Last year I talked a bit about how I’m really trying to focus on wasting less food (or anything else, really) to save money. As part of that goal for 2011, I hope to do an ongoing series of posts with ideas and recipes to help us all accomplish this.  Since trash day is tomorrow, I’m cleaning things out and trying to find new uses for things. What I have too much of: bread. I have two half-loaves of regular sandwich bread and a half loaf of Italian bread that I bought on 12/31 to go with our meal. That bread is too stale to be eaten as is. The other bread has some life in it, and as long as we eat sandwiches for lunch every day, won’t go to waste.  But here are some ideas of things to do with bread that is either stale or about to be.

First, I love this Mario Batali meatball recipe. So I cut up 3 cups’ worth of bread crumbs, put them in a vac sealer bag, vac sealed it and tossed them in the freezer. Next time I want to make the meatballs, I’ll already have stale bread ready to go!

Then, I took what was left and cut that up into small bite-sized bits. Tossed with a few Tbsps of olive oil, some olive oil dipping spices, baked at 300 for about 30-40 minutes. Homemade croutons! And they are better than anything else you’d buy. Don’t have the dipping spices? Use garlic, garlic powder, garlic salt, rosemary, salt, pepper, Italian seasonings…be creative and you’ll be surprised at how good they are. I particulary like them not only to dress up a boring salad, but to dress up a boring can of soup on a night we need a quick dinner.

When I was little, my Nan would grab us, the stale bread, and take us down to Cedar Beach on Hamilton Blvd (Allentown, PA) to feed the ducks. I just need to find a duck pond around here and you have a fun, free family activity. We actually have ducks right across the street, but my boys have not yet discovered that the White Clay Creek is right across the street, and I don’t want them to know it’s there, they’re too young and I don’t trust either of them to not wander off and K loves to play in water and can’t swim. Too dangerous, but now I’m rambling……

Most bread stuffing recipes are easy to make. A little celery, some sage, some broth and there you go. Or, cube it and freeze it for when you do want to make stuffing and you won’t have to buy bread cubes.

French Toast! And it’s not just for breakfast anymore!

Grilled cheese-if the bread isn’t too stale, still have a decent sandwich. Same goes for toast.

Pilling a dog-my one dog takes many meds and is hard to pill. I do a small swipe of peanut butter on bread, put the pills on it and squish it into a bread ball and she’ll eat it.

Put a piece in your brown sugar container to absorb moisture. Remove after a few days and it should extend the life of your brown sugar.

Lots of other recipes like bread puddings (yuk, sorry) call for stale bread.

Prepare it for a future recipe: Cube it, vacuum seal it and freeze it for when you need it. The price of one of my vac sealer bags is still less than what it would cost to buy bread for a recipe.

Good luck & let’s eliminate waste to cut down on spending this year.