I just hunt and eat the homeless. I work for the municipality so I just leave what I don’t eat around park benches, bus stops and the front of stores to scare the rest away.
I do this sort of thing with pets from the animal shelter
Be organized, have a weekly menu. I’m sorry this is the solution. My bad.
This isn’t “THE” solution though. Plenty of other options. My favourite is meal prepping - spend three hours cooking for the entire week, put it in the fridge. Instead of an hour / hour and a half each day. You only have to clean up after yourself once too.
Issues are you need to prepare things that reheat well, or that you can quickly “cook up” each day without it taking too long. I.e. “just add the sauce to the salad” type of deal.
This happens to us - if I cook dinner for everyone, two of us eat, if I cook dinner for two of us, everyone wants to eat. If I make enough for leftovers, nobody takes them to lunch. If I don’t make enough, they ask why there is not enough for lunch.
Things that help on your question though -
Canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned coconut milk, canned pumpkin, jarred spaghetti sauce, spices - a lot of our staples are not perishable.
Do you live where you can stop by the store on the way home? Then don’t buy perishables for the week, buy them for the meal you are making.
Some foods and meals freeze pretty well, freeze them and keep a list of what’s in the freezer so you remember to eat it.
I hate meal planning but it helps a lot. I sometimes put a note on the fridge “we have food for dal with spinach, chicken & cabbage, sheet pan gnocchi with sausage and broccoli, eggs and potatoes” or whatever we have the food to make, and cross them off as they are made.
Some foods make other foods. So if I make a hunk of pork, it’s pork, rice and beans then enchiladas then burritos, and so on.
It’s not for everyone, or even most people probably, but I deal with it by buying virtually the same thing every week, once a week. No impulse buying. So, I eat everything I buy, every week, because I know exactly how much I eat for each meal, each week. I waste nothing. I don’t need a list, I know the path through the store I will take, and I’m in and out in about 20 minutes, including checkout.
I decided to stop thinking about food as entertainment or reward, and now think of food as only nutrition (as much as I can, it’s not easy, but that’s the idea.)
I got a chest freezer for $200. I freeze everything before or on its expiration date.
Sometimes if its mushy veggies I make a stock and freeze it for the next meal. If its too far gone i have a compost jar in the kitchen and a bin outside.
I started a garden and an edible native hedge this year. I have tea herbs and squash for free now and working on a seed propagation.
I started a coop mushroom grow with my neighbors since he felled some hardwood and I had the plan. The leftover mushrooms we dont eat will be either sold at market or made into liquid cultures.
Were talking about going in on a local half cow or pig. He says if my garden keeps growing we can buy the plot behind us together and start a farm. Would cut grocery costs a lot.
My wife and I have pantry weeks where we dont go grocery shopping, we eat whats in reserve, soak dry beans, thaw last weeks on sale chicken breast and pressure Cook em, make a flatbread and have some curry.
Instant pot helps too. Thinking about getting coturnix quail to feed good scraps to and get eggs out of. I can plant cover crops for em on the last strip of lawn I have.
It doesn’t have to be wasteful forever.
Buy food that has a long shelf life - lentil, rice, beans, canned vegetables, salsa jars. As a bonus it also doesn’t have to be refridgerated.
You now have gout from eating too many preservatives.
You would need to eat an exceptional amount of canned food to get gout - and rice and beans doesn’t have artificial preservatives.
A freezer and a pantry full of canned and dried foods.
Only buy fresh meats and veggies when you are actually gonna cook.
Freeze leftovers in single portion sizes.
Eventually you’ll have a bunch of homemade frozen dinners to choose from.
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Consider therapy or medication.
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Buy nonperishables in a higher ratio, such as canned, pickled, or dry goods.
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If you’re not concerned about your health enough to cook your own food every day, then just don’t buy food that has to be cooked every day.
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Remind yourself why you’re doing it, set a timer, and get it done. “This is for me. I love good food, I love my body.”
- Food prep. It maybe cuts down on variety but you only have to cook once. The rest of the time you’re just warming something up.
I second food prepping. If you want more variety, separate some of the prepped foods from each other so that you can mix and match.
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with pen and paper
It comes down to planning meals and a certain amount of acceptance that what you’ve got in the house is what you eat, period, even if the specific food isn’t what you’re in the mood for at the moment. Fast food, doordash etc are difficult habits to break. They reward your desire to have what you want when you want it, which is a big reward, and can make living on your own food feel like a punishment by comparison. But that feeling is just part of the habit. Eventually it goes away.
If you don’t have a good sized freezer, buy one. There are small ones that fit in any home.
Too many veggies? Chop them up and put them in quart sized containers. You can add them to any soup or stew.
I have a five quart pot; make chili/stew/soup and freeze in pint size containers.
My house has a good freezer, here’s the first i searched out as an example.
Solution: freezer. I basically never have food go off because basically all of it is either frozen or non perishable.
I have a bad habit where I stop feeling bad about not eating the food once it’s in the freezer, and then it doesn’t come out until I’m cleaning months later. And then all of my Tupperware is in the freezer.
But once you’re out of Tupperware you start thawing and eating right? That’s been our system for years and it works pretty well.
A slow cooker helps. You can use random ingredients before they go bad easily enough, and you will have left overs so cooking one time results in not having to cook for multiple meals.
- Get a big freezer. It’s really surprising how much delicious stuff you can make just from frozen stuff that can last you forever. Frozen food is also often more fresh and with microwave and air fryer the prep of anything frozen is actually not very difficult.
- Outsource as much as possible. Often it’s really hard to outcompete efficient kitchens. I don’t mean order Uber eats or something but there’s likely a place in your vicinity that does food prep where you can take your food containers and stock up for 2-3 days. You can even freeze some dishes.
Wife and I really did the math because we feared of becoming lazy and it makes absolutely zero economic sense to cook everything at home right now unless you want to treat yourself or live in a very economically unusual places where #2 is not accessible.
Use a software/app to meal plane. (Mealie/Tandoor) You pick the recipes you fancy for the days/week/whatever period. It generates a grocery list containing exactly what is needed for the meals you chose, nothing else.
I haven’t thrown away anything in a couple years now. Oh and freeze leftovers if needed.