pondering food waste

[kaberett]

I mentioned the other week that my worst failure mode with respect to food waste is doing a big batch cook and then completely failing to have the executive function to put it in the fridge or freezer. I have also been thinking a lot about the One Third Of Food Is Wasted factoid, guiltily, every time I bin some food. Which isn't actually a healthy approach to take (especially as, on extremely cursory further reading, that's one third of food is lost or wasted, of which ~40% of losses happen at the retail and consumer levels).

So, okay, sitting down to write this post has already been useful in that it's calmed me the fuck down about how much consumer-level food waste even happens, but nevertheless I'm gonna talk a bit more about Things I Do At Home.

Other than batch cooking, the major choke points for me are fresh herbs, salads, and miscellaneous dairy products (milk that we don't get through; yoghurt and cheese that we just... forget about). I'm much better, these days, about Being Allowed Nice Things: for some time, I'd buy myself some Nice Food and then Save It as a Treat (with a bonus side of being terrified of scarcity and therefore unable or unwilling to eat it if I didn't have "spares") until it was inedible.

This was Utterly Fucking Miserable and it... has actually been a very long time since I last did that, I think, so that's nice. (How I circumvented that particular failure mode: acquiring a more stable and predictable and much higher income, and also acquiring a live-in carer.)


So. Them's the problems. In terms of actual set-up, we have a large fridge-freezer; the ability to sterilise jars, fill them with things, and store them; an entirely vegetarian kitchen; space to store tinned and dried food in bulk; space to grow some of our own food; and the ability to compost. We also have a me, who is pretty relaxed around death best-before dates and about cutting mould off foods it's safe to do so -- and who is very comfortable looking at What Needs Using Up and turning it into Food.

We are also lucky in that we are able to do fairly small and frequent shops for perishables: A has two supermarkets on the way home from work; if I go down the hill for any reason there's another several large ones. This means it's possible to browse, find fresh food in the reductions bin, and take it from there.


The thing about herbs and salads is that (i) I really like them, (ii) I grew up with herbs on the patio/in the rockery/etc (and a prejudice against dried if fresh is available), and (iii) I resent the price-per-100g increase (and more packaging) on smaller bags of supermarket fresh herbs, so insist on buying the large ones even when it's obviously a bad idea.

My solution to this, now I've got light and space, is a set of tubs on the porch containing rosemary, parsley, garden mint, thyme, sage, and bay. (And wild garlic.) I've also got a pile of salad that I really need to get into the ground at the allotment. Prior to having light and space, I was either skipping them entirely and feeling sad about it, or buying large packs and feeling guilty when they went miserable before I got all the way through them. (Occasionally I'd get my act together to freeze them, but only occasionally; Jack Monroe recommends pesto, but I am not a massive fan of pesto at the best of times.)

We do not buy bananas often, but I avoid them going off by dint of either (i) making banana bread or (ii) peeling them, chopping them, and sticking them in the freezer. (Or sticking them in the freezer whole, if I'm struggling, and then peeling and chopping them at a later date.)

Our flat doesn't have green waste collection (because Why Would It, urgh), but vegetable peelings get sorted into a bag in the freezer (if they can be turned into stock) or straight into the compost bin (if they can't). Once stock has been made (and generally frozen), the peelings then get composted. (Compost is also the end destination, these days, of food we really don't manage to eat: I feel much less bad about compost than I did about landfill.)

Lemon and lime peel also goes into a bag in the freezer, if I'm juicing but not zesting. For bonus points my compost set-up can in fact handle digesting citrus.

Bread used to go mouldy rather more than we'd have liked when we were buying it (usually in plastic); now that we're almost entirely making it at home, we get through a loaf in two days or thereabouts and if it hangs around longer it stales and gets turned into croutons/breadcrumbs/etc. (Joyous thing about staled bread: once it's stale you don't actually have to rush to do anything with it; it can just Sit There.)


