a frui-tea party

We had some sunny weather on the weekend which somehow sparked a bit of spring cleaning in the refrigerator!?  The other night we made pizzas for dinner and opened a tin of pineapple.  I always have the best of intentions to bake something with the leftover pineapple but I often find it weeks later at the back of the fridge looking a bit...um fuzzy. :o(

So I decided that this time was going to be different!  I drained off the juice, scooped the pineapple into a bowl and added apples, bananas, oranges and blueberries.  Not wanting to waste the pineapple juice I mixed some orange juice with it and poured it into a tea pot so the kids could have a "frui-tea party"!  They don't have juice very often so it was a real treat for them and I felt good as nothing was wasted!

So while we're on the topic of less waste, have you visited The Zero Waste Home blog?  I find it very inspiring and she has encouraged me to be more aware of how much food we waste.  As our diet mostly consists of vegetables we have to be fairly careful about eating up produce before it goes off.  Buying local veggies whenever possible does help to extend the "shelf life" of the produce but I have come to the conclusion that we are obviously just going too often!

So, I have given myself two new challenges.....1) to buy only what I know that we can eat up before the food spoils, and 2) to plan out meals so that I have a better idea on the quantity I need to buy.  If I buy a larger quantity of something (ie:  because it's on sale) then I have to preserve it somehow (like freezing it or making it into something).

So lately we have been creating a lot of dishes that use up whatever happens to be left in the fridge.  We find that spaghetti sauce is a good place to use up the leftovers.  Soup is another good meal for kitchen clean up.  Do you have any "use it up" recipes or recipes that can be made with very few ingredients?  I could use a few more recipes to fall back on! ;o)

Have a great day!

xoxo

~ joey ~