Americans are notorious for wasting food. While over 1 billion people on our planet do not have enough to eat per day Americans throw away approximately 1,400 calories of food per person per day. Put another way, America throws out 40% of the food that it produces.

Not only is this fact about waste disturbing in relation to those around the globe who are starving to death, but when you consider the volatility of the economy and how expensive food is becoming at the grocery store you would think that it would make more sense for people to guard against waste.

Think about the last time you cleaned out your refrigerator. Did you throw out moldy cheese, produce bags gone gooey, or bowls of leftovers that now resemble some sort of science experiment? Did the leftovers even make it to the fridge or did you just toss them out right from the start?

The problem is, our society has become so immune to the concept of waste; so used to throwing things away, that perhaps part of the problem is in not understanding how to avoid food waste. When we throw out that bag of spinach that has gone bad we know that the next bag is only as far away as the nearest grocery store. We won’t go hungry because we bought too much and/or failed to eat what we had on hand. How can we re-train ourselves to be more conscious of food waste? Here are seven basic tips that can be followed which, when taken together, will significantly avoid the amount of food wasted in your household each day.

1. Only make what you need. One of the biggest problems with food waste is that we often make more food than you need for each meal. If you are in doubt as to how much constitutes a serving, check online. You should be able to gauge how much you will need to make for the number of people you will be cooking for. Cooking only what you need will cut down on leftovers and potential waste. And if you do decide to cook extras make it a family rule that lunch the next day is leftovers from the evening before.

2. Prepare your food correctly. Many today are so used to pre-cooked and prepared food items that they don’t know how to prepare fresh food properly. They may buy up some fresh foods hoping to make some old family favorites they had as a child but since their cooking skills have fallen by the wayside in favor of boxed mac and cheese the foods may sit and go bad. Many times people waste large portions of these items because they don’t understand how to prepare them or they don’t have the confidence that they can do so. Now though, you can look up recipes online and get step by step pictures even. If you buy the food, put the effort into actually making it.

3. Cook your favorites. You know what you and your family members like so come up with a list of favorites that you can cook from scratch and cook well. Serve those meals once or twice a week and make a habit of buying the items you need to make them. When you see those familiar ingredients in the fridge you know what you need to make before things go bad. Occasionally I make a vegetarian version of chicken scallopini for instance and it uses white wine and cream (2 things I usually don’t buy or use). I will often make this meal 2-3 times in a single week until I use the wine and cream up. I do the same thing with Potato Leek soup when I have potatoes and leeks to use up.

4. Use your leftovers. Leftovers have a bad habit of sitting morosely in the refrigerator until they sprout mold and have to be thrown out. No one seems to want to take the time to put the items together to make a new dish. A key to avoiding waste is to devise new meals out of leftover items. There are lots of websites that give ideas for dishes that can be made out of common leftovers and if you get creative I’m sure that you’ll find a way to make something new out of something old. Produce that you know you won’t use in a meal can often be used in green smoothies too.

5. Get Creative – Freeze your cutting board scraps like onion skins, carrots, celery, garlic, mushroom stems, etc and reserve them to make your own veggie broth. Produce that is about to go bad can also be used for this purpose. Stale bread can be used for bread crumbs and coutons.

6. Do a pantry/fridge challenge once a month. This means you avoid going to the store and figure out what you can eat from what you have. Spending a week or more eating this way gets rid of older foods before they can go bad and it saves money too!

7. Compost. As a last resort, compost all the biodegradable items that you are not able to eat or use. While technically this IS waste, it is waste that is being reused for something productive; in this case fertilizer for your garden and is not entering the standard waste/recycling system. We had had great success with our Worm Factory Compost Bin.

By following these seven simple steps you can significantly reduce the amount of waste in your household and, hopefully, will serve as an example to your children about curbing food waste.

When it comes to healthy summertime treats for kids the winning solution usually has to do with the presentation of the treat. Something that captures a child’s imagination has a much better chance of actually getting eaten.

Getting a Visual on Summer Treats

A child given a handful of carrot and celery sticks is far less likely to be interested in eating them than is if they were given ‘notched’ carrot and celery sticks that they can create buildings out of (think the old fashioned Lincoln Logs).