Dairy is... a problem. Nice cheese is currently the most frequent victim of Nice Food We Fail To Get Around To Eating (but at least it can be composted). Milk we consume very variable quantities of, but A has a kefir culture and I have the makings for cheese, so milk that is getting to be on the turn gets made into paneer (usually), or sometimes bread (instead of using water), and maybe eventually yoghurt (if I get my act together to learn how the instant pot yoghurt-making function works.)


Batch cooking, I am... trying to get better at keeping the cupboard full of boxes organised, which reduces the cognitive overhead of portioning food up and moving it into the fridge. I'm currently trialling "asking A to put the food into storage", because for me the difficult bit is wrangling all the pieces where for him the difficult bit is noticing it needs done. The other point that is kind of important here is keeping track of what's already even in the fridge and freezer, and making sure the freezer is actually sufficiently organised that I know roughly what's in it and have space to put more stuff without needing to think about it quite as hard.

Okay. Right. This has in fact yielded me some action points, hurrah, in addition to reassuring myself that (i) I really don't throw away a third of the food we purchase uneaten (or even compost it) and (ii) no actually people... don't... by and large... throw away 30% of food they buy, unless they are Spiders Georg.

Said action points being:

• sort out the freezer, Alex, and maybe make a list of things that are currently in there
  
• reorganise the tubs cupboard, urgh >:(
  
• maybe consider setting up Actual Reminders to Eat The Nice Cheese, when you get it, in addition to just buying less of it in the first place
  
• work out a way to automate or at least facilitate Asking A To Put The Batch Cooking Away

... and this isn't neat and pretty and elegantly concluded, but please do by all means collectively go ahead and make suggestions/have opinions/ask questions/discuss in general...

Comments

[kaberett]

I SHOULD IN FACT EXPLICITLY SAY that a lot of this guilt and anxiety is Some Bullshit that all else aside is super fuckin' ableist; it's just that given my specific circumstances it is easiest for me to deal with it by... composting as much as possible. This does not mean that the guilt-and-shame is right-and-proper, or that my approach is The Only Way, or anything; it is Here Is How I Am Choosing To Deal With It In My Own Context.

(In full recognition of the fact that an allotment being run on broadly organic principles is much less resource-efficient than many of the other options available...)

[sylvaine]

... this is a good reminder to me to Actually Eat The Nice Cheese, thank you!

[kaberett]

HA. You are welcome!

[sporky_rat]

The yoghurt function basically scalds the milk, then you add the chunk of culture after it's had a chance to cool a bit to a slightly more reasonable temperature.

Bam. Yoghurt.

(I used to make yoghurt for bread, I actually can't eat it otherwise.)

[sporky_rat]

Er. There is some babying the instant pot does of the milk-and-culture. It doesn't go 'bam' instantly.

[conuly]

If I had suggestions about moving food from "prepared" to "stored" I'd give them to you. Alas, I'm merely happy that I'm not the only one.

[kaberett]

ahahahaha lolsob no, no you are not.

[ironed_orchid]

When I batch cook, I serve everything into bowls (for eating straight away) and storage containers at the same time. I tend to leave the containers on the bench to cool while I eat, and stick them in the fridge or freezer when I take my dishes to the sink. This also means I can soak pots if necessary.

If I'm taking leftovers to work for lunches, then I put things like rice and curry into the same container. If I'm going to be eating leftovers at home, then I put each component into a separate container, and often put half in the fridge and half in the freezer.

Mostly I cook two to three times the amount that will be eaten straight away, which means it can get eaten within 5 days if I don't mind having the same meal several times in a week. If I am making soups, stews, and stocks then I make a full pot and freeze most of it*.

Maybe you and A. could somehow incorporate storing food into your dish washing/stacking routine?

Over time I've decided that it is more important my mental health and eating habits to accept that some food waste would happen, and to do what I can when it comes to composting and reusing scraps. Like most waste, the amount a household generates is very small compared to the amount that gets wasted before it reaches consumers.

*I don't make these very often, which means I can rotate through things in the freezer and not run out of space.

[kaberett]

Huh.

