Leftovers log and waste log
Every leftover with its cook date, eat-by day, plan and outcome, and the weekly waste log that starts with your baseline week. Everything you type stays in this browser.
For a first pass, both sheets are essential: the waste log holds the baseline week from Your starting week and the planned week from Review and adjust, and the leftovers sheet holds every leftover in the fridge now (Leftovers and using it up).
Leftovers
One row per leftover (Leftovers and using it up). Count the days from when the food was first cooked, even after it becomes a new dish (our convention).
Waste log
One row per week of collecting preventable food waste (Your starting week and Review and adjust): food bought to eat that spoiled, and food prepared but not eaten. Leave out peels, shells, cores, bones, liquids and food-soiled paper.
How to use these sheets
- Log it when it goes in. A leftover gets its row, eat-by day and plan the day it is cooked. The outcome column fills in later.
- The first cooking day stays. When a leftover becomes a new dish, its days still count from when it was first cooked, our convention (Leftovers and using it up).
- Waste: same bag, same rules. Collect only preventable food waste, for the same number of days each time you measure. Write the amount by volume (or weight, with a scale), what it was, and the main reason.
Jordan's baseline row (fictional) reads: seven days, about 2 quarts, most of a bag of salad greens, half a container of cooked rice and two yogurts; main reason spoiled, with "did not want the leftovers" and "worried about the date" in the notes. In a shared house, the Alder Street housemates write each owner's name on the leftover row and the label.
The log records what happened to food; it does not judge whether a leftover is safe. A leftover past its 3 to 4 days is discarded, not repurposed, and food is never tasted to test it.