This post was included in the 118th Festival of Frugality carnival over at My Dollar Plan.
I will be the first person to tell you that I am a pretty picky eater. While I seem to be getting better the older I get, I still stick to my guns about a good many food items. Raisins? Forget it. Mushrooms? I’d rather starve. And don’t even get me started on rice. Yes, I said rice.
Jake, my fiance, will eat just about anything though, which makes it easy to cook for him and to go grocery shopping. The problem arises when we buy something that Jake will happily scarf down, but I will not touch with a ten foot pole. Sometimes, that item will sit there and sit there and slowly, but surely begin to rot because Jake has been busy eating other things (things that I too enjoy eating) and not eating up whatever gross thing he got for himself. There’s nothing I can do, but nag and let the food sit there because I can’t stand to eat it. In some cases, the food has honey in it, an ingredient I’m allergic to (yes, freak that I am, I’m allergic to honey), and I down right can’t eat it. I absolutely hate spending money on food only to throw it away because we simply forget about it- it’s just like tossing your hard earned cash straight into the trash.
But, I no longer have to fret; I finally came up with a solution:
This is a list of all the food in our kitchen that Jake will eat and I will not. I’m hoping that when Jake is hungry and looking for something to eat, he will consult this list first before digging in. If anything has an expiration date, I will include it next to the item. I also plan on starting a list of things that I eat and Jake will not when, on the off chance, we buy something that he doesn’t eat (namely avocados) so that I will know which foods to focus on eating too.
This kind of list would also work if you find yourself throwing a lot of food away because it expires before you can use it all up. Just write down all the food that is perishable with the expiration date beside it. No need to hunt around, use guess work, or throw out forgotten food anymore; it’s all listed on the front door of the refrigerator.
20saver 