Friday, November 12, 2010

Food Waste Friday - The Frugal Girl.

Kristen, I read your readers question about Cheerios that had gone off. My suggestion for that or almost any other thing that has gone off or is past it's best to a point that you don't even want to risk it on your husband or kids! Is to give it to the birds - they don't check the "best by" date, they just tuck in and if it doesn't suit them they don't eat it. Chances are it will get knocked to the ground where some other wild creature will find a use for it.

If people would put a bird table up and put most of their food waste on it, we might have a lot more songbirds to enjoy. Just be sure it is not easily accessible to the local cats. Birds will eat the half eaten sandwiches and hot dogs from your kids, leftover french fries, fried chicken, cat food, apple cores, almost anything. Even better, in my opinion, would be to give it all to a neighbor who, like me, keeps chickens.

More and more people are keeping a few chickens to supply themselves (and maybe even their friendly neighbors who give them scraps for the chickens!) with a few fresh eggs, while at the same time using up food scraps that would otherwise go to waste. Chickens will eat almost ANYTHING!! Including carrot tops, lettuce or cabbage leaves - they don't care if it is the poor leaves from around the outside - all food scraps (If you eat it, they will eat it) That should cover everything, but I still find people surprised to hear that they will eat the remains from a fried chicken feast or a chicken or turkey carcass, fish bones and skin, crab feast remains - they will get every tiny scrap of crasbmeat that you missed, and the guts, lungs and all - seeds of any kind like from a cantaloupe or watermelon, and any kind of fruit waste, peelings etc etc, I even give them leftover beer, tea and coffee. I think the only thing I have found they won't eat is citrus fruits.

If you don't want to feed the birds or a neighbors chickens for some reason, at least compost your waste (But not any kind of meat, fish, milk product etc) Then you can put it around your flowers, bushes or trees to feed them.

Go for it, another advantage is keeping stuff out of our landfills which makes them last longer - and thus keeps our taxes down! And it is less for the trash trucks to haul, more savings in gas etc.

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