memes

Consider cooking it, then you have something to eat.

Yeah ...

Strategies against this include cooking for several people (well, that ain't happening), doing meal prep several days in advance / cooking larger portions that you can eat over a couple of days, and buying frozen ingredients (still better than buying entire frozen meals). Some non-frozen ingredients keep for a long time, too, e.g. dried rice or noodles, onions, pickled vegetables.

I cook the food

Be organized, have a weekly menu. I'm sorry this is the solution. My bad.

I sought an ADHD diagnosis.

I got a chest freezer for $200. I freeze everything before or on its expiration date.

Sometimes if its mushy veggies I make a stock and freeze it for the next meal. If its too far gone i have a compost jar in the kitchen and a bin outside.

I started a garden and an edible native hedge this year. I have tea herbs and squash for free now and working on a seed propagation.

I started a coop mushroom grow with my neighbors since he felled some hardwood and I had the plan. The leftover mushrooms we dont eat will be either sold at market or made into liquid cultures.

Were talking about going in on a local half cow or pig. He says if my garden keeps growing we can buy the plot behind us together and start a farm. Would cut grocery costs a lot.

My wife and I have pantry weeks where we dont go grocery shopping, we eat whats in reserve, soak dry beans, thaw last weeks on sale chicken breast and pressure Cook em, make a flatbread and have some curry.

Instant pot helps too. Thinking about getting coturnix quail to feed good scraps to and get eggs out of. I can plant cover crops for em on the last strip of lawn I have.

It doesn't have to be wasteful forever.

I live walking distance from 2 small super markets, I walk to those near every day and just get a few things and I also get hello fresh and I always cook those. So generally my fridge is pretty empty but I always eat well. Just in Time Home Economics you could say.

This happens to us - if I cook dinner for everyone, two of us eat, if I cook dinner for two of us, everyone wants to eat. If I make enough for leftovers, nobody takes them to lunch. If I don't make enough, they ask why there is not enough for lunch.

Things that help on your question though -

Canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned coconut milk, canned pumpkin, jarred spaghetti sauce, spices - a lot of our staples are not perishable.

Do you live where you can stop by the store on the way home? Then don't buy perishables for the week, buy them for the meal you are making.

Some foods and meals freeze pretty well, freeze them and keep a list of what's in the freezer so you remember to eat it.

I hate meal planning but it helps a lot. I sometimes put a note on the fridge "we have food for dal with spinach, chicken & cabbage, sheet pan gnocchi with sausage and broccoli, eggs and potatoes" or whatever we have the food to make, and cross them off as they are made.

Some foods make other foods. So if I make a hunk of pork, it's pork, rice and beans then enchiladas then burritos, and so on.

Meal plan. Write what you're cooking for the week, buy only ingredients for that.

Anything uncooked goes in the freezer, you can defrost and cook/reheat a lot of food, stop throwing stuff away.

i didn't start cooking until I got a big enough kitchen to store plates, forks, knives, spoons, glasses, cooking pans/pots&utensils, cutting boards, leftover food storage, dish towels, and food cupboards and pantry.

rentals rarely have enough for that.

but once i got enough space to have that stuff, and then saved up to buy that stuff little at a time then cooking became a lot more sensible. (middle aged bachelor)

i have recipes that i don't have to think about that create leftovers.

And that is the goal: LEFTOVERS

Leftovers are your bread and butter of saving money and not having to cook.

A freezer and a pantry full of canned and dried foods.

Only buy fresh meats and veggies when you are actually gonna cook.

Freeze leftovers in single portion sizes.

Eventually you’ll have a bunch of homemade frozen dinners to choose from.

It's not for everyone, or even most people probably, but I deal with it by buying virtually the same thing every week, once a week. No impulse buying. So, I eat everything I buy, every week, because I know exactly how much I eat for each meal, each week. I waste nothing. I don't need a list, I know the path through the store I will take, and I'm in and out in about 20 minutes, including checkout.

I decided to stop thinking about food as entertainment or reward, and now think of food as only nutrition (as much as I can, it's not easy, but that's the idea.)

Solution: freezer. I basically never have food go off because basically all of it is either frozen or non perishable.

1. Consider therapy or medication.

2. Buy nonperishables in a higher ratio, such as canned, pickled, or dry goods.

3. If you're not concerned about your health enough to cook your own food every day, then just don't buy food that has to be cooked every day.

