throwing money in the trash. SICK OF IT!!!

I'm not a big fan of leftovers either. My wife will make food and will freeze half of it the next day. You can freeze bread and it will be ok. In addition, if I do NOT want to eat something in the refrigerator, I'll either eat fast food or make other arrangements for food. Kids yell and scream about not eating certain foods, but they cannot DRIVE!

I don't see how you can waste so much food....I waste some veggies every once in a while, but not half the groceries I bought. I don't have a family, it's just my boyfriend and I, but I think it's harder for me not to waste foods...I cook a pound of hamburger for tacos, we can have two meals from that, and the taco meat tastes just the same. I do this with many meals I make, and am only cooking for two. Make your children eat the leftovers, if they are hungry, well they can eat what's provided for them to eat. I might sound strict and I don't have kids, but you're throwing away your money! Make a change, cook the food!

We throw a lot out too and it bugs me. Sometimes it's unavoidable, especially with produce.
We belong to a produce co-op and get a big basket of produce every other week. It's so much that we can't possibly eat it all before it goes bad, but even if we throw half of it away it's cheaper than if we bought it at the grocery store.
My wife likes to buy so much stuff that the pantry and fridge is packed tight. When I open the fridge to find food, I am not going to dig through every shelf with crap falling off the shelves onto the floor to see what is hidden back there, so inevitably it goes bad and gets pitched. I can't get her to just keep less on hand. I think she has a problem with allowing any empty space whatsoever in the pantry or fridge.

Yeah that sucks. I had that problem then I told my husband to make up his mind. He now eats the leftovers. Its expensive eating out all the time and very bad for you. So you tell him he can come home and eat a healthy sandwich when he gets off work!

My husband and I recently invested in a fancy shmancy new fridge and I swear it keeps food 5x as long as our old one did. My old fridge used to keep blueberries for 3 days before they'd spoil... now they last a couple of weeks. We also freeze a lot of our meals that we make from produce as well. Which is a double win - less sodium than prepackaged meals and it's way more cost effective.

If you refuse to go to fast food with your husband, and insist that you (and kids) eat the healthy food you buy and fix instead of the junk he's bringing home, will he get the hint? If you're throwing food away anyway, might as well toss the unhealthy stuff and eat the good stuff, right?

I don't know -- it might work, it might not. Good luck!

i know me being super picky about eating old food that im scared is growing mold but you just cant see it , is part of the problem but i cant stop cause thats my health and my kids health i couldnt emagine giving them moldy food that makes them sick just cause the mold wasnt old enough to be seen by the eye yet. i have had grapes that i ate that showed no sign of mold but totally tasted like it.


ROFL

I despise grocery shopping! Its just me & the hubs here and some weeks I feel like I'd get more nutrition out of just eating the cash I was going to spend on the food. We are constantly on the go and the one night a week I am home in time to cook a meal, that's the last thing I want to do because there are a ton of other things I think I should be doing instead. But I'm adjusting, slowly. Maybe a few of the things I'm doing will help you.

I've started cooking a casserole or two on the weekends. Once its done cooking I let it cool then dish it into serving sized containers to be frozen. The smaller containers only take about 5 mins in the microwave to heat up. I feel good knowing even when I'm not home my husband can eat a halfway decent casserole, instead of over-processed mystery meat in a box. My 'serving sized' containers are the plastic containers the hillshire farm deli meat comes in or ziploc plastic containers. I can write on the side with a sharpie to know what's in it, but it comes off with just a few swipes of the soapy sponge while I'm doing the dishes.

My sister-in-law taught me to brown my ground hamburger meat before freezing it. That way it just needs to be heated a little and have the seasonings added to it for tacos, italian dishes, or anything else.

I have three tupperware containers for my cereal. As soon as a box/bag is opened it goes into a tupperware. If there are no tupperware containers available we don't open a new thing of cereal. If the kids all want different types of cereal perhaps try the little individual boxes. Two birds with one stone: the kids only get one serving of cereal in the morning and it doesn't go stale. It is a bit more expensive but it beats the waste. Also those little boxes make great munchie food while watching tv, on a road trip, whenever again its only one serving so you don't completely blow your calories for the day.

As soon I buy a package of crackers, graham crackers, saltines, any crackers, I open the box, and put the inner bag inside a ziploc bag. That way if someone other than myself opens the inner bag they have to open the ziploc too and hopefully they remember to close both as well. We had some last minute guests this past Thanksgiving and a couple things of crackers went soggy because they didn't ziploc the bags but other than that its been pretty successful for my pantry.

