Frugal Fridays

Food Waste Fridays
Follow Fridays
Food Hop Fridays
Foodie Fridays

I thought about a number of topics to write about on Fridays, and they all seem to have one thing in common (at-least for me). Frugality is not a bad word, and right now while I am seeking Financial Freedom it is my word. I have never thought being frugal was a bad thing. Being stingy or being cheap, those are bad words. I have read blogs that have promoted doing things in the name of frugality (stealing toilet paper for businesses, etc.) and that is not what Frugal Fridays is about. 

Frugal Fridays is about my efforts (and failures) at being frugal along my road to financial freedom. I have never lived a lavish lifestyle, but there are certainly time when I am less than frugal. This will be my attempt to be accountable to my frugal lifestyle.

Food Waste Fridays, I have followed more than one blogger who participated in Food Waste Fridays, but I personally cannot see devoting an entire post to just my own personal food waste. If I am wasting that much food each week, I have a bigger problem. Certainly my food waste has increased over the past year and I believe I can link that directly to stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed and having no control. 

Today I can tell you that I have 1 cup of mashed sweet potatoes, from Thanksgiving to throw away. I had originally frozen them. But then I got them out for Lu to eat one day and she did not. I should have then made them into something, a sweet potato cake or something. But I did not and now they are not safe to eat. I have 1 cup of red quinoa to throw away. This was something Lu made and did not finish. Again I should have thrown it in the freezer for later use or used it up myself. There was a package of romaine hearts. These had begun look slimy and smell off. I salvaged the bases which I will cut up for tacos in a day or two, as well as half of a zucchini. Again I cut out the part that was no good and salvaged the rest. It will need to be used up soon (maybe a hash with some onions, peppers and mushrooms).


While I am on the topic of food that needs to be used up, I also have 2 over ripe avocados. I have no idea if they are still good (or how to tell if they are good). So I'm going to Pop out for some googling....and there is no definitive on whether or not it is safe to eat. I have in the past used soft/smooshy avocados to make chocolate mousse. So I guess I'll cut into these two later today and see how the look, smell and taste. If all goes well I'll have some yummy chocolate mousse, if not I'll update my food waste.  

Additionally, I have 4 pomegranates in my fridge from way back in September. They have lost their bright red color and seem to look dehydrated. I'll see if I can salvage any seeds for use in smoothies. Then there are carrots which have been around for a maybe a month. Some left over bagged salad from last week, and some mini oranges that should be investigated. The last thing to deal with is sweet potatoes.They have started to get spots and look "dried up". So I'll cook up the ones that have spots and scoop out the flesh to freeze for Lu to use in smoothies. I might give the pup and kitties a little treat of sweet potato as well. 

One of the good things about evaluating my food waste and food situation is that I can look at what needs to be eaten, used or frozen and plan the next week's meals from there. Given that my food budget is $368 per month to feed three adults. Yeah I said adults. Both of my kiddos are taller than I am, and eat as much if not more than I do. That is what SNAP has determined is required to feed the three of us 3 meals a day 30/31 days in a month. Fortunately for me, Lu does spend 2-3 days with her father where I only have to feed her either breakfast or dinner. Even still it is tough and if it hadn't been for the Friends of the Rochester Public Market's campaign giving me $2 extra dollars for every $5 of EBT at the public market (and lots of supplementing) I would not have survived. 

I know some will make the argument that SNAP counts on kids of school age receiving at least Lunch at School (and some breakfast too), but there is no box on the application to indicate that I home school one of my children, or to indicate food allergies. I'll be doing a separate post on Food Stamps in the near future. But even my Lu can rarely eat at school. She cannot eat Gluten, Rice, Soy, Grains (except on very rare occasions), legumes, etc. She cannot even eat off the school salad bar, because despite having more than one Celiac student enrolled in the school they cannot figure out to remove the croutons and noodles from the salad bar to prevent cross contamination. Lu used to eat at the school from the salad bar until she found a crouton in her salad and realized that the reason she was still suffering flares and the butterfly rash was likely due to cross contamination. She now just eats whole apples, bananas or oranges or brings her own liquid (smoothie) lunches to school. 

So this week's Frugal Friday is about food waste, making me accountable for what I wasted and getting me back on track. 

How did I do?