Use food before it expires

Food waste is usually not a mystery. It is a bag of spinach you meant to use, a yogurt you forgot, and a lemon that went soft behind the condiments. The fix is not a better shopping personality. It is cooking the soonest-to-expire ingredients first.

A simple rule

When you open the fridge, ask: what has three days or fewer? That ingredient gets a seat at dinner, even if it was not the thing you were craving.

• Wilted herbs go into skillet lemon chicken or garlic spaghetti.
• Soft tomatoes or a pepper go into shakshuka or sheet-pan chicken.
• Leftover rice is fried rice tomorrow, not the compost on Friday.
• Yogurt that is close can be overnight oats instead of another unopened tub.

Plan around dates, not vibes

A weekly board helps only if the early-week slots take the fragile food. Put the long-lived cans and dry goods on Thursday. Put the produce on Monday and Tuesday.

If you shop on Sunday, cook the salad greens before the chicken in the freezer. The freezer will wait.

How PantryZero surfaces this

When you add a pantry item you can set an expiry date. Recipe suggestions add a small boost when a matched ingredient expires within three days, so "use this now" dinners float up without a separate reminder app.

The grocery list still only includes what the week's plan needs that you do not have. Buying more spinach because it was on sale, while last week's spinach dies, is the habit this breaks.

Try it

Create an account, add the three things in your fridge that will not last, and see which recipes move up. Cook one of them this week.