Wasting Food Dilemma...Who else struggles with throwing food away?
One of the many reasons I am over weight is that I can not bare the thought of throwing food away. I grew up very poor, and this doesn't stop with food. I have difficultly throwing anything away. Something has to basically be in pieces or on fire and beyond repair or useful for me to throw it away.
But back to food, I have a very hard time throwing food away. If bread is past its date, I will just check it daily for mold, and continue using it, granted I do not see any mold on it. Cracker type products (though I don't really buy them anymore, but when I did) I ate well past the "use by" date. And if I get full while eating a dish, I have to sometimes talk to myself about why its ok to throw out the rest, but I usually end up wrapping things up for left overs. (Heaven forbid there's not really enough to wrap up, I get the "might as well eat the rest" mentality) I know this comes from my childhood. But here's today's specific problem...
Many, many months ago when I was not making healthy choices (nice way to put it) I bought a pack of sweet Italian sausage, figuring I'd try something new for dinners. Hubby and I were not a fan, and the dinner didn't go over well. We had 3 left over, so I wrapped them and froze them. And they've been bothering me from the freezer ever since. Not that I want to eat them, au contraire, I don't want to eat them. They are not a favorite food to begin with, definately not worth the calories and fat for a food I don't really like. But I don't want to throw them away..
So stupid me thought its been months, let me just defrost them, and make them for dinner and get them out of the freezer, eaten and we can all move on.. So now they are defrosted for tonight's dinner! And I don't want to make them! My husband is on board now with healthy eating so I'm sure he won't be happy about it either, plus he too, wouldn't really care if he never ate another Italian sausage again for the rest of his life. I know he feels the same way I do, that if he's going to splurge, the sausage would not be his choice.
I can easily omit the sausage from dinner. As I make meatless dishes quit often, but the idea of throwing it away is driving me crazy!!!
There's no one for me to give it to, because I was thinking of that. I don't have any animals (like a dog) to feed it to.
But the guilt of throwing out something just because we don't want to eat it sounds spoiled and ungrateful.
If you don't like them, and they are high in calories, then just throw them out in a ditch somewhere. A stray starving animal WILL find them and eat them. Even many birds eat meat. You are not a garbage can, and if you eat them, you will be wasting them on your health! Get them out of there!
(Edit: Pork does not last very long in the freezer without becoming "rancid" tasting. If you thought you didn't like them months ago, they'll be even worse now...)
are you in a city or more country? you can trow it out somewhere and something will eat it, stray dogs or cats, bugs, just dont throw it too close to your house
I have struggled with this since I started my diet. Mine is different. I used to only go to the store once a week- but if I buy enough lettuce, tomato, cucumbers and fruits for a whole week they go bad before my next trip. I have to throw it away. Now I have to go to the store twice a week to keep fresh veggies and fruits available. Of course- more work for me... this weight loss thing is not easy for so many reasons. Sometimes I feel like the odds are stacked against me.
I also grew up with that 'waste not, want not " attitude and found it difficult to throw things out. I am getting better, though. I do try to prepare things, though that won't need to be thrown out. If I just hate it I either give it to my dog or the neighborhood cat.
Yes, I hate it too. I was very proud of myself last week for getting rid of ... I don't remember, some terrible meat product, maybe it was a not very good bacon I had archived in the freezer. See? In a week you will have forgotten all about it!
Also, ditto on putting meat out for the stray cats here. And I have a compost pile for the vegetable items. Birds eat bread! Although I will admit to having made croutons and bread pudding, because I make my own bread and lots of times a new recipe doesn't come out very good the first time.
I agree with bronzeager, I'm sure within a short space of time you will have forgotten about throwing it away. At least you have learnt something from this experience-don't buy italian sausage!!
I have a hard time throwing away food... unless it's expired or moldy. The reason for those two things? Living at my grandma and grandpa's house last semester. I mean... they save EVERYTHING. They have bacon grease from 1988 in their fridge. My mom and I were looking through their medicine cabinets and fridge (to make room for my stuff... we were given permission), they had medication that was prescribed five years ago to one of my cousins. It was four years expired... but they kept it... "just in case".
