Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Avoid wasting food through extending the life of your food simply and easily. Many foods too large or packaged with too much food to use up right away. Adopt these quick and easy tips and reduce food waste to almost nothing.

Avoid wasting vegetables and fruit; Extend their life and convenience

Ever had the experience of finding a produce bag full of green, liquidy mush and asking yourself, “what was this?” or found half an onion and wondered, “how long has that been there?” Well, store that in your memory banks and avoid wasting food in the future. There are ways to prolong the life of your vegetables and fruit, so you can use them completely. No buying chemicals or odd contraptions, just use some smart techniques and you will not only prolong the life of your vegetables and fruit, but actually make it more convenient to use.

It’s so easy to avoid wasting food and extend food life! Let’s go back to that half of an onion. Imagine if we had diced the entire onion at one time instead. We could use what we needed for that meal, then freeze (in a labelled freezer bag for best results) the rest of the diced onion. Then, whenever you want a bit of diced onion, just grab some out of the freezer bag and use it. Onions and other vegetables can go from the freezer to the pan and keep their full freshness, flavor and aroma. It actually makes cooking even easier!

The principle is the same for other veggies to extend vegetable life and make them super easy to cook with. Chop the entire carrot, celery, fennel, etc.; puree the whole pumpkin, chunk the full acorn squash; save the florets of cauliflower or broccoli not used in the first meal. They will be ready and waiting for you when you want them next. And normally you won’t even want to defrost them – just go from freezer to cooking.

Many types of fruit will do well with the same treatment. Slice fruit such as apples, peaches, and melons. Store berries whole. De-stone, de-pit or deseed, before you freeze them. Use frozen fruit to cook with, such as in pies, muffins, cobblers or scones. Or use frozen fruit to make delicious smoothies. Don’t try to defrost to eat “fresh” again – take them from the freezer directly cooking and baking.

One of my favorite kitchen hacks takes almost no effort and delivers a delicious, hot cooked desert any time. Any time Fruit Crumble Recipe:

Once you know these techniques, they will seem so obvious and become part of normal life. You will reap the benefits of easy preparation and be drawn to cooking with more vegetables and fruit even more often.

Avoid Wasting Meat; Buy meat at bulk buy prices yet make it ready for single meal preparation

Buying single or small portions of meat is not always easy to find and is always priced punitively higher than budget-friendly, affordable larger packages. I call it the “single tax.” Single people or those with smaller families pay much higher prices for the same food, just because we buy less. Well, there is a good way around this.

Buy that “family pack” budget size ground beef, chicken pieces, steaks, sausages, whatever you fancy and extend the life of the meat, so you can use it over a longer time. Purchase roasts, loins, and other large cuts of meat, and split it into manageable sizes for meals over the coming weeks or months. It’s easy and will save you a small fortune.

Simply have individual size freezer containers or bags ready (make sure to use freezer safe, to keep your food in top condition). The moment you get home from the shop with your bulk buy, simply open your package then. Separate out one servicing size to have that day or the next. Then, take individual serving sizes out one by one and place each one into a separate freezer container or bag. Form each serving into a convenient shape (for example with ground meat, form it into rectangular patties, so they stack nicely). Then put all the individual servings in the freezer, except the one you may have that day or the next. Doing this right away, will keep you with food you can use for weeks or months. The key is to break it down into the serving size that you will use when you need it. Freezing a all but what you need right now will mean you will need to defrost all the rest of the meat at one time, and then you risk losing the rest of the meat.

There are some smart meat processors who are now individually packaging chicken breasts, fish fillets or beef patties, but this normally comes at a premium price and the variety of types of meat is limited. Doing it yourself will ensure you get exactly the meat you want, in the size you want, at the best possible price and quality.

For a large cut of meat, such as a roast or loin, the process is the same. Open the package and cut it into the size you will prepare at one time. Package those pieces individually and freeze all that you won’t use in the next day or two.

To use the meat, simply take the individual serving size out of the freezer. Place it in the refrigerator overnight and it will be ready to prepare the next day. There are ways to quick defrost in the microwave or using cool water, but overnight in the refrigerator gives the best results.

Avoid Wasting Bread, finish the entire loaf over time

You guessed it. To avoid wasting bread, freeze it! Sliced bread and even fresh bakery bread freezes very well, and tastes great upon defrosting, so you can easily extend the life of bread. For unsliced bread, simply cut it into the size of “mini loaves” that you can reasonably eat in a day or two (at most). Keep out what you will eat today and tomorrow and freeze the other “mini loaves” in individual freezer packages or bags and freeze.

The best way to defrost to eat the “mini loaves” is to bring them out the night before (for morning and lunch use) or the morning (for dinner and evening use) and set them out at room temperature. Eat when the bread has reached room temperature. To expedite things, you can slice and toast the bread. Don’t try microwaves or other quick defrosting techniques – they will make your bread inedible.

Sliced bread is especially simple. You can do the same as an unsliced loaf and separate your large loaf into individual sized freezer packages. This works well. But most sliced bread, you can actually freeze the entire loaf and take out bread slice by slice or as many slices as you need. Like above, you can eat it immediately from the freezer by placing it in a toaster. Or you can take what you want out and leave it at room temperature several hours to bring it to room temperature. Most sliced bread these days have preservatives in them. If this is true for the bread you have, the bread will likely last three to four days and still be fine.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy! You have used your entire loaf of bread, delicious every time. And you don’t have to shy away from fresh bakery bread any more because of fears of not being able to use it all before it goes stale.

What’s next?

Look for future blogs on reducing food waste and extending food life on ReadyandThriving.com’s Extend Food Life page. Some topics include the following:

• Cookies and bread crumbs can take on new life as a cheesecake crust or fried topping
• Explore the art of “make ahead” cooking and transformational use of large roast meats (roast turkey one day; enchiladas suizas the next)
• Create a kitchen herb garden for fresh herbs any time
• Grow a fresh food garden that also allows you to get certain foods whenever you want them
• Preserve harvests that are more than you can eat while fresh
• Weekend clear out “recipes”
• And more …

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