January 2, 2010

Five Dollar Days means no partying with friends on the weekends. No $30 bottles of memorable red wine. No Arbonne Vitamin C infused facial cream. So, on this fine Saturday there will be no strolls through the malls, casual stops at the Thai restaurant, or impulsive movies we should take in. In other words, we stay home more. Naturally, if you spend a little more time at home, you end up with a cleaner, more organized, functional home. Even though it’s a beautiful Austin day, I can’t go down to Book People and sip that coffee and hang out with whatever magazine I don’t need. That would cost me about $9. What I can do is take a look around the house and see what needs to be done that I have been putting off. Water the garden and beds, walk the dogs, touch up a little paint, and plan some meals in such an order that the produce does not go bad.

I cleaned out the fridge and found we have not eaten the beets I boiled a few days ago, and we have about $7 worth of artichoke hearts. That would be about $11 worth of food we would have thrown away if we were not taking a hiatus from the dinners out. We’ll probably have a nice salad with the donated greens from last night and the beets and hearts that remain. However, I was pretty certain that we were not going to eat all of the artichoke hearts, which equal about four cups. At first I thought that we would eat a few tonight, maybe a few tomorrow, night, but eventually they are going to go bad. Then I recalled in a food magazine article that when you buy pickles, you should not throw out the vinegar brine but toss in onions and other vegetables you can pickle. Just my luck, we have a pickle jar hiding in the back of the fridge with only a few remaining pickles. In went all of the artichoke hearts, officially safe from rotting and safe from costly disposal.

As we explained our January to last night’s company, our friend, Ryan (who is very green sensitive but consumptive in the same breath) admits that he and his partner throw away a lot of unused produce. I followed up with asking them how many meals they eat out. Between the two of them, they eat, on average, one meal out per day. I can honestly say that they’d have a hard time conforming to our annual ritual. However, if they were to take on this challenge, they’d get better at using that produce they are currently wasting. After hearing that, I used the information to plan our meals better. Originally, I would have thawed out some chicken for tonight’s dinner, but with all of the unused produce, we had to go with the fibers tonight. During the fridge cleaning, I found two bags of wilting herbs, which I promptly chopped up, bagged and froze for later use.

The practice sensitizes us to where we consume versus what can be saved. If we could only live with the frugality of my poor grandparents: reusing aluminum foil, rinsing off saran wrap, using a bank account for deposits only, and walking to the corner store rather than driving to the Costco, we’d certainly spend less, live a greener life, and maybe work for fewer years due to our more proactive saving.