Over the weekend I was able to pick up 4 boxes of “chickens scraps” from a local store. We were able to salvage a little over half of the fresh and fruits and vegetables you see above. For the third week in a row, I was astounded by the amount of perfectly edible strawberries I was able to save.
The Girl and I ended up freezing 5 full sized cookie sheets full of berries, as well as giving some to Mrs. Hillbilly in exchange for a lemon {to make strawberry ice cream}.
After 3 hours of sorting, discarding, and repackaging, there were 2 full boxes of actual scraps for the chickens. And in all honesty, we could have saved a little more out of the boxes, but decided to call it a day.
From the four boxes of scraps, we were able to keep:
- 7 gallons of strawberries
- 1 papaya
- 1/2 of a watermelon
- 3/4 of a pineapple
- 3 red pears
- 5 yellow pears
- 3 lbs grapes
- 10 cabbage leaves
- 9 green peppers
- 1 1/2 cucumbers
- 9 apples
- 1 cantaloupe
- 1/2 of a honey-dew melon
- 2 ears of corn
- 25+ tomatoes
- 9 heads of lettuce
- 3 spinach leaves
Besides sipping strawberry and papaya smoothies twice a day and eating fresh fruit around the clock, I was also able to whip up batches of strawberry ice cream, homemade tomato sauce and 2 bottles of strawberry syrup {for pancakes}.
Oh my word.
I still think this is amazing. All this was destined for the trash/compost by the store. Yet look how much was still edible.
If you are interested in trying this yourself, I want to encourage you to ask your local store/ farm stand for their scraps. The worst thing they can do is say no.
It never hurts to ask.
You can read more on the topic of food waste in Jonathan Bloom’s book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It). Amazon currently has it on sale for $10.40
*Amazon prices can change at anytime.
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