<p>You know – mushy zucchinis you find in the back of the veggie drawer. Moldy rolls you left in the basket on the counter too long. Half-opened jar of spaghetti sauce you stuck in the back of the fridge.</p>
<p>If I didn’t have to throw out food I’ve let get rotten, I’d be rich[er]. </p>
<p>Has anyone used those vacuum bag machines to keep food fresher? Are they worth it??</p>
<p>They work but you need to use them regularly to save money and most people I know don’t have the discipline to vac seal the cucumbers each time they use one. I think it makes the most sense in large families where you need to buy a lot of produce at once.</p>
<p>I used to cook only a portion of veggie packs with the intent to make a different dish out of the rest later - and then had throw out mushy zucchinis etc. Nowadays, I use everything and just freeze the prepared food in containers or ziplock bags, which work ok for short-term freezing. </p>
<p>Requires discipline. One reason going to Sweet Tomatoes is a nice treat- all the various veggies at once without needing to eat hem for every meal the whole week. I can’t see spending all of that money on a single purpose gadget and buying special bags. Not environmentally sound?</p>
<p>A trick for cucumbers- I peel, quarter, remove the seeds and store in an open plastic bag to help them last longer. Keeping the air out of the spinach leaves helps- we get rid of stems and store in an ordinary plastic bag which we flatten before closing. I wash the head of lettuce and store in an open bag as well to prevent rust. Cook and freeze those veggies that were only good fresh a few days. I store onions and potatoes in the refrigerator instead of finding rotten ones in a cupboard. One of the few times to wish for the full nest is when buying those fresh foods and cooking items that are best not frozen.</p>
<p>I am bad about this and getting worse as kid #1 is now out of the house. I am still cooking for 4 a lot of the time.</p>
<p>We go to the market several times a week. And just buy what we need.</p>
<p>I thought this thread was going to be about this.</p>
<p><a href=“U.S. Lets 141 Trillion Calories Of Food Go To Waste Each Year : The Salt : NPR”>U.S. Lets 141 Trillion Calories Of Food Go To Waste Each Year : The Salt : NPR;
<p>I recently put up a large chalkboard label, like these only larger:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.staples.com/Martha-Stewart-Home-Office-with-Avery-Chalkboard-Labels-Flourish-3-3-4/product_366167?cid=PS:GooglePLAs:366167&KPID=366167”>http://www.staples.com/Martha-Stewart-Home-Office-with-Avery-Chalkboard-Labels-Flourish-3-3-4/product_366167?cid=PS:GooglePLAs:366167&KPID=366167</a></p>
<p>on the cabinet next to the frig. I write down what is in there that people can eat. This has cut down on the containers of leftovers that migrate to the back of the frig and rot. It doesn’t help the rotting vegetables/fruit problem, though. It’s particularly bad in the summer when things go bad so quickly. I try to use things up. I make DS a fruit salad most days, and I add vegetables to pasta and soups.</p>
<p>If you have a compost pile, at least you can get some good out of the expired veggies.</p>
<p>Keep chickens.</p>
<p>Mainly I tend to chop up raw veggies and stick them in a bag in the freezer to use later as a soup base. Every once in awhile I’ll stick a bunch of veggies in the crock pot. After I make soup base I can freeze what I don’t use – I but them in a silicon tray to make larger 2-inch square cubes – and once frozen the cubes can be transferred to a freezer bag for saving. That can also be used to freeze leftover sauces – I’ve also frozen coconut milk. I wouldn’t wait for the leftovers to get old before freezing – I’m cooking for 1 most of the time, so this is my solution for the fact that I would’t be using up everything in the can or jar in the first place. Though I have quite buying canned tomato sauce and instead have been buying tubes of tomato paste instead - so that cuts down on one area of potential leftovers.</p>
<p>I am not nearly as efficient about all of this as I would like to be.</p>
<p>The other thing is to keep ethylene absorbing packets in the produce drawer of the frig. (like Blue Apple) The produce really does last longer.</p>
<p>One more trick I’ve found - if I rinse fresh fruit like berries in a bowl of water with white vinegar before putting them in the frig, that seems to prevent them from getting moldy. A solution of 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water seems to work fine for me. Also works for smooth skinned veggies left out to eat (such as plums) – but I did not have good results trying that with apricots. Nothing frustrates me more than to have to throw out a whole container of fresh fruit because of mold. </p>
<p>We freeze leftovers in single serving glass containers with lids. H takes them to work for lunch. Not much to throw out- we buy limited food for the week.</p>
<p>I think I need to buy less at a time. I guess I’m still buying as if we had two teenaged boys in the house.</p>
<p>Berries last longer if you pour boiling water over them, and I suspect that might work for other things too.</p>
<p>Right now we are suffering from CSA shock. It’s a combination of more vegetables than we really want to eat, plus too many things I don’t really want to eat. You can get sick of greens pretty quickly!</p>
<p>I’m also having a hard time scaling back and I never even had big eaters! I have one of those seal a meal things but only use it for big leftovers, like ham or for garden veggies. I feel guilty whenever I use plastic and the seal a meal plastic is heavy. I doubt that it will ever decompose. The worst waste is if I pick something from the garden, forget about it and it goes bad. :(</p>