They had an unopened bottle of tartar sauce (they don't eat tartar sauce) that had a 50% off ticket on it... the expiration date was 2003. Disgusting.
So... I won't throw away things I feel as though are still good... but for me... seeing the extremity of keeping EVERYTHING... I will throw away things that expired.
However... having something on my plate... I feel as though I SHOULD finish it... because if I don't... I'm wasting food... *sigh*
You just have to develop get-arounds. For the sausage, you could've mixed it with another sausage (if it's in a casing, you can take the casing off or even chop it up. Google is your friend for ideas!), made some kind of casserole, and either given it to someone or eaten it mixed with the milder flavor.
For bread, I make bread pudding or you can make French toast and freeze it for individual servings.
Veg about to go off? Chop and freeze.
Fruit? Make cakes, muffins, or breads and freeze. Or make a crumble.
You can find a low carb or low fat or low whatever version of pretty much anything you can think of. If you have something that's about to go, google. Someone will have an idea.
I don't really mind the idea of waste so much, but I like filling my freezer because I know my lazy self will want something sweet (banana bread in muffin tins = single servings) or just plain not want to cook or someone will have a baby and need a casserole or something and I'll be prepared.
But at the end of it all, if you just plain don't like it - throw it. It's three stinky sausages, not a case of expensive wine!
i get what you mean, i hate throwing food out too. my ex had some prawns in the freezer from xmas, i hate prawns but still couldnt bring myself to throw them out when we split (on boxing day), i eventually cooked them for my cat lol hes a very well fed kitty
i 2nd giving the sausages to strays, they will appreciate them much more than you will, and they wont have been wasted.
In many ways, I'm incredibly frugal - but I'm learning that treating myself as a garbage can is not frugal. It costs me (and because I'm on medicare, it costs every taxpayer) more to be overweight. Losing weight will not only save me medical and medication costs, I'll also be able to spend even less on clothing (I buy most of my clothing second-hand or on clearance sales, but when I'm in the more common sizes, I'll save even more money doing so).
I figure bears, chipmunks (yep, they'll eat meat when they can get it), rats, mice, racoons, fox, coyotes, skunks, feral cats, possum, ravens, seagulls, and all sorts of other omnivorous animals and insects have to eat. Anything I throw away, becomes part of a glorious buffet for critters such as these at the local landfill.
Even if I intentionally bought a food and then regretted it - like potato chips - better it go to some hungry rat momma and her babies at the landfill, than end up on my hips.
The time to be frugal is at the grocery store, not at the table. If it doesn't taste good to you, it can bite you in the butt two ways. You may end up eating more calories not only because the food isn't very healthy, but because you get the munchies later in the eventing because the meal wasn't satisfying.
If there is a way to make the food palatable and healthy that's great, but if not, throwing it away will make some skunk or racoon very, very happy.
I'm facing a similar food dilemma now (coincidentally also with sweet italian sausage). We bought like a dozen packages because they were only 99 cents a package with 5 large sausages per package.
These sausages are going to last us forever, because to make them healthy, I've been browing them with onion, and lots of tvp (textured vegetable protein, also called textured soy protein).
Because tvp is virtually fat free, I can combine it with fattier ground meats to save money. Instead of buying 95% lean ground beef, I brown tvp with ground beef and seasoning veggies (onion, celery, mushrooms, bell pepper).
Usually my mixer of choice is ground beef, but I've also used ground pork, chorizo, and sausage.
This morning I got out a package of the italian sausages out of the freezer and when they're thawed, I'll remove the sausage from casings, and brown it with chopped onion, bell pepper, and a pound of tvp. You need to reconstitute tvp with equal volume of water, but I always brown it dry, and then once the meat is browned nicely, then I'll add the water or broth.
Then I let the meat cool. Put it in a ziploc freezer bag and every 20 minutes or so, "Smoosh" the bag around so that the mixture freezes in scoopable crumbles. Then when I make any recipe using ground meat, I scoop out what I need and reclose the zipper bag (removing as much air out of the bag as I can, so it stays fresh in the freezer longest).
I'm actually going to be making two batches of the meat mixture. One batch with tvp and italian sausages, and one with tvp and ground beef. The ground beef mixture is more versatile, but the tvp/italian sausage will be nice too.