I normally get A to serve (because, again, I... am not great at the Putting Things In Containers set), and I tend to go "well if we're eating it again tomorrow I can leave it in the pan to get heated up again more easily", but "you are clearly not going to eat this for a week straight, PORTION MOST OF IT UP" as a thing to do While Serving is... sensible. Thank you. (Means I need to keep the worksurfaces slightly clearer/more organised than I've been managing, but that's no bad thing.)

And I can probably actually decide in advance whether it's going to be lunchfood or freezerfood, which means the fact we have different sizes/shapes/etc of box for the two contingencies doesn't have to be blocking (or at least I can tell A how to subdivide things and he can cheerfully get the appropriate boxes even though that's the step where my brain shorts out).

Dish-washing/stacking: hmmmm, maybe. We mostly use the dishwasher and I tend to be the person doing any washing-up-by-hand; I suspect for me at least it would be a "too many jobs out once, out of cucumber error, reboot universe" sitch but it might not be for him.

Thoughts thoughts thoughts.

[alatefeline]

This is me having a sympathy! Also actually quite admiring all the excellent work you and your household are doing in terms of using up food and ex-food.

(I have been cooking batches of food, half-assing putting it away, and ... not eating it? And then eating three bowls of it in a rows? And then feeling bored and sad and buying food bars.)

[kaberett]

yupppp. this is part of my problem with batch cooking also, though I'm getting better at managing to eat the same thing multiple meals in a row (possibly because it's now my cooking rather than my parents'/father's cooking...)

[archangelbeth]

Depending on how you store food in the freezer, a permanent marker/freezer marker and scrawling "name of food and date" on it might be helpful? (It's how we handle leftovers... We, alas, go out to eat a lot. At least we're helping the economy... -_- Leftovers get composted, or feed the wildlife. -_-)

I am all for reminders to Eat The Nice Cheese! Mmm, cheese.

(I am so happy that we got a composting bin for Xmas. Unfortunately, it doesn't work too well in sub-freezing temps! Oops. >_> )

[kaberett]

<3

Marking up food that goes in the freezer is something I am... patchy about, but A is fine to ask me what's which and have me sort it out from there; the issue is more that we Forget, so probably I should reinstitute "having a list on the outside of the freezer". Which I haven't done yet in this flat because the small white board I use for the purpose is... not something that fits anywhere conveniently, but maybe the thing to do is to just fucking make a Trello board with poor grace. (Okay I just asked A and he said "probably yes", so thank you, I think that's that problem sorted.)

[fyreharper]

I, er. Also have the hoarding-the-nice-thing-until-it-dies problem. Particularly stuff that is difficult or impossible to reacquire! Am not entirely certain how to get past that one, but it’s kind of problematic for the honey cupboard (see also: honey cupboard, existence of >_> ), among other things.

(It is entirely possible that 30% of the produce I buy gets wasted. But not of food overall.)

[kaberett]

... I have so much sympathy on the topic of the honey cupboard. (we only have about... three... jars of Special Honey at the moment? but I FEEL YOU.)

[ewt]

When I batch cook I am batch cooking for three of us, usually.

Things that have helped:
- buying a lot of single-serving containers that stack inside each other and have matching lids. The tubs cupboard is still kindof overwhelming, but nowhere near as bad as it was. Larger tubs are now used so seldom that they go in a different cupboard.
- when I get to a "wait for something to happen" point in batch cooking, I get out as many containers as I think I need
- I tend to schedule a batch cooking day and that will need to be a day without other commitments
- half of what I batch cook goes in the refrigerator, half in the freezer. This means we don't get sick of Whatever Soup before it goes questionable. It also means when the freezer is very full I don't batch cook, instead we eat things that Past Me made or do smaller meals on an ad-hoc basis

Gripes:
- the containers that stack inside each other are not oven safe; I don't have enough similar-sized oven safe containers that I can do another batch of oven-reheatable things before we finish the first lot, and this irks me
- housemate's desirable portion sizes seem to fluctuate a lot more than mine
- washing up is still sortof an issue sometimes (I think other people should wash the cooking dishes if I cooked; other people appear to think washing out their containers after eating the food therein is sufficient contribution; I have not yet worked out a good way of communicating about this)

[ewt]

By matching lids, I mean interchangeable.

