Eliminate Food Waste

Did you know that around 30–40% of perfectly good food in America is thrown away? This hurts our hearts for so many reasons—the environmental impact of that uneaten food, the general wastefulness of it, and also because it's money down the drain for consumers!

To help eliminate food waste in your kitchen, we have some suggestions!

• Use the Search feature to look up recipes based on leftover ingredients or items you already have in your pantry. That way, you're using up what you've got before purchasing more.
• Freeze ingredients or meals that you can't enjoy right away! Going on vacation but still have that bunch of kale sitting in your fridge? Just rinse and chop it up, and store it in your freezer! Then you can pull it out when you're back and ready to cook.
• Put together half your Menu for the week, and then take a look at your Grocery List—if you're seeing any small or half portions of a whole fruit or vegetable, go back to Search to find other recipes that will help you use up the other portions of that ingredient. That way, you'll be able to use up all of the ingredients that you buy at the store and have less food waste.
• Leftovers, leftovers, leftovers. Similarly to the above, if you scale up the recipes that you make (rather than making 5 separate recipes for 1 portion each, for example), you're more likely to use up whole quantities of items—a whole can of beans, whole head of cabbage, etc. Plus, you can then buy those items in bulk, which is both cost effective and, when bringing your own container, more eco-friendly!

Do you have any favorite tips or tricks that you use to be more environmentally friendly in the kitchen? Let us know so we can add it to our list!