I've never tried freezing bread because we do go through a loaf in just over a week by taking our lunches every day. My husband is saintly for making our lunches each morning. He has either a ham or salami sandwich and I get turkey or peanut butter. But I've heard freezing bread is a good thing to do with it if you don't eat it fast enough. When I was bread shopping this past weekend I noticed some of the loaves are not as long as others. Perhaps switching to one of those shorter brands might help.

There have even been a few rare occasions where I've managed to get out of bed early enough to throw things in the crockpot so its ready to eat when I get home from work. Other times I get it all ready the night before, keep it in the fridge overnight, then plug it in and turn it on as I walk out for work.

I have worked the midnight shift before, I did it for a year. At the time I was seeking weight loss help from a place that is no longer in business. It was hard to figure out my schedule and the best time to eat. The best advice the weight loss place could offer was get on a normal 9-5 schedule. I lost a couple pounds but nothing like I wanted. All that to say that I know its difficult to adjust to a drastic change from what everyone else considers "normal." I think the thing that helped me the most was that there wasn't a lot of junk food in my house at that time and there were no fast food joints on my way to/from work. What really hurt me was the time I would spend with my friends all they wanted to do was go out to junky food places.

Perhaps if you don't pack a lunch for your husband you could pack him a hunger emergency kit for his car. Then maybe he won't be so tempted to stop at the drive-thru after an off the wall shift. Ask him once a week or so if the kit needs to be replenished. Possible kit items individual size box of cereal, protein or meal replacement or breakfast bars, bottle of water, cracker snack packet, trail mix, snack bag of nuts, sunflower seeds, etc. A lot of my items are prepackaged but that's because when I'm in the car I want something crunchy. There are some prepackaged things that are healthy, healthier than most fast food anyway.

My neighbor had an issue with her husband not eating what she prepared because even when she used his mother's recipes it didn't taste enough like his mom's to be worth eating and he never touched leftovers. There were a good number other issues going on in that marriage too but eventually they sought the help of their pastor. She explained that besides hurting her feelings when he refused to eat her cooking, he was setting a poor example for the kids about respecting their mother. The pastor was able to explain it in a way that really hit the husband like a bullet between the eyes. So the next weekend they shipped the kids off to friends' houses and she spent the weekend cooking meals and tweeking recipes so they would taste more like his mother's so he would be willing to eat them with the family and so she would not prepare more than what would be eaten in one sitting. It was a lot of work but some of the creations they came up with were quite Yummy! Because he still refused to go near leftovers my husband & I ended up with most of the trial dishes. We froze most of them and ate very well for weeks!

Best Wishes to you!!

FREEZING.. is your answer.. freeze the bread and only take out what you need at the time, buy gallons of milk in half gallons.. pour out a little of each container and freeze them until needed. buy Peanut butter, canned chicken and tuna for lunches instead of lunchmeat... you can also freeze lunch meat and sliced cheese. Boxes of cereal can be put into tupperware and the same with the crackers. if the fresh veggies and fruit are not being eaten then buy less of them.. stick with frozen and canned most of the time.

Sit down and talk with him. Go over your weekly mealy plan with him. See what he thinks. Get some of his imput and talk about not bringing food home.

Meal planning and prepping food in small containers is the key.

For example, I had spinach left over from last week so I thawed some venison and made mini meatballs and froze them in serving size containers so I could pull them out as I wanted. Freezing in serving sizes is great for portion control and reducing waste.

Other ideas are freezing stir fry or fajita packs, if you have extra peppers, onions, other other veggies slice them like you like them and have them ready in containers so you can just pull something out and cook it.

I do all my food prep on the weekend since I do not like chopping when I come home from school or work. Plus if veggies are chopped or the melon is balled and frozen in 1 cup containers, I will take those for my snacks rather than buying a candy bar because I am starving.

I know it's gonna sound crazy, but maybe you can try to plan to shop everyday for food, or every few days. I know it takes a lot of time out of your schedule, but then you don't have to worry about having tons of food at home. Just an idea.

Just a few quick ideas - look up storage tips (for example, herbs that get their ends trimmed, and then stored in a little cup with a small amount of water and a ziploc over top last AGES longer than stored any other way!), and try to make meals with components you can easily freeze - soups, lasagnas, meats etc. Good luck!