Will, or Eli, as he now prefers to be called, is home from college for Christmas break. Up in Boston he's developing a really strong feeling and ministry for the homeless. His school in right in downtown Boston. He likes city living, but there are plenty of homeless he sees every day. One thing he has mentioned a couple of times since coming home is just how important it is to never waste food. Food is a gift! He's been trying to just eat the awful cafeteria food at his school. Last year, when he was a Freshman, he didn't like it and ate out all the time spending way too much money. So this year he makes himself eat the cafeteria food every weekday. I do think he treats himself once in a while on the weekends to something else. He also has a little fridge and he'll buy some ready to eat foods from Trader Joe's. He's got a hot pot so he can heat up some soup or make himself some tea in his room. Anyway, passing the homeless every day and having his own diet restricted to not so great cafeteria food has made him realize just how precious food is.
I am terrible at wasting food. It is because I am such a poor planner. It seems like the back half of my fridge gets filled with half eaten jars of applesauce and salsa, jelly jars and left overs that no one ate. If I kept my fridge cleaner, I'd have a better handle on what food we have and how to eat it all more efficiently. It's the same way with my pantry shelves. They somehow always seem to become too crowded with things we don't actually want and we always seem to be out of or low on the things we do want. And there's no room to put the things we do want, because the shelves are too full of stuff that we don't want. Yet I'm the one buying everything pretty much, so it must be me who is messing up the works here! How to solve that? I really would like to be more organized in those two areas. I think we'd eat better and I wouldn't be wasting so much food. I bet I could save enough money by being more conscientious about what goes in and out of our fridge and pantry, that I could feed a whole other family of seven! It's that bad!
The thing is whenever you start cleaning out fridges and pantries you wind up wasting a lot of food! Some of the pantry items can go to a community food bank, it is true, but you have to get it there! That's always the rub for me, remembering to make time to do that. And the fridge is just shameful, all that waste that comes of there in order to start anew. So I do feel defeated before I even truly get started!
Anyway, Eli (Will! He'll always be Will to me!) is here for almost 4 weeks, so with him prodding me gently, perhaps I can get into a groove where I am more efficient and less wasteful when it comes to food.
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