Purposeful Abundance
Published by Beth on Monday, January 29, 2007 at 9:44 PMI'm quite good at procrastinating. I find it very easy to get distracted when I have so many things going on. It's not that I'm lazy and sitting around doing nothing, it's that I find it more interesting to be reading or knitting than cleaning or organizing, so the "fun" tasks tend to be done before the more urgent ones.
As a result, my main "projects" this week have been put on the back burner. My goal was to clean and thoroughly reorganize my kitchen, but many distractions have eaten away at my time. The refrigerator has been cleaned out, but the cabinets are still in disarray and the counters are cluttered. I hope to get to them soon, but I'm sure my time will vanish more quickly than I'd like!
While only completing this one extra task has been discouraging, I noticed something about my refrigerator. A lot has gone to waste. I threw out half a pound of asparagus that I bought last week. I tossed an almost unused bag of mozzarella cheese that had turned blue. I cleaned out a storage container with leftovers that had spoiled. I think back to my grandmother's generation, where every last scrap of food is used up. And here I am, throwing out a relatively large portion of what I buy!
When it comes to food, I've got to be more purposeful with my abundance. Hubby and I can afford to eat fresh produce and meat, but I sometimes let it spoil because I forget about it, push that certain food aside to make something else, or just decide to eat out instead. I need to be more purposeful about the way I use up food. Instead of throwing out the old bananas, make bread. Instead of buying lunch, use up leftovers. Once I do that, I hope to see how much more richly God has blessed us in this area of life.
When I chop an onion, I usually only use half. So I chop the whole thing, put half in a baggie and freeze it until I need it again. One recipe I use calls for juice from half a lime. I don't use lime for anything else, and didn't want to throw it away, so I juiced the other half, put it in a baggie, and froze it. Thanks to the fabulous WIC program here in Indiana, I obtain more cheese than I know what to do with. So I... yep, you guessed it - I freeze it. With mozzerella, though, I cut it into peices that fit into my grater first. Then, when a recipe calls for so much grated cheese, I pull out and defrost only as many little blocks as I need. I love using fresh parmesan cheese as opposed to the powdered kind, so I cut it into 1 oz blocks and freeze it, and it's such a soft cheese that I don't even need to thaw it first, I just grate it frozen! 1 oz is perfect for a lasagna topping. Produce, though, I just can't help you with. I hate that I throw away most the parsley and celery that I get. I only need a little bit - but you have to buy the whole bag! Can you freeze such things? I don't know. And, ironically, the only thing I've ever had go bad in the freezer is ice cream. :-P