4. Remind yourself why you're doing it, set a timer, and get it done. "This is for me. I love good food, I love my body."

I just hunt and eat the homeless. I work for the municipality so I just leave what I don't eat around park benches, bus stops and the front of stores to scare the rest away.

I solved this by getting into a relationship with someone who genuinely loves to cook for others. I felt super guilty about it for a while but eventually got over it.

Meal planning is overwhelming to me, so I made a habit of rotating a selection of staple meals with fewer, more stable ingredients. PB or eggs scrambled with cheese on toast for a breakfast. A salad of chickpeas, carrot, broccoli and avocado with a whole-wheat roll, or a lentil/rice bowl, for lunch. Precook larger batches of freezer-friendly staples like chickpeas, lentils, rice, turkey burgers, meatloaf, tomato gravy - reserve 2-3 days' supply and freeze portioned batches of the rest. Allow yourself less experimental ingredient buys per grocery run - so if it turns out they don't synergize with your staples, you're not accumuating a lot of dead-end ingredients.

with pen and paper

Meal prep brah, freeze that shit up

Buy food that has a long shelf life - lentil, rice, beans, canned vegetables, salsa jars. As a bonus it also doesn't have to be refridgerated.

If you don't have a good sized freezer, buy one. There are small ones that fit in any home.

Too many veggies? Chop them up and put them in quart sized containers. You can add them to any soup or stew.

I have a five quart pot; make chili/stew/soup and freeze in pint size containers.

My house has a good freezer, here's the first i searched out as an example.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Magic-Chef-3-5-cu-ft-Manual-Defrost-Chest-Freezer-in-White-HMCF35W5/313922431

Cook in bulk for the week. Grocery shopping on Saturday, cooking on Sunday. Then all you have to do is heat things up at meal time.

*I should clarify that you only need to refrigerate, not freeze, the type of stuff I'm talking about. Works better if you're vegetarian

For me, I try to focus on buying stuff that will keep well, things that I can use a lot of ways, or things I have an immediate plan to use all of.

Or multiple of those things at once. Like if I get a crown of broccoli, it will only stay good in the fridge for a week or two, but I don’t need to eat it all at once, I can just take a bit at a time and add it to other things, like a soup or a pan fry, to get some green in. Frozen veggies solve the only lasting a week or two thing also.

On the other hand there’s things like canned tuna, there is only really one way I’m gonna use that, but it keeps forever in the cabinet, so no wasting fridge space, and the cans are usually small enough I can use it all at once.

Like, if it doesn’t keep well, you you wouldn't use it all at once, and you’d probably only use it for one thing, just don’t bother.

Also, like, look in to how certain things should be best stored, some things can last a lot longer if you figure that out.

Perishables take more planning. Get just enough and have a plan to use it. Use canned and frozen food to account for uncertainty. Be aware of expiration dates of your food and plan accordingly.

I only buy packages, containers, or cartons that will sit within my nutritional budget to eat all of in a single sitting. One, maybe two of those = one meal. Especially those wonderful single-course entrees I can buy at ALDI for like six bucks a pop. That's actually a day's worth of food. Especially because I tend to eat one meal a day (when i am behaving).

Costco rotisserie chickens rock my fucking world too. Those things can be more than one meal!

I will also buy packages of "salad mix"--mixed greens with a few other veggies in it,
and then I'll add a nice dash of salt, and either a splash of apple cider vinegar or a liberal dusting of Parmesan cheese and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes, then shake it all up and just GO TO TOWN on the whole container.

The only perishables I buy are things of this sort that I will most certainly eat RIGHT AWAY.

Everything else is either
a: canned goods where i'll use the whole can at once adding to one of the above items
or,
b: non-perishable usually dry goods with which i can augment other things with pinches and dashes at a time (there are some things like vinegar or certain hot sauces that age and develop more flavor over time).

Buy food that you can cook in advance and reheat. Make a list of meals for the week, cook it all, then freeze it. Too tired to cook later in the week? Take it out of the freezer and reheat it.

Also, try to do recipes you can do in sequences that don't require too much dishwashing, then clean everything up at the end.

Freeze stuff

Walk yo and from the grocery store

Buy stuff that will last a while

Grow your own produce

Please don't waste food.