Dinner for Two

After putting out the garbage last night, I was reminded that I waste waaayyy too much food.  I feel guilty because that moldy watermelon hurts the environment and my dwindling bank account balance!  When I think about how much I threw away just this week it makes me shudder because I am most certainly an "average consumer."

A quick search of the internet suggests researchers have encountered a variety of obstacles when making models about how much food/energy/resources gets wasted from throwing out food.  But almost all of the numbers suggest that a great deal of food never reaches our table.  The Oberlin College Resource Conservation Team recycling facts list that Americans dump more than 21 million shopping bags of food into landfills each year!

With the economy the way it is,  I am even more concerned about how to avoid the extra spoilage.  There are plenty of tips and advice out there that range from buying seasonal produce to making more frequent trips to the grocery store.  

So in the spirit of saving food from becoming refrigerator orphans, I used my day old produce in a delicious although certainly not authentic pad thai.  My recipe came from allrecipes.com and with a few alterations (used spaghetti instead of rice noodles, added some red bell pepper and snow peas instead of sprouts and got by with using oyster sauce instead of fish sauce) the final product wasn't half bad.  My boyfriend even gave it a rating of 6 out of 10 (what that scale really means he's still working out)..

Mmmm Pad Thai

And as the highlight of the meal, my boyfriend helped prepare the chopped peanut garnish

Who doesn't love the SlapChop?

So in the spirit of conservation, what is your favorite pantry/refrigerator clean out meal?

-Almost halfway through the week!