I Did Not Want To Waste The Food

It went off in the cupboard.

Not because you forgot about it. You knew exactly where it was, and roughly how long it had been there, and you thought about it more than once.

You did not use it because you were not sure you would do it right, and doing it wrong would mean wasting it, and wasting food is not something people in your family have ever done lightly.

So it sat. And you ate something else. And a while later you found it and it had gone, and you put it in the trash quietly and did not mention it to anybody.

Which is the part that stings, because the thing you were protecting it from was you, and the protecting is exactly what lost it.

And this has happened more than once. It is a pattern and you know it is a pattern.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nobody in this article thinks you should already know how to do this.

There is no age at which not knowing becomes shameful, and nothing here treats your carefulness as a fault. Being unwilling to waste food is a good instinct that has been attached to the wrong end of a decision, and the instinct is fine. It is the arithmetic underneath it that is wrong.

He that regardeth the clouds shall not reap

There is a line in Ecclesiastes about waiting for conditions, and it is aimed at exactly this hesitation.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. (Ecclesiastes 11:4, King James Version)

He that observeth the wind shall not sow.

The man in that line is not lazy and he is not careless. He is careful. He is watching the sky because he does not want to waste the seed, which is the same instinct that stands guard over the contents of that cupboard.

And the verse does not congratulate him for it. It says he will not sow, and then it says the same thing again about the harvest, because a man who waits for certainty gets neither.

You are being shown a careful man rather than a careless one, and watching the sky before you sow has never once been the same thing as wisdom. Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the loss on the side of the one waiting for conditions, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody who has thrown something away that she was trying to protect.

And read what the verse costs him.

Not a bad harvest. No harvest. The seed he was protecting stays in the sack and the field stays empty, and at the end of it he has neither the crop nor the seed, because seed kept too long is not seed any more.

That is the cupboard. That is precisely and exactly the cupboard.

You have been keeping seed rather than saving it, and something held back until it was certain has never once stayed as good as it was. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody standing in front of a cupboard doing sums, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 spends the whole verse on what waiting costs a careful man.

The waste already happened, at the other end

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. The choice in front of you has never been use it or keep it safe. It has been use it or lose it slowly, and only one of those two has ever produced a meal.

Here is the arithmetic that has been running. If I cook it badly, the food is wasted. If I leave it, the food is still here. And the second half of that is true for about eleven days and then it stops being true, and the sum has never been updated.

The real comparison is between food that became a poor meal and food that became garbage. A poor meal is not waste. Somebody ate it. It did the job food does, slightly worse than it might have.

And there is a second thing underneath this, which is worth naming. The fear is not really about the food. It is about doing something badly and having proof, and a ruined pan is a receipt. That fear is doing far more work than the cost of a few items ever justified.

You were pricing a receipt rather than a loss, and a poor meal that somebody ate has never once been the same thing as waste. Ecclesiastes 11:4 sets the whole cost of waiting on the careful man rather than on the weather, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who has been calling caution an economy.

And here is the instruction that follows from it, and it will feel backwards.

Cook the thing that is closest to going bad. Not the safest item. The one that has been circled for a week, the one with the least time left, the one you would most regret ruining.

Because that item is already on its way to the trash, and the only question left is whether it gets eaten on the way.

You have nothing left to protect on that shelf, and something already going has never once been made safer by being left alone. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with somebody reaching for the thing she has been guarding, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 will not let a careful man wait for the right sky.

What tonight is

So here is the assignment. Cook one thing tonight with whatever is closest to going bad, and eat it sitting down.

Tonight. One thing. Go and look, take out the item with the least time left, and put it in a pan with an egg or on some rice or into something on toast. Do not go out and get anything to go with it, and do not look up the correct way to treat it.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than information about you, and it is still very much better than the trash.

You are turning a loss into a dinner tonight, and an item rescued late has never once owed anybody a better result than being eaten. Ecclesiastes 11:4 sets the loss squarely on waiting rather than on trying, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with somebody who finally took it down off the shelf.

Then the second half. Eat it sitting down, at a table, on a plate. Sitting down is what makes it a meal rather than a salvage operation. And it was a meal. Something in that kitchen was going to be lost and instead a person ate it, which is the whole point of food.

You are eating something that was already going rather than mourning it later, and a rescued item on a plate has never once been a lesser dinner than a planned one. The Holy Spirit is the one at that table with a plate on it, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the harvest on the far side of sowing without certainty.