Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions, Sept. 13, 2013

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

Wally had a yummy milkshake from this booth while on vacation

This Week's Food Waste

None

This was fairly easy to achieve since we were on vacation part of the time and we hadn't been to the grocery store in a couple of weeks except to get a gallon milk.   

This Week's True Food Confessions

(I didn't get any food pictures this week, so I've included these food-themed pictures from a historical festival we visited while on vacation. )

Can you find: A chicken plucker, colonial cooking, a cider press, a barrel maker, an electric potato cutter, a threshing machine?

Let's see. When didn't we eat out this week? A bad cold, late hours at the office, and a few days of vacation conspired to make this a week of catch as catch can. Some of our eating highlights:

--One morning at the hotel, they had biscuits and sausage gravy. They were not as good as my mother makes, but pretty darn good. An unexpected pleasure from childhood.

--And speaking of things from childhood, I had canned spinach for supper tonight. I loved this stuff as a kid, but haven't had it in years. We were recently gifted several cans, so I tried it again. And I still loved it. I thought maybe my tastes had become more sophisticated and I would prefer spinach the way I usually have it these days-- in a salad or freshly cooked. Apparently not. I still like the well cooked (some would call slimy) version.

--Wally had the best nachos he has ever had (his words) while we were on vacation. Instead of the chips piled high with the ingredients piled on top of that, the chips were in the middle of the bowl and the toppings were around the edges. Not only were they much easier to eat, they were delicious too.

--Theo discovered peanut and butter jelly again. We had PB&J sandwiches for lunch while we were on vacation, and he liked them.  For the last few years he hasn't. As the boys said when they were little, "He had a taste change."  

--Ward also tried a favorite from years ago. Pizza, Pizza. Or Little Caesar's Pizza. There was a Little Caesar's Pizza near where we used to live and it was our favorite pizza. We've been seeing commercials for it on TV and discovered recently that they opened a store near where Ward works. Well, to make a long story short, it did not live up to our memories. We decided that if we were going to do carry out, he'd stop by Aldi's which is also close to his work and buy a much cheaper pizza to bake when he gets home.

--We actually did eat at home a little thanks to the abundance of Leo's and Uncle Billy's gardens. We had roasted butternut squash again and two salads with fresh lettuce, tomato, and cucumbers among other things. 

 --The new recipe of the week was Graham Cracker Fudge. I modified a recipe that popped up on Yahoo that caught my attention because we had some stale graham crackers to use up. It also didn't hurt that we had all of the ingredients. It was super easy and pretty good. However, I still prefer conventional fudge, but would be happy to eat this any time.

 Graham Cracker Chocolate Fudge

14 oz sweetened condensed milk (1 can)

6 oz (1/2 bag) chocolate chips

7 oz. (1 1/2 sleeves) of graham crackers

Pour milk and chips into a microwave bowl. Heat for 30 seconds and then stir. Repeat this until all of the chips are melted.

While the chips and milk are heating, crush graham crackers into fine crumbs. 

Mix crumbs into melted chocolate mixture and then pour into greased 8"x8" pan. Let cool and set.

Enjoy.


Until next time....