Waste Free Kitchen

I can remember being little and not wanting to finish my dinner (mostly the green stuff) and my mom/dad saying, “There are poor starving children that would LOVE to eat that food, and you want to waste it??  Shame!!”.  (I offered to ship the foods directly to those children, but they never went for it.)  While this little parental speech always annoyed me as a child, as an adult, I find myself a bit more understanding about their hatred for waste.  Today, as I looked around the refrigerator for lunch, I noticed three half-eaten, no longer good, cans of refried beans (ok, that sounds really nasty, but just wait.  There’s a reason I’m subjecting you to this.)  As I had just purchased another can at the grocery store today, the sight of those three gross cans made me feel a bit guilty.  I hate to waste, but I am also terrible about using up the old stuff before I get the new stuff out.  So, this, along with the ridiculous price of groceries got me thinking about how I can do better.  I thought awhile, and then turned to The Almighty Google.  There was a lot of stuff out there for the kitchen, but mostly it was “use your old clothes as paper towels after you sew them by hand and make sure you monogram them for good measure” stuff.  Y’all know I’m not crafty.  Sewing and monogramming are out, but I do like the idea of using old fabric as cleaning rags.  That’s probably where I will start.  But!  My big issue is finding a way to use up old leftovers and NOT having them grow legs and crawl out of the fridge of their own accord.   So, I’m going to really try to aim for a “No (or perhaps less.  Yes, lets just say LESS) waste kitchen'”.  Maybe I’ll save a few bucks in the process, and hopefully my fridge will be a bit happier.