Day 103: Food Waste Saturday

I've been recently following The Frugal Girl (along with many other "frugal" blogs), and every Friday, she hosts "Food Waste Friday," where she takes a picture of all the food she wasted that week. In my efforts to save money on groceries, I've realized that food waste is a HUGE money pit for us. So, I've decided to try to play along with Food Waste Friday, although I'll probably post on Saturday or Sunday, since that's when I grocery shop, and that's when I typically clean out the fridge. I also decided to make it part of this blog, instead of Working It Out, since this blog is more food-centered. This first post is almost embarrassing, because the picture doesn't even include everything I threw out today. I found a few more things after I took the picture. So, without further ado:

• One sleeve of very stale graham crackers. I could have turned these into crumbs and put them in the freezer, but I didn't like the way the generic crackers tasted anyway.
• About a cup and a half of Life Cereal. Neither one of the boys like Life. And it went stale before I managed to eat it.
• Six taco shells. I've never been able to keep leftover taco shells from going stale. And I NEVER use them all up.
• Leftover fish from the week before last (I think, maybe even two weeks before last)
• About 5 strawberries that got moldy.
• A fourth of a container of grape tomatoes
• Three lemon halves
• Half a head of cabbage (from St. Patrick's Day--yes, I'm just throwing it out now)
• About a cup of mixed greens
• Half a bag of broccoli

Not pictured: A piece of pizza (Ed's anchovy pizza from last weekend, I might add), leftover salmon from ???, a fourth of a loaf of bread that went moldy, and about a cup of grapes that weren't salvageable, although now that I'm thinking about it, I could have probably frozen them, and they would have been fine. Shoot!

There were some things that were on the brink that I managed to make use of. We still had chicken breasts leftover from last weekend, and although a week is probably too long to leave something in the fridge, I decided to take a chance. I shredded the chicken and added the leftover chicken thigh meat from last night to make tonight's dinner, Chicken Enchiladas. I also used up the other half of the avocado that I had cut for last night's salsa, and a tomato that probably would have stayed in the veggie bin for a long time. The enchiladas were excellent! I also put some hot dog and hamburger buns in the freezer so that they wouldn't get moldy, and Ed ate up the leftover salsa from last night.

So there it is, my first "Food Waste" post. I hope that each week, my "score" will get better. Wish me luck!

ETA:
I got so excited about Food Waste Friday that I forgot to post our dinner!
Dinner:
Chicken Enchiladas/Wagon Wheel Pasta and broccoli
Ed and I ate the chicken enchiladas and Seth and William ate the pasta and broccoli. They each tried a bite of enchiladas, but they couldn't even chew and swallow. I figured that would be the case, so I made the pasta in advance. Such is life. That just means more enchiladas for Ed and me! We sat down to eat at 6:30. Neither on of the boys ate much pasta or broccoli. So no chocolate milk and no dessert. William didn't even ask for chocolate milk before bed. He started to, but changed it to water.