It’s hard to believe today is the last day of a challenge. It went really quickly! It’s also the last day of my current apartment complex, where I’ve been for two years, a little bit, bittersweet leaving, however, in the context of food waste challenge. It was sort of satisfying that when I emptied my freezer, I was able to give my neighbor blueberries and a pastry pie crust, knowing that she loves baking and would make good use of it.

and what I brought with me was some pulverized greens to make smoothies, frozen, homemade soup, homemade pasta sauce, chopped onions, and I felt really successful in my personal endeavors in this challenge.

However, the biggest success was looking at the ACW climate action team with seven members coming in at number five in the teams and Margo also coming in in the top five at least at this point in a day bravo to everyone who participated I think we did a great job built Community And had fun engaging with some new folks. Online was a lot of fun!

My fridge is all of a sudden almost bare, just in time for my "national holiday tradition" of cleaning either the fridge, the shower, or both. Time to apply what was learned/observed this month. I had fallen out of the habit of reading labels for high fructose corn syrup - don't buy. I will go back to that, plus look at expiration dates and only buy if it's close, not already a couple years past, and not be as adventurous with what I think I should try. That should keep my backstock more reasonable, which saves space and unclutters the brain. I've started filling excess pantry space with non-pantry items so I'm not tempted to buy just to fill space. I'll try to pay more attention to where and how I can get smaller quantities of fresh produce. When you'd like to share a CSA box or farmers market excess with other like-minded folks but you don't live or work close by, intentions are good but execution impractical. And finally, congratulations to the ACW Climate Action Team - our small number but mighty prolific participants are among the top in the challenge. Thank you for taking it seriously, and we can reflect off-line what it means for the group.

This has been a fun challenge. Next year, I want to grow more of my own produce, especially green beans, tomatoes, and carrots.

Someone reminded me of the back-to-school BBQ that is held at the Culinary Wellness Center on Plymouth Ave., it's September 18 from 4-7. It's great to see how the Minneapolis school district is changing over from the soul-less prepacks of previous decades, and making it fun for students to embrace healthy and cross-cultural eating. Unfortunately, a lot of schools were built without kitchens during that era. I want to believe schools are teaching not only healthy eating and food preparation, but the stop food waste principles covered in this challenge AND the perils of plastic from February's challenge. I'm guessing it's also hard to hit all three in the institutional setting with tight time constraints.
In case I don't get to check in on the last day of the challenge, I want to say it's been fun exchanging notes with the most active of our team members. We took the routine seriously and were able to keep in touch and learn something about each other even as our life circumstances were changing and we had other work to do together or apart.

Pulled another day at the fair, and learned that MPCA (Minnesota Pollution Control Agency) is interviewing vendors there relating to all kinds of waste. Only got a quick introduction but would like to know more - and the results. I assume there's a lot of consumer waste with people buying food they then decide they can't eat all of...I like the idea of traveling in packs, ordering just one of anything and letting everyone try a bite. Don't know if anyone does that. I was working at the newspaper museum, saw someone's Sweet Martha's Cookies (the smallest bucket) and said "ooh, I need one of those." They opened up the tin and said "take what you like" - they apparently had eaten their fill trying to get the lid on.

Missed checking in to the Challenge yesterday due to being at the fair and exhausted when I got home (never did get the hang of checking in via phone). Again, ate fair food judiciously - tried the pickle pizza (it's good) and a Kiwanis malt (apparently simple natural ingredients - not overly sugary, and my companion pointed out, it doesn't break down into foam). Haven't had time or inclination to grocery shop, so I'm learning to re-interpret breakfast. So what if it's yesterday's lunch sandwich leftover, it's nutrition.