Diary of a Recovering Food Waster – Part 3

 

I don’t mean to brag, but I feel like as of late we’ve been killing it as far as food waste goes. The weeks ahead might be a different story, but these last couple of weeks we have been cleaning up our leftovers, using our food saver, and have done a pretty good job of keeping the chicken scraps to a minimum of peels and veggie remnants.

Jan 30: Armed with a detailed list and the Safeway sales ad, I made a grocery run. Safeway is notorious for rockin’ some stellar meat sales. This time they pork shoulder roast on sale for $1.29 per pound. So why wouldn’t I come home with a nine pounds of pork shoulder?

In addition to the massive amount of pork I brought home, I also picked up the ingredients for The Pioneer Woman’s Carnitas Pizza that Tom had been anxious to try.

Jan 31: I may have gone a little overboard on the Carnitas Pizza… I made two sizeable pizzas and still had quite a bit of beef leftover.

Feb 1: On account of the busy-ness of the day, and the snow, the amount of leftover pizza and beef we had was truly a blessing. We had leftover pizza for breakfast and dinner. Then for supper, it was leftover make-over time as I served up Cuban Crispy Shredded Beef – a recipe straight from the Beef It’s What’s for Dinner website.

Feb 2: Today, I cut a three-pound chunk of pork off of the nine-pound roast I bought the other day and made open-faced hot pork sandwiches with mashed potatoes and pork gravy. Don’t get me wrong, beef is far and away my favie in terms of proteins, but this – this was good. And it’s a good thing too, because we have lots of leftovers to clean up.

After I cut what I needed for supper, I continued cutting the rest of the roast into two smaller, more manageable roasts. Now, while I did get a giant box of freezer bags for Christmas that is not what I used to store the pork roast. In fact, I haven’t used your typical Ziplocs for freezer storage since this summer when a friend turned me on to the FoodSaver®. This miracle machine vacuum packs foods resulting in less freezer-burn, longer storage, and money saved.

Feb 7: Yesterday was Bountiful Basket pick-up and today was the Super Bowl. So using the avocados, cilantro, lime, spinach, and garlic we got with our contribution, I made Guacamole, Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Touchdown Taco Dip for the party that we had been invited to.

Feb 8: There wasn’t much, but we did come home from the party with some leftover Touchdown Taco Dip and guac.  Today was fairly busy so the leftovers came in really handy as I was able to quickly make them over into some pretty tasty Quesadillas.

Feb 9: It was a crew day here today – the first-calf heifers were given their first round of the ScourGuard vaccine. As a result, I had a crew to feed the noon meal to. I had planned on serving a beef dish, but while I was in the freezer, I picked up the bag containing a smoked turkey we had and it broke. No problem, new plan – smoked turkey for lunch.

Now, I do not know how big that turkey was, but I do know that I fed the 4-man crew, the kids, and myself and still had a lot of turkey leftover…

Feb 10: It was a frozen pizza kind of day today. For one thing we sorted our steer calves, getting them ready for shipping, and for another thing, we all had to get our minds right to eat all that smoked turkey. And I needed some time to come up with some different, non-boring ways to use it all up.

Feb 11: Smoked Turkey Broccoli, Rice and Cheese Casserole

Feb 12: Buffalo Smoked Turkey Wraps

Feb 13: Smoked Turkey Tortilla Soup

Feb 14: In our Bountiful Basket, there were two large heads of cabbage. Normally, we would go on a cabbage burger baking rampage, building a stockpile for the freezer. But, baking cabbage burgers has not been the priority the last few days  – quick and easy has been more our style as of late. So, we tried a new recipe that we saw on my new favorite cooking show, A Chef’s Life. The recipe is Miss Daisy’s Beef and Cabbage Casserole and let me just tell you, it. was. phenomenal.

I mean really – a big hit with the whole family, even the baby devoured it.

Feb 16: Because we still had a plethora of cabbage left to use up and because we loved Miss Daisy’s Beef and Cabbage Casserole so much, we made it for supper again tonight. And I would bet that there is still enough cabbage left to make cabbage burgers… and maybe more casserole.

Next time in Diary of a Recovering Food Waster – more leftover-makeovers, project freezer clean-up, and meal planning. Until then, I would love to hear how you are saving on food waste. What are your favorite leftover make-overs? Have you discovered the genius that is the FoodSaver® yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

If you have missed anything from this series, click here to catch up on all the happenings in the Diary of a Recovering Food Waster.