eat all the fresh food in the refrigerator/pantry. There are a variety of things - a couple of slices of leftover pizza, one leftover chicken sausage, stuffing, eggs, lots of fresh vegetables, some cheese, some pie crust dough. There is not quite 2 cups of pureed pumpkin which will become pumpkin bread that I will give to some friends. I am trying to spend only $10 for fresh food at the grocery store this week. I have also allotted some money for food storage items depending on what goes on sale.
• I have at least a dozen fresh lemons that I got from my neighbor in a trade. I will try to find some things to make with them.

I rearranged the top shelf in the cabinet where I found the sage and honey-mustard. Now there are things up there that I like to have on hand all the time but that don't go bad, like extra boxes of salt and baking soda.