Which brings us to our first healthy summertime treat:

Rabbit’s Lincoln Logs. Rabbit’s Lincoln Logs consist of carrot and/or celery sticks cut to precisely the same length and “notched” on each end so that they can be used to create edible structures. Kids will have a blast creating and then eating cabins and other structures. Stand by with a kitchen knife so that you can “cut out” windows and doors. If you want to get really creative, you can add olives as “ornaments” or lettuce leaves as thatching for the roof.

Juicy Pops. Tried but true, freezing 100% natural juice in your freezer to make juice pops never goes wrong, no matter how young or old your child is. Orange juice and apple juice fresh from the juicer and then frozen are big hits with my own kids. You can also buy popsicle molds with interesting shapes and forms that kids will love.

Homemade Smoothies. Everyone loves a cold drink on a hot day, but if you want to make sure that your kids get healthy alternatives to the high-sugar varieties of drinks available, you may want to consider homemade smoothies. Use an all-natural yogurt or kefir (plain or flavor of choice) as your base. Add 1 cup of berries and a handful of spinach. Blend it smooth and serve in small cups. Hint: Try to aim for a ‘pleasing’ color for your smoothie or your child may refuse to even try it. In our home we especially spinach and musk melon smoothies. They taste great and the pale green color is appreciated.

Tea Party Sandwiches. While the idea of tea party sandwiches may be aimed at girls for the most part, just change the name for boys, the idea is the same. Use a sprouted bread (like Ezekiel) and your favorite sandwich filler, and then cut the sandwich with a cookie cutter to make fun sandwich shapes. Hint: to minimize waste, use a cookie cutter shape that you can get at least one tea party sandwich per slice of bread, and don’t add the filler until after you’ve cut the shape, this will prevent unnecessary waste of the sandwich filler (not to mention cut down on the mess).

Nut Butter Porcupines. Use a smooth nut butter (like almond) and scoop out a large tablespoon full. Pat the nut butter into a smooth ball and then roll through chopped up walnuts and coconut until they resemble porcupines that have rolled themselves up into a ball. For an extra sweet touch you can add honey to the butter before rolling them in the nuts and/or coconut. This treat can technically be considered a “sweet treat” thanks to the coconut, but is still far healthier than many “sweet” snacks available on the market. Sunflower seed butter (which my kids adore) will also work with this if you add a bit of almond flour to solidify it.

What treats do your kids like to eat in the summer?

Have you ever looked at the traditional food pyramid and thought, “Ugh, there’s no way I can eat that many fruits and veggies?” If you have, you are probably not alone. I aim for 10 servings of fruits and veggies per day and usually it isn’t that hard… you just need to get a bit creative.  Instead of deciding that you need to eat steamed brussel sprouts with every meal you need to find ways to incorporate these foods that are so easy you barely think about it. Its not so impossible when you are really enjoying your food and barely notice that GASP.. you are eating VEGGIES! Here are seven ways to add vegetables into your diet. Some might be obvious and some you might not have tried.

#1 Add them to your eggs. Oh yes… the veggie omelet! Spinach, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, peppers, even asparagus and a whole number of vegetables taste absolutely fantastic with eggs. Scramble them up for a healthy breakfast or serve them in an omelet. You can get up to two servings of vegetables taken care of right off the bat. Plus, if you are eating away from home there are many restaurants that make delicious veggie omelets.

#2 Add them to your sandwich. Add tomato to tuna or egg sandwiches. Add guacamole to your turkey sandwich instead of mayo and you have a serving of vegetables. Add a slice of lettuce and a tomato to sandwiches and burgers or try a veggie sub. These are one of my faves… a sub with spinach, butter lettuce, cucumbers, tomato, onion, mushrooms, cheese, and oil & vinegar. Yum!

#3 Grab a veggie drink. Green Smoothies are so tasty and you don’t even notice the veggies. I get at least 2 servings of dark leafy greens every time I drink one.

#4 Precut veggies and make them easy to snack on. Carrots, celery, peppers, broccoli and a number of other vegetables are easy to prepare in advance. Grab your favorite dip or hummus and snack on vegetables when you’re at work or just sitting in front of the television. Put em on the table front and center and kids will grab them when they walk by too.