[kaberett]

- matching containers: I am increasingly Just Using Yoghurt Tubs (because The Collective Dairy make my-current-favourite yog, and their tubs are conveniently portion-sized, so that helps). so: hmm maybe I should more aggressively Get Rid Of the ones that *aren't* yog tubs/lunch boxes, and generally consolidate more.
- hmmmmmm re getting-out-a-number-of-containers; perhaps this is a thing I should incorporate (though it would probably benefit from me managing to keep the kitchen surfaces a little clearer)


re gripes: things like lasagna/sherpherd's pie/etc can, for what it's worth, but portioned up, wrapped in foil, *and then frozen one portion at a time in foil*. The whole lot can then just get bunged in the oven.

[silveradept]

Empathy about worries and things with regard to keeping refrigerators and freezers cleaned out an unspoiled. The Previous Relationship had a bad habit of buying things up in large quantities and then sticking them in placed where they would be forgotten until they spoiled. So I have been resisting getting more food storage (that probably is necessary) because I am concerned that doing so will result in food getting spoiled or otherwise left until it is inedible. There has been negotiations about what would actually go into the food storage that is not seen on a daily basis to prevent this.

I do like the idea of getting your storage containers out as soon as possible, so as to make it easier cognitively and physically to get anything not immediately consumed into storage and into a refrigerator or freezer. (I use a plastic set that is multiple sizes with bottoms and lids that can work with each other.)

[kaberett]

<3

Yes, it is Helpful that I tend to keep a really pretty accurate mental map of what food we have where.

I have grudgingly worked out (in conversation above) that at least some of what I want to do about Food That Is Out Of Sight And Potentially Out Of Mind is... another Trello board. Because we've got a tablet with the housework Regularly on, and we've got some shared Trello boards anyway (for shopping and house maintenance and relationship maintenance) so actually setting up another one with "this is what's in each of the out-of-sight locations, here's when it needs eating by [as due dates]" probably fits quite well with our existing workflow.

[damerell]

A step forward for me was realising all the fruit and veg I use in the fruit and veg blending device can be frozen on purchase - sure, it would turn into a horrible mush if thawed, but by a happy coincidence, I'm going to mush it anyway. I think buying it and not mushing it in time was my major source of food wastage.

[kaberett]

HA. Yes. This is more or less my situation with the bananas.

[momijizukamori]

I wish we could like, combine our powers or something, because I am generally pretty good at getting stuff portioned and put away, but bad at picking out recipes and getting supplies for them.

Also as someone who worked in a grocery store for a while, I guarantee you that if 40% of waste is retail/consumer level, probably 80% of THAT is at the retail level. I probably tossed a good twenty pounds of produce a shift (well, composted - we had a massive bin that got picked up once a week). And there would generally be four or five of us a shift, with three shifts or so, all doing about the same amount.

[kaberett]

ahahaha lolsob yes.

(this is a thing where A is Very Convenient -- in many respects he is The Wrong Kind Of Autistic e.g. he's a diifferent-foods-mustn't-touch autistic and I'm a gotta-have-some-of-everything-in-each-mouthful autistic -- but this also means that a lot of the time we are Complementary Autistics provided we respectively remember that asking the other person to do the bit that's hard for the requester IS NOT AN IMPOSITION, it is ACTIVELY A GOOD THING, it makes everything work better! which can be difficult, because Asking Someone Else To Do The Hard Thing So I Don't Have To feels shitty & I feel guilty about it, and internalising "yeah but it's not hard for him" is a work in progress...)

[cadenzamuse]

I think our food system breaks down at the "communicating between the adults" level? T gets frustrated that he bought food for me to eat and it went bad and I never knew it existed. But I also am not the cook in our house, and so while I think I would design our food systems more optimally, I try to...not? Because I don't want to backseat drive T. (But oh man, I do rather wish we saved bits and made stock, and that T. LABELED THINGS when he makes them and puts them in fridge or freezer. I have a Gigantic Squick around raw or spoiled meat so am unlikely to go opening the unlabeled containers for the one I know is What I'm Looking For and Still Good.)

