EVERYTHING BUT THE PANTRY SHELF 👩🏻🍳
Here's to wasting less food in 2025 :)
There’s nothing we hate more than throwing out unused produce or even worse…meat. So over the last few years, we’ve had an ongoing goal to reduce our food waste. In fact, one of the reasons we started the Pantry was that we realized during our COVID quarantine, we hardly ever wasted food. We primarily chalked this up to having a master grocery list and most importantly a weekly plan. We knew what we were making and we made it. We weren’t cruising the grocery aisles buying ingredients for things we never ended up cooking or snacks we never ended up eating. We have strived to continue the practice ever since. In addition, we have developed habits, tips, and tricks, that together have had a significant impact on reducing our food waste.
So in honor of continuing to reach our goals in the New Year, here are some of our best tips to stop wasting food!
1. FREEZER/FRIDGE/PANTRY CLEAN-OUT CHALLENGE
New to this year, Jackson suggested we challenge ourselves to use up things we have in the freezer, fridge, and pantry in lieu of getting more groceries. A challenge it definitely is…. but the accomplished feeling of freeing up space, using food that would otherwise be thrown away, and creating a delicious home meal all while saving money has been worth it. In addition to full-on leftover meals, we often have ingredients in our fridge and freezer like extra vegetables and frozen ground meat (and lots of flour in my pantry).
One of our go-to recipes that uses all of these ingredients is shepherd’s pie. It also happens to be one of the most popular recipes in the library!
2. REPURPOSING COMMONLY THROWN-OUT ITEMS
Herbs, lettuce/greens, cheese rinds, fruit, and veggies are all items that most often get thrown out (why do herbs come in such large bunches?!). One of the biggest hacks we’ve found to use up these ingredients before they get trashed is repurposing herbs into fresh salad dressing for the week (blend them up with an immersion blender), adding greens (especially kale) to soups or omelets, throwing fruit into a chia pudding or overnight oats breakfast, and chopping up leftover veggies and putting them into baggies for easy to grab snacks.
Our Mediterranean white bean, tuna, and herb salad is a delicious way to use leftover herbs. It calls for cilantro and parsley, but any herb will do.
You can mix the chopped herbs into the dressing, or blend it all with an immersion blender or food processor. y😉.
3. ORGANIZE YOUR FRIDGE
Cleaning out and organizing my fridge (at least quarterly) has been so helpful in our quest to reduce waste. With ADHD, if you can’t see something it doesn’t exist. So when we keep things that we know will go bad in our immediate eyesight, we remember to use them! But If we accidentally shove them to the back, they will surely get tossed. A clean and organized fridge also makes it easier to see what you have quickly, and knowing what you have before going to the grocery store is an easy way to limit waste and save money.
4. MAKE TWO DIFFERENT MEALS WITH SHARED INGREDIENTS OR CREATE NEW MEALS FROM LEFTOVERS
Yes, we admittedly love to prepare enough food so we can enjoy leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day (dining on leftovers is the most obvious way not to waste food). But sometimes, eating the same meal multiple times just doesn’t cut it, so here are two ways we like to stretch our ingredients and spice up our leftovers.
Choose two recipes you plan to make in the same week that use shared ingredients. For example, when a recipe calls for rotisserie chicken (and we have quite a few in the library) it often doesn’t require the entire chicken. So when we use a rotisserie we like to choose two recipes that week that either both use rotisserie chicken or are vegetarian-based with the option to add meat for extra protein. Last week, we used half of a rotisserie chicken in our black bean enchiladas and saved the other half for our white bean chicken chili.
Bonus: These enchiladas are also a great way to use up leftovers in your fridge. You can put just about anything in these…leftover meat, greens (spinach), veggies, herbs…whatever you have on hand and they are always delicious!
Not only did we use up all the rotisserie chicken we bought, but we also saved money by using it in the white bean chicken chili and creating two different meals! You can do this with any protein, vegetable, or grain.
This white chicken chili is also the perfect meal to serve while everyone’s watching the NFL playoffs. Go Lions! 🦁🏈
Create a new meal from leftovers. Instead of reheating last night’s dinner, sometimes we like to be creative and turn our leftovers into a whole new meal. One of our favorite ways to do this is with leftover steak.
All you need is a few peppers, an onion, tortillas, spices, avocado, cheese, and sour cream and you have steak fajitas!
We like to reheat the meat in a skillet with our onions, peppers, and spices. It’s so easy and delicious. And if you don’t have enough steak to make fajitas, steak & eggs for dinner is always a good option.
5. HAVE A PLAN & A LIST
We know we’ve said it a million times, but honestly, the biggest thing you can do to reduce food waste is to have a grocery list and a plan for the week. Yes, it takes some of your precious time to sit down and plan what you want to eat for the week…. and then create a grocery list….but that’s exactly what the Pantry is here for! So cut it out with the excuses 😉.
Use our Weekly Digest newsletter as a guide or inspiration for your meals. We send them out on Friday since most of us grocery shop over the weekend. Typically, there is a rhyme or reason to the recipes we feature each week (it’s in season, it’s a holiday, or they simply match the mood of the weather, etc.) but if they aren’t what you’re looking for don’t forget we also have an entire recipe library with OVER 300 RECIPES! So there’s bound to be something you’re craving. You can also access our Substack to look up past Digests for inspo!
Once you’ve decided what you’re making, write up your grocery list, or use your Pantry account to save recipes and generate a corresponding grocery list to create your own customized ‘weekly digest’ (See our How to page). Then you’re ready to go! You have a plan. You have a list. And you’re not gonna waste any more food!
See? We really do have you covered 🤗.
THANKS FOR READING!
Cheers 🥂
Hil & Nat
Don’t forget you can access the entire recipe library with all your favs here.