[2023-02-20] Ding-ding-ding

Every day or two, someone in our household will say, "ding-ding-ding." It's become a family ritual signifying that we've eaten the last of something, such as leftovers. It's a cute way of celebrating our triumph over food waste.

We even use the expression as a verb, as in, "I ding-ding-dinged the fruit salad." Today, we ding-ding-dinged cauliflower, Greek salad, cooked quinoa and roasted kale—all food items that can easily languish in the fridge, only to be tossed in the compost bin a few days later.

According to Canada's Food Guide, "almost half of all food waste happens at home." It occurs when:
  • we store foods improperly, which can cause them to spoil before we can eat them,
  • we prepare more food than we can eat at a meal or as leftovers,
  • we shop impulsively, without planning meals.
The Food Guide adds, "When food is thrown out as garbage, it ends up in landfills and can produce the greenhouse gas methane."

Food waste was less of a problem when we were four in the house. Leftovers were often consumed as a snack or in lunches taken to the office. But once Shane had left the nest, we needed to adjust both what we bought and how much we made. We stopped buying large quantities of perishable items from Costco (such as a six-pound bag of apples) and started making single rather than double recipes. Our invention of ding-ding-ding grew out of a desire to proclaim our successes in using up the foods we were buying.

While avoiding food waste usually means saving money, sometimes we'll willingly pay more per unit for a smaller amount of food because we know we will be able to eat it all. For example, a single tub of yogurt purchased at a grocery store costs more per gram than 24 yogurt cups purchased from Costco. However, if we have to throw out expired yogurt that we weren't able to consume before the best-before date, we're no further ahead.

Most mornings, my husband, daughter and I decide at breakfast what we'll eat for supper that night, focusing on foods that need to be used up in the fridge, freezer or pantry. And most evenings, we can happily say ding-ding-ding.