Whether you are planning a holiday gathering, potluck or special dinner, preparing your meals or specific dishes ahead of time allows you to get what you need with less waste.
Save the Food offers cooks and eaters alike options for food-and-money saving tips. The latest tool is the Guest-imator, a dinner party calculator that estimates how much food you need to keep your guests full and happy. What a concept!
Visit a local farmers’ market
There are some farmers’ markets open year-round and even more open for Thanksgiving, so it’s a great time to get back out to the market. The farmers market map allows shoppers to find a market based on the neighborhood and the day they want to shop.
Choose from a wide variety of seasonal food that tastes fresh and looks beautiful on your plate, including apples, pears, cranberries, winter squash, hazelnuts, walnuts, chard, kale, leeks, beets and potatoes.
Reduce and reuse at the table
There are many waste reduction ideas you can incorporate at the table and in the kitchen. By using durable plates, cloth napkins and serve-ware, you can add beauty to the table, save money over time and reuse these items year after year. Invite your guests to bring reusable Tupperware or casserole dishes so they can take home leftovers (or bring your own if you’re a guest so you get dibs on leftovers too!).
Save the Food offers these top 10 meal planning tips - plus more resources and tools on their interactive website for you and your family to save both food and money.
- Don’t start from scratch
- Check the refrigerator
- Use portion planners
- Have kitchen essentials handy
- Use building blocks
- Think double duty
- Schedule a lazy night
- Go fresh fruit
- Lean on frozen ingredients
- Cook and freeze