Friday, April 18th, 2014

President Bartlet (The West Wing), "If I cook stuffing inside the turkey, is there a chance I could kill my guests?  I'm not saying that's necessarily a deal-breaker."

So it's Friday and we thawed out a pound of ground beef for dinner, but we don't know what to make with it!  

 

We are totally against wasting food, so a lot of times I let Damon get creative so we can use up whatever it is that's been sitting around in the fridge or freezer too long.

Since we hadn't actually planned ahead a dish for tonight, Damon got his chance to get creative.  He took a look around to see what we had in the fridge that had been in there awhile.  We had a little lettuce left, a half of a block of pepper jack cheese (left over from when we made our homemade ravioli), and some frozen Texas toast flavored with some type of spicy buffalo wing flavoring that had been in the freezer taking up space for quite awhile......

Damon decided that this might could make a pretty tasty, if not slightly unconventional, cheeseburger!  Damon cooked up the patties and I put the toast in a fry pan and heated them through.  We cut slices of cheese from the block of pepper jack and melted them onto the top of the patties.  We dressed the toast with just mayo and some lettuce,  just to try to cool down some of the spice from the cheese and the spicy toast.

 

Anyway, this turned out to be one damn good burger but it was also one of the messiest burgers I've ever had.  Maybe this frozen toast isn't meant to be used for a sandwich because the sauce/flavor is on the outside of the bun which makes it quite a mess to handle.  I thought the flavor would somehow be baked into the dough but regardless, we used up the rest of our lettuce and the rest of the block of cheese before it went bad, and that toast had been in the freezer taking up space for quite awhile, so it was nice to use it up too.

My point being, there are people everywhere starving... not just in other countries either, people right here, in your country, in your state, in your city!  So stop wasting food, get creative if you have to, but use your groceries up before they go bad and if you have too much and know you can't eat it before it goes bad, then consider donating it. Damon heard the other day that 40% of groceries people buy from the grocery store, end up in the trash and that's just plain stupid and unnecessary!

And please, don't throw food away because it's the day after it "expires"! Those dates are "best by" dates, not "turned poisonous overnight" dates! Your eggs don't know what day it is, so they don't just magically go rotten the day after this date, your milk either.  Check your food and make sure it's not rotten, but don't just assume it's bad because it is past it's "best by" date.

Wake up tomorrow and try to waste less!