It’s the weekend and it’s been a tough week (isn’t it always?), so I’ve decended to the depths of mundanity for this one.
Which is the food itme which you most commonly buy and then never eat?
For me, it’s the avacado. Bought loads down the years. Thrown most of them away.
Love them, but for some reason, almost never get round to slicing it open, taking out that stone and gouging out the contents. So simple a procedure, and yet - for whatever reason - so rarely done. By me.
What’s your nomination? And what is it that causes the slip twixt cupboard and lip?
For me its butter, I live alone and just don’t use that much butter. I usually go through about a quarter of a stick at the most before it starts to go bad.
I have to go with lettuce. I plan to eat salads; then I eat the tomatos, cucumber, carrots, scallions, all the good stuff that goes into a decent salad first and then the idea of lettuce mixed in doesn’t thrill me. I’ve even bought green and red, even young spinach leaves, but it still seens like so much rabbit food to me. Somewhere a guinea pig (in China) is going hungry…
Green salad. I keep buying it because I have this perpetual goal to improve my eating habits. I keep throwing it out because I so often fail at this goal.
For my apartmentmates and I it’d have to be potatoes. We buy them with all the best intentions but they generally manage to go bad before we can eat the lot of them.
Bananas. I’m very finicky when it comes to bananas. They must be yellow, with perhaps the merest hint of green. But once the little brown spots start appearing, the banana flavor simply is too pronounced. So I have all these high hopes when I buy bananas, but they turn far too quickly. (And, yes, I bought bananas at the store tonight; anyone want to bet whether they’ll be consumed before they turn a nasty spotted shade?)
Campers, unreal. Totally unreal. Am with you down to the last (or first) brown dot. I’ve made it a rule in the family now that one buys no more than 5 bananas at a time, because I was getting fed up with chucking them out. I also buy them myself at work for work, and the supermarket, knowing how perishable they are, sell them in as big job lots as possible, binding them in bunches of no less than 7 with tape. No problemo. I just tear through the tape (nails not so hot, so had to use the teeth last time - pleased they’re still working when you get to my age) and pull off the three I need for the next 48 hours. In this cool weather, they’ll keep that long. But you really have to plan it like a military campaign to ensure a) you don’t bin any and b) you don’t end up eating two when you only want to eat one.
Keep it rolling - this is proving totally absorbing. AndyPolley, what are you chucking off the Brooklyn Bridge?
Milk. Hands down. I don’t really like it, except for on cereal. And I don’t eat cereal often enough to drink the whole carton. It’s almost impossible to find smaller cartons of 2%, so I often end up throwing away a quart or more of milk.
Exactly. Last time I bought bananas I got 3 because they looked like they would last days. I only had the one I ate when I bought them. Luckily I gave the other 2 to a visitor. From now on I am buying one at a time.
I rarely buy bananas now because for the same reasons that others have mentioned - if they’re too ‘banana-ey’ tasting, they turn my stomach. I bought 3 the other day at a near-perfect level of ripeness - a little too much green to eat right away, but I figured that would let me eat them before they got too ripe for my liking.
I have to finish them today and tomorrow, or else they’ll go overripe.
But for me, the thing I probably throw out most often is bread - I just can’t get through a loaf before it starts molding (which is why I buy about the least expensive that I can, at $.89 for white and $1.49 for wheat). I know I can keep it in the fridge longer, but I always forget to stick it in there after I make my sandwich in the morning.
Sacks o’salad. They go on sale, so I’ll buy two. We’ll have a nice salad for dinner the night I bring it home. Then the other sack sits in the crisper drawer till it’s mush.
Cilantro. I only ever need a tablespoon or two of chopped cilantro, but they only sell it in rather large bunches. I’m always throwing out wilty, yellowed cilantro.
