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It’s Garbage Day-reusing/repurposing fruit

May 1, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

I am very pleased that today when I was looking through the pantry and the refrigerator, there was no food to toss! And I don’t mean that I’m just hoarding it until next week when it will get thrown out, I legitimately did not waste any food this week. I’ve already done a post on some things to do with almost-spoiled bananas. Today I thought I’d focus on other fruit items, non-citrus.

Berries-go through the container and toss the bad ones of course. For larger items like strawberries, you can cut bad spots off. There are lots of good recipes online for blueberry muffins. Or, toss the fruit into a blender with a few ice cubes, some yogurt, and you’ve got a smoothie.

Make breakfast tarts-just choose what your crust will be-an English muffin, bagel thin, waffle. Make a frosting with cream cheese and powdered sugar, or just cream cheese, or just jelly. Spread your ‘frosting’ on it, then arrange the fruit. Kids will love making designs out of it if you have them do it themselves, or make a smiley face with the fruit.

Apples, pears-cut the bad spots off if there are blemishes. It’s very easy to whip up a baked apple or pear crisp or cobbler, many recipes to be found online. I really like the recipe from the side of the box of Cinnamon Corn Flakes. I use that one all the time and just modify it. I’ve used pears instead of apples and I dislike nuts and nutmeg so I leave those items out.

If you find yourself with an abundance of apples or pears, here’s an easy dessert. Just peel it and core out the middle of the fruit. Put in a tbsp or two of butter, pack it with brown sugar, some cinnamon. Take a refrigerated pie crust and wrap it on the outside of the item. Bake at 350 for about an hour and yum! Serve with vanilla ice cream, pudding or whatever. Very easy, it can bake while you’re cooking and eating dinner and it makes the house smell wonderful.

Fruit pizza! Serve it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Hey, why not? Here’s another recipe from Pillsbury. Although I’ve eaten cookies for dinner on several occasions, I don’t know that I would serve it to my kids. But it would be a good dessert or snack, and at least the recipe gives you a good baseline to work with for adapting and modifying to suit your needs.

My friend Barb has this idea to share: Had blueberries, strawberries and mangoes to use up so I diced the mangoes and sauteed them down with a little butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar. I also added a little vanilla and some pumpkin pie spice. Then I added the blueberries and strawberries. Cooked for a few minutes then added some Mojito mix and simmered for another 5 minutes to cook off the alcohol. Will be serving it either over French toast or pancakes.

Feel free to share your ideas for fruit!

Note: This is a post from 3/29/11. Got it out, dusted it off, added some ideas & checked the links–good as new!

 

 

Filed Under: Food & Recipes, Reusing and Repurposing Ideas~eliminating wasteful purchasing Tagged With: , ,

Garbage Day repurposing food-Ham!

March 20, 2012 by · 2 Comments

Today is garbage day, that day when I clean out the fridge and hopefully don’t waste too much food. Many consumer agencies report that Americans waste anywhere from 10%-40% of what we purchase! That’s unreal! If we use it instead, just think, instant savings on your grocery bill.

Although none of us probably has any ham to toss just yet, thought I’d find some ideas now so that we’re not throwing it away after Easter. Plus, if you take a look at some of these recipes now, you can pick up the needed items at the supermarket, in anticipation of your leftover ham.

Potatoes au Gratin or Scalloped Potatoes with Ham (that one is from the Food Network and we’ve made it, it’s good!)

Ham and Cheese Bake

Ham & White Bean Soup

Cubano Sandwiches

Rachael Ray’s Ham & Cheese Mac

Click to see recipe. This is one of my family's favorite dishes, a staple in our recipe repetoire.

Check out the Simply Potatoes in the refrigerated section of your supermarket. I’ve made these,and they were yummy! They’d be a nice side dish to ham, if you want to just eat the ham as a main course meat again. And click on the photo for one more recipe.

If you don’t want to be bothered with a recipe–maybe a quiche or a frittatta is what you need. My simple recipe for that is 6 eggs, half a cup of milk, and I use my electric beaters to beat for about 30 seconds. From there, you can add anything into it. A quiche has a crust, a frittatta does not. Good time to use up pie crusts if you have any. But I toss in cheese, meat, veggies, whatever I have as leftovers and will go together. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes.

Omelettes, hot ham & cheese sandwiches, cold ham sandwiches, dice it up with some cheddar and top a baked potato. There are lots of things to do with ham, don’t let it go to waste. The only thing that I don’t think works is freezing cooked ham. It gets a weird texture.

Good Luck. And now I’m hungry!

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Garbage Day: Stone Soup

January 10, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Have you ever heard the story of the woman who had “nothing” in her cupboards and made stone soup? There are several versions of it floating around for, well, who knows how many years.  I think of it every time I have vegetables in the fridge that are looking a bit wilted or when I have “hardly any food in the house”.

I don’t start with a stone.  All the work I would have to go to sanitizing the stone first isn’t worth it so let’s just pretend. The whole idea behind stone soup is to take the little bit of this and that you have and throw it all together. If I am home all day I occasionally use the stove but   today’s Stone Soup simmered in the crockpot.  Recipe will be posted below.

I start with  my vegetables. I choose these before meat because the whole point is to use up the vegetables going bad in my refrigerator.  I almost always use garlic and onion. They are staples in our house and make a great natural flavoring while being healthier.  Today I used garlic, onion, and cabbage. The poor head of cabbage amazingly survived 3 weeks in my fridge.

Next I choose my base liquid. I use water, beef, chicken, or pork broth. Today I went with beef. The cabbage needs all the flavor it can get!

Lastly I figure out if I am using meat. Today I used 1 lb. ground beef. The beauty of stone soup is that a little goes a long way.  I don’t need to use big ticket items ot get delicious results.  Sometimes I just skip the meat altogether.  

Stone Soup: Cabbage

1 medium head cabbage, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 lb. ground beef
32 oz. beef broth
1/2 cup barley
salt and pepper

Put the cabbage and barley into  the crockpot and sprinkle some kosher salt over it. Pour the beef broth over it.  Brown the burger with the onion and garlic then add it to the cabbage.

I mixed it together and stuck it in the fridge overnight.  This morning I started crockpot on high for 4-5 hours, then set it on warm for the rest of the day.

I had a snack this afternoon and cannot wait for dinner.

 

 

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Garbage Day post-eliminate waste to save $$!

May 10, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

With a little help from our household’s favorite trash can-Oscar!

I haven’t been doing too many daily posts lately, and one of the reasons is that once again, I am working on a new look for the blog and doing some behind the scenes work. One of those tasks is to make resource pages for you all that are actually useful. I am going to have a resource page just for repurposing items and compiling all of those posts in one place.

So while I’m working on that, here is a small recap of some of the previous garbage day posts on repurposing items.

Repurposing Fruit

Lunch Meat

Misc recipes

Garbage day & ID fraud

Ham

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