Waste Not: How to Stop Throwing Away So Much Food

On the Meal Plan

Any frugal shopper can tell you how to avoid this dilemma: menu planning. But there's a reason that, according to one retail trade association, 76 percent of supermarket-buying decisions are made in the aisles. Planning ahead feels like dull, burdensome work -- much less fun than spotting something awesome and tossing it into the cart. Indeed, my foodie friends were appalled at the very concept. "What if you're not in the mood for the meal that's on the schedule?" one asked. "I bet French women don't menu plan," said another.

To get a pragmatic perspective, I called Monica Knight, cofounder of the Boise-based Fabulessly Frugal. A dedicated couponer with four mouths to feed, Knight has a lot of food to track: She once bought 60 boxes of cereal at a single go. And she deals with her stash with ruthless efficiency and advised me to do the same, buying in bulk when items I know I'll use are on sale and a coupon is available, and planning my family's meals a week or two at a time based on what's in my always-stocked fridge and cupboards. She also recommends shopping from a list (and never succumbing to impulse buys), cooking in large batches that can be frozen for future meals, and scheduling leftover nights into your menu plan.

I set out to put Knight's strategies into action. The reconnaissance part was fun: I enjoyed perusing supermarket flyers and figuring out how to fit their specials with the items that are usually on our (now-sparse) shelves. It was like a puzzle. But a glitch quickly arose: my overly ambitious estimate of kitchen time. I like to cook (really), so I'd buy food thinking that I'd make a meal three or four nights a week -- but actually came through only once or twice. That meant I was once again stuck with a fridge and pantry overflowing with food we weren't eating.

The other surprise was our unexpected resistance to a crucial piece of Knight's gospel: meals composed of leftovers. These dinners, almost by definition, are unorthodox, often consisting of small amounts of unrelated foods from other nights. In theory this is an "interesting," more creative way of eating that Rob and I should embrace. But in reality I found it...inadequate. I can't help it -- I like a protein, a carb, and a vegetable on my plate. And Rob feels the same way. Plus I enjoy the big reveal of cooking, the ta-da! that comes with putting a roast chicken fresh from the oven, or even a big pot of soup, on the table.

It was no secret that Rob and I had a slovenly approach to refrigeration. We'd scoop leftovers into old yogurt cartons or cloudy plastic containers bought from an infomercial six years ago, then stick them somewhere in the back of the fridge where they'd go unnoticed for days, even weeks. I'd store herbs in the plastic bags I'd put them in at the market and keep restaurant and takeout food in their original containers. When I told this to B. J. Stein, a senior product manager at OXO, he was gentle but disapproving. "Ultimately, there are two requirements of stored food," he said. "It has to last as long as possible and it must remind you to eat it in time. That's why you need good, clear containers." If the food looks better, he explained, you're more likely to eat it the next day. "It's a subconscious thing. If something's in a leftover Chinese takeout box, it's like, 'What is this mystery food?'"

Lucinda Ottusch, a senior home economist at Whirlpool, also touts the virtues of good containers, but her chief focus is fridge organization: grouping like with like so all dairy is in one area, for example, and all leftovers in another. She told me to pay attention to the labels on the fridge and freezer drawers. "Those compartments are designed for the best preservation of the items they're meant for," she said. (Yikes! Am I the only one who just chucked stuff in according to size?)

The upshot of talking to Stein and Ottusch is that I bought a new set of clear plastic refrigerator containers. The novelty of having something so nice-looking helped us keep our fridge neater and cleaner and even made packing lunches of leftovers a bit more exciting. For a while.

In our house the freezer is the place where food winds up after it's already endured several days of purgatory in the fridge. Why? Because I've fixated on the notion that fresh is best. I'll cling to the ideal of never-frozen tilapia, even as days pass, before I jam it in the freezer at the last possible moment. By then, of course, it's a little slimy, so it stays frozen and uneaten for months.

Not that I needed to be told this was wrong, but Ottusch scolded me and reiterated her belief in labeled -- and dated -- containers for the freezer as well as the fridge. Knight, my Fabulessly Frugal role model, keeps a list of what's inside on her freezer door so she doesn't even have to open it to plan a menu. She thereby minimizes freezer burn, which is essentially caused by food unfreezing and freezing as the door opens and closes.

I got so excited about food lists that I taped one to the fridge and the freezer. But keeping up was hard, and the fridge list didn't last. Rob and I made a point of putting something from the freezer on our menu plan at least once a week.

And I began thinking of the freezer as a first-option cooking tool, just like a stovetop or oven: If I had aging tomatoes and roasting them felt like work, I'd puree them and freeze them for sauce. Or I could freeze leftover vegetables in a bag for making stock later. In fact, timely freezing (who knew?) can extend the lives of a staggering array of foods.

In the end I loved having our fridge, freezer, and pantry organized and easy to navigate. But stopping food waste takes an ever-vigilant eye: Look away for a day and the cottage cheese has turned green. We haven't achieved my goal of 100 percent no waste, but we're shopping less (which saves time and money) and improvising more. Recently I even used lemon zest in a recipe calling for lemon grass, which meant I wouldn't be throwing out that expensive ingredient a week later. Cordon Bleu it's not, but in our house, most days, the food tastes just fine.