There are many ways to reduce the amount of food waste produced by your household. I'll tell you a couple of ways I do it.
What I used to do was make a detailed meal plan for the week and buy the ingredients I needed to create all of those meals. However, this is a very time consuming process and it is often difficult to get the exact amount of ingredients you need, resulting in food waste. With this method, there is not a significant amount of food waste, even less if you plan to use the same ingredient multiple times for other recipes. A challenge I frequently ran into using this method is that I didn't always want to eat what I had planned for myself. Also, if I did not plan the meals carefully (eat/consume them in time) I ended up not being able to eat those meals because of the food spoiling.
More recently I have changed my method to food planning; and having a small variety of edible plants has also changed how I plan my meals. Now I plan a few meals and pick up the items necessary to cook those and buy whatever else looks good in the fresh fruit and produce section of the store. The change in my diet has also resulted in me coming up with some very unique meals that I never would have thought of cooking previously.
After I cook the couple of meals that I had planned for the week, I then take inventory of what foods I have left. I plan a meal each night based on which food(s) need to be cooked the soonest. I am a big fan of mushrooms, but they have a short life and need to be cooked sooner than other foods. Other foods that need to be used up (in my kitchen) include kale, fresh lettuce, and sprouts. I'm sure you have others you can think of.
The more perishable food items you can use in each recipe the better. Sometimes using Pintrest or a Google Search will give you creative ideas for preparing your foods that you would not come up with on your own.
Of course, properly storing your food will also increase it's edible life span. I recommend using re-usable zip lock bags and beeswax wrap. These are environmentally friendly, re-usable products that replace single-use plastic bags and plastic wrap.
Of course, when you compost you also give your food a new life. On the occasions where I do not manage to use my food in time, I feel better knowing that it is going to create new soil rather than sitting in a trash mound unable to properly break down due to lack of proper air flow and exposure.
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