I do want to get our compost set up better, so I would love to hear your composting set-up.

[kaberett]

I think our food system breaks down at the "communicating between the adults" level? T gets frustrated that he bought food for me to eat and it went bad and I never knew it existed.

Ooooh.

I think one of the ways A & I approach this is to specifically say to each other, with great excitement, "I got you a present! look at the present I got you!", where we are treating "a vegetable you like" as "a present", such that there is explicit communication about what exists in the house and we get to practise feeling actively good about & grateful to each other in a bunch of small ways on a near-daily basis (which ties in to my having trained him into walking up to me and going "I demand a small praise! I did [A Thing]!" (largely by doing it to him myself and explaining why I was doing it, i.e., communication about what has happened & about making visible work put in to the shared household that might otherwise go unnoticed, etc). Dunno how that might fit in to your collective lifestyle.

But I also am not the cook in our house, and so while I think I would design our food systems more optimally, I try to...not? Because I don't want to backseat drive T.

I think I find this a bit surprising? In the sense that A & I *know* we have different strengths, so I've got very used to us saying to each other "hey I think I might have a way to optimise That Thing You Do, wanna talk about it?" and have it all be good & fine & collaborative, but yes, okay, fair enough, I can in fact see how it would not work out that way.

(But oh man, I do rather wish we saved bits and made stock, and that T. LABELED THINGS when he makes them and puts them in fridge or freezer. I have a Gigantic Squick around raw or spoiled meat so am unlikely to go opening the unlabeled containers for the one I know is What I'm Looking For and Still Good.)

SYMPATHY. (A little while before I moved out of my parents' house, my brother... got... a snake. I... started avoiding the freezers.)

Re stock: I am massively massively pro Dedicated Freezer Bag. I have a big metal two-tier steamer, and as and when it's time for stock I reserve the cooking water from some vegetables I've made anyway, dump it in the steamer, then dump the vegetables IN THE BASKET and provide enough water to cover, and then I can just leave it to simmer and all I've got to do when it's done is lift the steamer out, it's pretty great.


I do want to get our compost set up better, so I would love to hear your composting set-up.

... ahahaha. Alright. So.

My main compost bin is a Hot Bin, which are manufactured in the UK and I have... no idea if they're in any way reasonably available in the US but I suspect not (and they're expensive enough over here is as). They have many good points, including "routine interior temperatures of 50-60°C means it's possible to compost a lot of stuff that you simply can't put in a cold composter" (e.g. compostable starch kitchen caddy liners, hair, cardboard/paper-based cotton buds, citrus, PLA filament waste from 3D printers, etc etc etc) and also "makes compost really rapidly" and "doesn't require making sure that you provide it the correct delicate balance of nitrogen and carbon".

So.

My compost set-up is a Full Circle kitchen caddy by the sink, into which goes a mix of (1) kitchen and household waste and (2) shredded paper (conveniently A is very consistent about shredding his financial paperwork, so I have a steady supply). I mention Full Circle specifically because it's the first caddy I'd seen that is set up with airflow in mind, and is absolutely and unequivocally the least vile kitchen caddy I have ever met, basically because it doesn't fall into the trap of lots of miserably slimy anaerobic decomposition while I'm getting my act together to take it out. That gets taken to the plot when full, once or twice a week, and mixed into the bin along with whatever weeds I pull up (IT RUNS HOT SO IT COOKS PERENNIAL WEEDS, I can compost perennial weeds, it is GREAT) and Some Wood Chip (to provide structure/aeration). Currently the woodchip is sourced from All The Wood That Had Been Left Lying Around My Plot To Slowly Rot, but the council also conveniently provides woodchip so I get to use that, too, as and when I've used up my pre-existing supply of etc.

Here is a full list (pdf) of The Kinds Of Things I Can Feed It. It's p great. (And is going to live inside the greenhouse and provide it a small amount of heating as and when I've got my act together to put the glass back in.)

[azurelunatic]

"average household wastes 1/3 of food" factoid actualy just statistical error. average household wastes nearly 0 food. Food Waste Georg...

[kaberett]

Y U P