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Food Waste

February 17th, 2016 at 11:56 pm

The downside to finally paying attention to my finances: I have to face the music for all of my neglect!

I cleaned out my pantry today. I had to throw out a bunch of food that had expired (by at least 6 months)! In total, I lost some faro, red lentils, black beans, kasha and rice (can you tell I was on the "starch shelf"?) Oh, and a bag of chips too. I had gone through the shelf with canned goods too but fared better there.

It was painful, but it's done. And I can now see what I do have, which will hopefully lead to better planning so I don't get caught like this again. To start, I had a bag of wheatberries that I've had forever (no exp'y on the package), so I put them in the crockpot to cook overnight. I read that they'll stay for 2 weeks in the fridge / 1 month in the freezer, so I'll plan on making a few salads with them.

I had previously cleaned out the freezer and fridge, so I know what I have there as well. I'm going to try to use up as much as I can between now and the end of the month and check back in.

In other news, I'm still using You Need A Budget. I'm getting used to it, so I think I'll keep it when the trial runs out. Not as simple as my trusty old Excel sheet, but I guess I need to get into the 21st century at some point!

7 Responses to “Food Waste”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1455754414

    I dislike throwing food out, but it happens to all of us at one time or another!

  2. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1455758436

    How do you know when those kind of things expire? (starches)

  3. mjrube94 Says:
    1455759240

    They all had "best buy" dates on the package. I'm usually not too strict with that, but in this case they were more than 6 months (one back to 2014!) so I figured "better safe than sorry".

    Also, if there is no date, but just a production code, you can usually call the 1-800 number on the package and they'll tell you the date.

  4. PatientSaver Says:
    1455759795

    http://www.stilltasty.com/

  5. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1455761567

    thanks!

  6. mjrube94 Says:
    1455763231

    Great site, @PatientSaver! Thanks for sharing!

  7. VS_ozgirl Says:
    1455793151

    How funny, I had to clean out our pantry on the weekend too! This was due to weevils in the cereal, unfortunately - first time ever that this has happened. There are definitely pros and cons; the pro's being that everything is so easy to find now as there's so much space; the con being that we look like we're poor because the cupboards are so bare! At least also we know what is in date though Smile.

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