TVP doesn't have much flavor of it's own, so it absorbs the flavor of whatever it's cooked with. I love making chorizo/tvp mix for tacos. Because chorizo is so fatty and so intensely flavored, I can use a lot more tvp (and tvp at it's most expensive, is still 1/2 the price per serving of even the cheapest, fattiest ground beef).
I've used tvp to cooked sausage too (for sausages that I essentially liked, but thought were too strongly flavored). I grind the sausage in a food processor and add it to broth or water in a pan and simmer the broth and sausage for a while (I may add finely chopped onion, or add some dehydrated onion). Then I add tvp (equal to the volulme of broth), and turn off the heat and move the pan to a cool burner to cool. When it's cooled, I put it in a ziploc bag and freeze as I've described earlier.
I wouldn't recommend the tvp mixing with a meat that you don't like though. If you like the flavor, except for finding it too strong, it works perfectly because the tvp is going to lighten the flavor, but if you don't like the flavor at all, lightening it isn't necessarily going to help. You could end up with an even larger quantity of a food you dislike.
I don't mind throwing things off it is moldy and bad , it is the good things that are still good that is hard to let go of. The most amazing thing I did was throw out a perfectly good half a peach pie, not because it was bad , on the other hand it was too good , and I knew I didn't need these calories so I tossed it , Now that is hard to do. I try never to have a whole pie or cake around as it is too much temptation and it is soooo hard to toss out.
Oh I hear you!!! And right now I have had to leave home for an undefined period of time to be out of province with my son who has had an accident. I went shopping the day before and my fridge has fresh cherry tomatoes, lettuce strawberries, blueberries and grapes that will probably look like science projects when I get home, because my DH won't think to take them in his lunch or eat them for dinner - he is strictly a heat and eat type of cook. It's driving me bats&*t!!!!
Last edited by Tea Granny; 03-19-2011 at 06:52 PM.
Thank you all for your responses. I especially thought about those of you that said it was treating myself like a garbage can. I can see how that is. And the really made me reconsider the idea that somehow I'm "ok" with putting crappy food in my body rather than throwing it away.
I live in apartments and can't really throw the meat (or other food items) outside, so the only place this sausage was going other than our dinner plates was the garbage.
Here's a real kick in the rear though. I throw out the sausage, wow! Huge for me. I even grabbed the one still frozen in the freezer, while I was doing without thinking about the fact that I was throwing this stuff away. All 3 in the trash! Yeah!
Then this late after noon we had a kids birthday party for a classmate of my son. It went from 3pm til about 5:30pm...it was really nice. I declined cake. Small victory. Hubby took a piece, and only ate like 2 bites then threw the rest away. Another victory! But there was a problem with the pizza delivery and 10 pies arrived at the end of the party, so the parents sent a pie home with everyone!
Now, yes we could have declined, but its hard to explain, but in the situation it would have been rude. So we come home with this whole pie...
My son had barely one slice, I had ONE slice after blotting it. (Both hubby and I had a simple garden salad with the pizza, which we had already made at home)After the whole sausage thing you think I wouldn't have had any, but I actually like pizza, and I didn't feel like cooking, plain and simple. Hubby had 2 slices. But both he and I, our servings were a victory, as we can eat a whole pie amonst the 2 of us, and well, now there's a half a pie sitting out there in the kitchen.
Thankfully, my husband (who is on our treadmill right now!!! I'm so happy he's now taking the steps to lose weight and be healthy) anyway, my husband already said we are throwing it away. And he'll come out and do it, if I can't. Which I can't.
It took enough out of me to throw away the sausage!
This was one of the areas of my eating patterns I HAD to address. It was hard in the beginning to leave restaurant food uneaten and unboxed. My thoughts were always going to the outlay of money for that food. I realized it boiled down to pay now or pay later.
I will wash tired leftovers down the sink rather than eat it. I have too. I made a deal with myself. I will do what is necessary to succeed without considering money as a primary reason to eat off plan.
I figure the money amount not eaten or 'wasted' is a future co-pay not paid.
Wasting Food Dilemma...Who else struggles with throwing food away?
and beyond repair or useful for me to throw it away. 
