Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions. (Thanks to Jo from Simply Being Mum for sponsoring FWF this week.)

This Week's Food Waste and True Food Confessions

One of the few meals that originated at home this week.

As you may have noticed lately, we haven't been very regular in achieving our goals of no food waste and meal planning and eating at home. The fall off the wagon started with our remodel beginning at the end of October and transitioned seamlessly into the Christmas season. We still have furniture piled on top of each other waiting to be returned to its normal places, but the kitchen is functioning. We're just not functioning very well in it. That's part of the reason, we've been doing okay in the food waste area--we're not doing much food cooking or buying here to waste. I will strive to do better in this area, but not worry about it too much if improvement is slow to come. "Tis the season to be jolly..."

And oh, for the nuts and bolts of this week. We had no waste and had a lot of leftovers including a couple of days from this meal of sloppy joes.

Animal Crackers for Christmas

or Now that makes sense.

I ran into a friend the other day while shopping. She was buying Barnum Animal Crackers and I was trying NOT to buy some Doritos. She told me that every year at Christmas, she buys a box of animal crackers for her kids since the crackers originally started as Christmas ornaments. Wow. I had never heard that. I guess that explains the string on the box.

Very curious, I went home (with a bag of Doritos) to see if this story were a piece of lore or truth. Here's what I found out. Animal crackers have a long history starting in England before the colonies were formed. After importing them for several years, they were eventually  produced here. There were various companies involved that eventually merged together to form the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco). In 1902 they started to call them Barnum's Animals from Barnum and Bailey's Circus. That was the same year they had the idea of marketing them at Christmas with a colorful box and string to hang on a Christmas tree. I'm not sure how long the this campaign kept up, but the box, largely unchanged, with it's string is still around over 100 years later.

Guess what Santa is going to bring Ward, Wally, and Theodore for Christmas this year? It will be hanging on the tree waiting for them Christmas morning. A new tradition has begun.

Want to read more?

http://collectibles.about.com/od/advertisingstuff/a/blTFbarnums.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cracker

http://www.foodreference.com/html/artanimalcrack.html