We don't waste any food in my house it's just two of us and we have both lived with out when we were younger so we do not waste any food or anything for that matter.

I wouldn't say that I'm more careful now; I've always been careful. We compost but also do "use-it-up" recipes like smoothies, soups, omelets, pancakes, etc. We meal plan weekly and start with whatever we already have that needs to be used up. And we buy a mix of fresh, canned, and frozen produce: we start the week with recipes that use fresh items so those are at their peak, then if we don't get to something involving more stable items we can postpone that meal to the following week.

To me using up leftovers is part of menu planning. I love to come up with ways to use things up in another dish. We also compost but it is mostly cores/peels/rinds not edible food.

Anonymous wrote:We compost all veg, fruit and starch waste and put it back into our garden beds. So we never really have a lot of "waste." Additionally, our chef prepares a meal plan for us. There is very little leftover in our household. Maybe 1-2 servings a week that can become lunch for our house keeper.

I assume it's your gardener that does the actual composting and mulching!

Yes I'm the last year we've really tried to pay more attention to what we buy and how we use it. We compost now. And DH has a less stressful job and has now found the time to really get back into cooking so we meal plan be ause we end up buying less common ingredients and we don't want those to go to waste. Id say on our weekly grocery haul, 99% gets used or composted. We used to have probably a 25% waste rate in the past.

We compost all veg, fruit and starch waste and put it back into our garden beds. So we never really have a lot of "waste." Additionally, our chef prepares a meal plan for us. There is very little leftover in our household. Maybe 1-2 servings a week that can become lunch for our house keeper.

Are you more careful these days about not letting food go bad before it gets eaten? Looking for small amounts of this or that in the fridge to add to whatever you're making?