food recycling

I confess that I recycle other peoples ziploc style containers - those who leave them in the kitchen at work for months at a time or just throw them away?! I collect them and wash them and have this wonderful new leftover program.

One of my major pet peeve's is throwing away food. I don't mind shopping and cooking but I mind then throwing it away if my family doesn't eat it. There I will be purging the refridge and my DH will say something like "gee I wish I had known that was in there". He catagorically will not move anything or look in dishes for leftovers!

So after having brainstorming sessions with him several times to find out what we could do about this little problem I tried a few ideas.

One was to put a list of available leftovers on the refridge door. Didn't work - he kept forgetting it was there or my daughter would come in and eat something and forget to cross it off.

Tried freezing leftovers but that just delayed throwing them away

Finally I stumbled on the idea of packaging each nights leftovers like they were about to be taken for lunch (serving size) in those clear ziploc containers. It has been wildly successful in our house. Wasted food is at a minimum. I stack them right eye level and he says it is really convenient to grab and run - and since we eat a lot of soup it works great.

does anyone have any other food recycling ideas - as much as I like composting - food is too expensive to toss just because we are busy!