The Sad Saga of the Almost Empty Chip Bags
April 24, 2008 by Deborah Ng
Filed under groceries
Has this ever happened to you? You’re cleaning out the junk food cabinet, a place you rarely visit because the temptation is too much to bear, and find a graveyard of chip bags filled with crumbs.
This is what I found yesterday:
- 2 bags of tortilla chips – one filled with crumbs, one still with a few soggy pieces big enough to eat.
- A bag of cheese puffs with about a dozen old, stale puffs all stuck together at the bottom.
- 2 Girl Scout cookies – not in a box or a bag or anything. Just sitting forlornly on the bottom of the cabinet calling out for ants to keep them company.
- Four, count ‘em, four open chip bags. Mind you, they’re all different types of chips, but chip bags none the less.
- A pumpkin filled with Halloween, Valentine’s, Christmas and Easter candy.
Now. I won’t buy junk food. It’s just too much trouble to refrain from eating it. My husband picks it up on his shopping trips – he does a lot of the grocery shopping for us on weekends while I take my son to his activities. Yet I’m the one who always ends up cleaning up all the nasty bits from the bottom of the cabinet. Moreover, I’m the one taking out the zipper locks and consolidating all the chip bags still having eatables inside.
If there’s ever an argument that the Ng family doesn’t need junk food, this is it. The vegetables and fruits aren’t rotting in a drawer. Our fridge isn’t filled with half empty yogurt containers and we’re not one of those family with strange mystery packages at the back of the freezer. We really need to stop buying junk. I end up throwing away more mushy junk food than anything else.
I think it’s time for me to start shopping again.
Where are some of the areas you feel your family is most wasteful, and what steps can you take to prevent it in the future?
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My husband is finally getting better about buying less junk food. His additions to the grocery cart used to be mostly Little Debbie snack cakes and chips of various sorts. Now he mostly sticks to tortilla chips and salsa or cheese dip, which is fine by me since I love salsa, too.
He doesn’t leave any chocolate out, though, because he knows it’s not safe with me around ; )
I HATE those open chip bags!
My husband complains that I let our daughter eat too much sugar, and then he brings her candy from the gas station. That’s where we are wasteful – impulse buying.
What you should do is not try and pretend this is a frugal issue when it’s really a ‘living together’ issue. I guarantee you that you are throwing out more fresh food than junk, junk just lasts too long. What you’re really saying is you’re resentful that you have to clean up food you didn’t want in the house in the first place.
However, you could use this as an opportunity to turn away from junk food toward snacks. You can make your own snacks, which reduces how much you eat and massivly reduces cost.
I’ll give you an example. For about $3 I can get a bag of tortilla chips, a bag of potato chips or a box of microwave popcorn.
For the same price I can get 3 bags of popcorn kernels with more flavor, that allow me to control butter and salt and have no additives. I can get 2-4 bags of tortillas and make my own tortilla chips which taste as good as restaurant quality. Or I can get about 24 eggs and the ingredients to make deviled eggs which have almost 0 carbs and are obscenely filling.
None of those snacks take more than 5 minutes to make and none will end up rotting in the drawer. Hell I can’t save popcorn for the next morning to try as a cereal substitute.
Hi Fat B – Thanks for dropping by. Actually, the only thing I’m resentful of is throwing away stale or moldy chips. I assure you I don’t throw away good food and the waste isn’t my fault.
For us the most recent waste is soggy breakfast cereal that the 2yo doesn’t finish. I’ve eaten it a few times, but blech. Mostly I toss it. Thankfully I don’t put much in there to start w/so it’s seriously less than a Tbps, but still. We’ve eliminated almost all junk foods lately, too. I make homemade granola bars, chips and popcorn. We make crackers, bread and eat a lot of fruits and veggies for snacks. I was just talking to my husband the other day how amazingly we’ve almost completely stopped having rotten fresh food b/c we eat it so fast. For us it has been a long hard journey b/c I don’t know how to cook, but I’m learning and I WANT to do it. That’s always the first step!
Left overs. I need to be more efficient so that I don’t have any, since they sit in the fridge and go moldy.
I use old chips for a coating on chicken or fish. It crisps right back up by frying or baking. I also make all my own snacks now. Tortilla chips are so easy!