How to Minimize Food Waste During the Holidays?
Holiday dinner parties are this season’s most common activities. Sharing friendships, memories, and food is a great way to celebrate this special time. However, these activities are also the reason why there’s so much food waste around the holidays. Here are some tips that can help you prevent food waste this season.
Plan Your Holiday Meals
Have you ever been in the middle of a recipe and then realized you’re missing a key ingredient? Or, maybe you bought too much of one thing when you didn’t really need it. Creating a menu for your holiday dinner parties is the best idea. Make a list of what you need and stick with it. When you buy something out of impulse, you’re most likely not going to eat it.
Guestimate Your Portions
When you’re hosting a dinner party, you want to have enough food for everyone. Most people “guestimate” but doing so, typically ends up leaving you with way too much food left. Enter the ‘guestimator’. This great tool by the NRDC does a wonderful job in giving you a more accurate idea of how much food you’ll need, to feed your guests until they’re full.
Get Creative and Use Up Everything in Your Fridge
You know how sometimes you use the celery sticks and throw out the leaves? Or maybe use the broccoli florets and get rid of the stem? You can use all of that in different recipes. All you need is a little creativity. Celery leaves are full of flavor and can be used in salads or stocks, and broccoli stems can be cooked and used in cream soups or maybe even broccoli pizza crust for a low carb alternative. Eating root to stem really makes a difference.
Make Something New Out of Leftovers
Leftovers are great for the next day but when you have too many, they end up going to waste. You know eating the same thing three days in a row is not something you’ll want to do, so rather than reheating those leftovers every day, turn them into something new and exciting. Leftover rice can be turned into delicious, cheesy rice balls; old bread can be ground up and put on top of mac and cheese, or use as a binder in meatloaf or meatballs, another reason to get creative. Pinterest is a great place to find all sorts of ways to repurpose leftovers.
Don’t Give Up on Wilted Fruits and Veggies
Even when they no longer look firm and pretty, there’s always something you can do with those veggies and fruits that are past their prime. Turn that fruit into homemade jams that can serve as holiday gifts —or to put on pancakes, and the veggies can be great in sauces or soups.
At Sunrise Sanitation Services, we’ve been in the solid waste and recycling business for more than forty years. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help you.
