I have heard two statistics that BLOW my mind...
44% of American household food budgets are spent in restaurants. AAAAAGGGHHHH how expensive. If you have a strong restaurant habit, splurge a little more in your grocery budget, pick a fancy new recipe and starting treating yourself more at home. Restaurants money adds up so fast!!!
...and the saddest to me was that the US throws out about 40% of ALL its food. Be still my heart. Really I can't handle the waste.
With a growing family we have less and less leftovers. But my tricks are simple and I can honestly say I throw away very little food around here. Eventually I hope to tackle composting and then what is thrown away will go toward making more :)
1. Serve plates, then immediately put leftovers up. Package a lunch portion for work the next day right then. After dinner you may not be as motivated to do this and its tempting to just scrape it in to the trash as you are scraping plates.
2. Freeze Leftovers. How often do you dutifully put the dinner leftovers in the fridge and then 10 days later ritually dump the contents of 10 or so containers into the trash. Microwaves these days have very good defrost settings, defrosting from frozen then heating as you normally would only adds a very little amount of time and saves a lot of money from stuff otherwise going in the trash.
3. Make a leftover list. As you store leftovers -write down on a scratch sheet of paper and stick it with a magnet on the fridge. Cross off as you take back out. Then you can grab this little note and mentally decide what you can use without digging through the freezer. Use masking tape to write on the individual containers. Some things once frozen are pretty difficult to tell what it is.
4. When you notice your Tupperware containers are low in the cabinet its time for LEFTOVER night.
Take out those leftovers from the fridge, heat them up, combine complimenting meals into soup or lay out a cornucopia of options and let the family dig in buffet style. (Leftover Lunch is especially easy on lazy Sunday afternoons)
5. If you are cutting up produce for dinner and chop more than you need. Stick the rest in a Ziploc bag, label and stick in the fridge - you can almost always add this to some soup later on.
and... some more produce tips:
Bread - DO NOT PUT IN FRIDGE!!!!! - it will make it go stale faster, and refrigerated bread is just weird, its hard and cold. Either freeze your bread or leave it out.
Apples - in the fridge or cool, dark place they will last up to six weeks
Avocado - not quite ripe slices are improved with a sprinkle of salt
Bananas - were covered well here, but when they do start to go bad - Don't throw them out. Freeze them, you can freeze them peeled or unpeeled. If you freeze with the peels on when they defrost you can squeeze the contents right out into your banana bread mix. Or if you freeze them after peeled you can easily toss them into the blender with for a smoothie - pre-cut if your blender is not particularly powerful.
Berries - refrigerated, unwashed in dry covered container
Melons - refrigerated
Peaches - in the fridge or room temperature in a brown bag to speed ripening -good in disposable drink holder
Cherries - refrigerated, unwashed in a plastic bag (green bag would be great!)
Grapes - refrigerated, unwashed, loosely placed in green bag
Plums - room temp to ripen, in fridge once ripe - good in disposable drink holder
Tomatoes - room temp but not in direct sunlight
for a quick no cook pasta sauce: grate ripe tomatoes and toss with torn basil and grated Parmesan
Cabbage - in airtight bag or container in fridge
Corn - in the fridge in their husks
Potatoes - in cool place away from light (not in fridge)
Zucchini and Yellow squash - unwashed in green bag in fridge
Beans - in airtight container - don't snap off ends before storing
Beets - in the crisper, lop off green tops before storing - the tops are great in salads
Broccoli - refrigerated in green bag
Mushrooms - unwashed in paper bag in fridge
Onions - in a dark well ventilated place - Don't keep near potatoes, they will absorb the potatoes moisture and spoilage speeding ethylene gas
Peppers - in a green bag in fridge whole, dry and unwashed.
** info from Penn State Co-op extension via consumer reports magazine
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