#5 Eat a salad a day. It’s easy to make sure you eat a salad at lunch or dinner and one salad can provide two servings of vegetables. If you add a bit of protein to the salad like chicken, tofu, beans, nuts, turkey or eggs then you have a complete meal. You can even get really inventive with your salads.. Italian Bean and Tomato Salad or Berried Avocado Grapefruit Salad. Try 365 Salad Recipes for ideas.

#6 Puree vegetables and add them to sauces and baked goods. You’d be surprised what you can do with a pureed vegetable. The Sneaky Chef addresses this. Pureed cauliflower can be added to mashed potatoes or macaroni and cheese and you can puree squash and add it to a number of soups and sauces.

#7 Eat vegetable soups and use veggie based sauces. Vegetable soups are very satisfying and they can provide you with a serving or more of vegetables. When I make sweet and sour soup for instance, I usually add tons of snow peas and mushrooms. For even more nutrition make sure the soup is made with a vegetable broth instead of beef or chicken. You can even make your own vegetable broth with veggies that are looking sad. Sauces can be made from squash, tomatoes and herbs like basil for a tasty pasta topping.

When you take a look at all the tips and tricks you have available, eating five or more servings of vegetables each day isn’t that tough. Make it easier on yourself and make eating vegetables convenient and easy. Think ahead, make sure you and your family have plenty of easy to access vegetable options, including frozen vegetables, and have fun with it. Vegetables can and do taste good and they’re good for you.

About a year ago (maybe less) my family fell in love with green smoothies. No it has nothing to do with green in the eco sense of the word but rather what is in the smoothie…lots of fresh, leafy greens. A universal issue it seems is the concern over getting our kids to eat their veggies, particularly the dark green variety. Green smoothies are the perfect solution for the whole family.

We drink at least one but usually 2-3 green smoothies a day. This means we are eating lots of Kale, spinach, collard greens, wild greens, etc and we barely even notice because they are disguised with fruit. My kids argue over who is getting the most “green power”!

Since I had so many people ask me for recipes over the past year I thought I would put together a book of all our favorite smoothie recipes and it is finished at last. Check out Green Smoothie Recipes for Kids. They are all kid approved, healthy, and as an added bonus they are also all raw vegan.

So if you have kids that would rather drink sugary juice, chocolate milk, or soda…you need to try these green smoothies. Enjoy!

Also check out a new project I just worked on with a friend of mine… 365 Salad Recipes.

The FDA in their infinite wisdom ignorance, has declared BPA safe. They always put special interests like plastic companies and product manufacturing corporations before the health of people. Lucky for us, many consumers have spoken out so loudly against BPA that many companies have started labeling their products BPA Free so that consumers can decide. At the very least we can exercise our right to choose healthier products, despite rulings such as these. For BPA free products check out these resources.

Now the FDA has recently announced that it will allow food producers to start irradiating fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce in an attempt to kill E. coli O157:H7 and other bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses, despite health, safety, and nutritional loss concerns. Because a few shoddy farms with dirty practices resulted in some food born illness they want to irradiate our food. What the freakin heck is wrong with these people????

Instead of pulling up their big boy pants and taking dirty industrial agriculture to task for making us sick they decide we need to have our food sterilized. This is exactly what they did to raw almonds a few months back. One bad company caused some illness and then they passed a law that required all almonds to be pasteurized. When these companies do this to us we are the ones punished not them. First we get sick when they run their business in a manner that is dirty and unethical and then we get punished by having our food choices taken away. I guess taking these companies to task for their actions is too much to hope for.

Not only is irradiation not safe for us, it takes away our right to choose fresh foods that don’t glow from irradiation. We should be able to choose raw almonds instead of pasteurized and fresh spinach instead of nuked spinach shouldn’t we? This is truly alarming to raw food eaters everywhere because they are blocking access to the very foods that can make us healthy and heal us from the disease and sickness caused by the corporations they are protecting.

I say NO THANKS FDA! I am a big girl and I can make my own decisions and I want to be able to buy fresh spinach. Tell the FDA no thanks courtesy of this petition from The True Food Network.