Words to Live by:
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”
—Robert Swan
Goal for over the holidays: Waste less food by Liz Melville
Who wouldn't want a tidy, clean kitchen and an organized refrigerator? Who wouldn't want a plan for shopping, cooking, and meals? Who wouldn't want to avoid food waste?
These seem like simple, easy accomplishable goals. But for me, they are hard. I have had issues with organization and clutter for as long as I can remember. The back corners of my refrigerator often contain green, slimy things and odd items bought for special recipes. I save what I don’t want to eat until it is no longer edible and then throw it away.
Does Food Waste Really Matter?
There are many reasons to care about food waste. Here are a few:
• Food waste is the most common material found in United States landfills.
• Rotting food in landfills is a major contributor to methane gas, “a powerful greenhouse gas, the second-largest contributor to climate warming after carbon dioxide.”
• The resources to create food: soil, water, fertilizer, and labor are not unlimited. When we waste food, we waste resources. And using resources that cause greenhouse gases to create a product that is thrown away is irresponsible.
• One-third of all consumable food in the United States is wasted. I can not control what happens in all of the steps in our food supply chain, but I can control what comes in and out of my house. Usually, I throw away food because I plan poorly, buy too much, or grow tired of what is in my cupboard and refrigerator.
Below is a list of my goals to decrease food waste. This list seems long, but many of these goals are just mind shifts, not action items. I welcome you to make your own list and join me in this challenge.
• Clean out my refrigerator and make a plan for the food that is in it.
• Be careful about what I buy. Bulk food is not a bargain if I throw much of it away.
• Put leftovers in clear containers. If I can't see the food, it doesn't exist until it smells.
• Be willing to eat leftovers or boring food. Every meal does not have to be super exciting!!
• Know what I have before I go shopping.
• Think twice before buying exotics.
I recently found two packages of miso soup paste, a container of marshmallow crème from a few years ago, a jar of slimy manzanillo sauce for ???, and two containers of sour creme (we only eat this on potatoes), all of which were either rotten or long past their expiration date.
Related Story: Saving the planet, one egg at a time
When I was growing up, my family went on many long treks across the country. My dad was a college professor and rarely worked in the summer. My mom, as was typical in the seventies, did not work outside of our home. This left our family free to travel during the summer months.
Our home base was in Kent, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. We took many trips to the Washington and Oregon Coasts; twice we drove to Boston, Massachusetts, where my grandparents lived; and one summer we drove down the Pacific Coast to San Diego California. My parents were fun-loving, and adventurous, but they had two basic travel rules: no hotels and no restaurants.
Some of my memories from these trips include: swimming at campground pools after riding in the car all day, holding a wet tent up into the wind to dry after a rainy night, hearing the wind rushing through the windows, feeling the grit of dust on my skin as we drove for hours with the windows down on hot days, and jumping through waves on ocean beaches. But I also have memories that were unique to just our family as we were each a bit eccentric and prone to do odd things. For instance, if my dad saw someone in another car picking their nose, he would drive up beside them and pick his nose back at them; I sang weird songs that I made up, all in varying words and tunes; my brother grouched about most everything; and my mother would spend much of her time trying to make everyone happy. But of course, my mother also had quirks and oddities. And as this week's substack is about food waste, this is a perfect time to tell a story about my mother taking extreme measures to not waste food.
We were at the tail end of our trip down the Pacific coast with our final destination being a visit to the San Diego Zoo. We had spent the night somewhere on the outskirts of the city and were preparing for our day. Morning activities would have included packing up our camping gear and making breakfast and lunch for the day. On this particular morning, my mom took extra time to boil eggs for our lunch.
Many things were a little off on this day. We were going to eat in the car rather than pull over for a picnic, and we were not in our normal seats. My mom was sitting in the back of the car beside me and my brother was in the front beside my dad; they had switched places. Probably my brother and I had been fighting and my parents decided to separate us. While these were not big changes, they were changes that gave me an up-close view of what happened next.
As we were cruising down the road, my mom began to prepare our lunch from a bag she had put together that morning. She took out a metal camping bowl that was shaped like a pie-tin, the egg carton filled with the boiled eggs, and a baggie full of salt and pepper. Then, she picked up one of the eggs and cracked it against the side of the metal bowl. Rather than the impact just breaking open the eggshell, a whole raw egg slid into the pan. My mom took a long pause and stared at it. My brother turned around in his seat, and he and I also stared at it.
I knew my mom could not throw it out. She never threw food away. Ever. Not throwing food away was an even bigger rule than the no hotels and no restaurants. I thought we would have to pull over so she could find a container to put it in to save for later. But my mom had a different solution. She lifted the pan to her lips, and tilted it up slightly so that the whole egg slid easily into her mouth. And then, with one gulp she swallowed it.
My brother and I watched wide-eyed. We were used to my mother, but drinking a raw egg nonchalantly while we traveled down the road was a new level of awfulness. It certainly made us forget what we had been fighting about.
"I thought I had boiled them all," my mom said, looking up in surprise. "I must have one. Surely the rest of them must be boiled. I really did boil eggs."
She then cracked a second one against the side of the metal tin. Once again a raw egg slid into the pan with its little yellow face looking up at her. This time, she didn't hesitate. She immediately lifted the pan to her mouth and slurped down the egg. I remember the sound of:
Sluuurp, gulp, gulp, sluuuup, GULP.
"No more eggs!" was the resounding chorus from the car. And thankfully, she stopped testing eggs. The rest of that day was a blur. I only remember seeing a koala bear and a few exotic birds. I don’t remember what we had for lunch. I only know it was not food that we bought at the zoo. We would never do that.
Now, looking back on this story, I can't help but see it differently, with a little admiration for my mom’s adherence to her principles. My common excuses: "I don't like it" or "I am tired of it" create a lot of dried up or rotten food that I ultimately throw away. My mother would have found a way to use these foods before they went bad. Unlike my mother, I did not live through the great depression and I have always had enough to eat. Saving food is not an urgent matter for me. But, maybe it should be as our landfills are overflowing with rotten food and much of the world is hungry.
I really want to waste less food; I am working on this. But, just like all change, I need to work towards better not perfect. And, I draw the line at eating raw eggs. It is one of many situations where I will not live up to the standards set by my mother.