ORIG./ The Bulletin employee in The Bulletin studio in Bend Wednesday morning 10-30-13. Andy Tullis/The Bulletin ORIG./ The Bulletin employee in The Bulletin studio in Bend Wednesday morning 10-30-13. Andy Tullis/The Bulletin

On Tuesday morning I had nearly half a turkey sitting in my fridge. Late that afternoon I cut the remaining meat off the bird and set the carcass and a few vegetables to simmer on top of the stove. By Wednesday night my tiny freezer was stuffed with small packages of turkey and quart containers of the beginnings of turkey soup. My daughter Mary and I, you see, are starting the third year of an effort to reduce the amount of food we throw away.

An awful lot of what’s available to eat in this country either never makes it to the grocery store, is lost there or is lost once it arrives at your home. In fact, according to research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 31 percent of the country’s available food supply in 2010 went uneaten.

In Oregon that year, 29 percent of children suffered from food insecurity — their parents could not be comfortable that there would be enough food available throughout the year. Nationwide, that number was more than 21.5 percent, according to Feeding America, which tracks such things.

Some of the 31 percent of food that’s lost wouldn’t make it to the table under the best of circumstances, meanwhile. The USDA’s “The Estimated Amount, Value, and Calories of Postharvest Food Losses at the Retail and Consumer Levels in the United States” report, published in February, notes that losses begin at the farm, where insects, weather damage and failure to harvest all that was planted are part of the problem.

After harvest, everything from quality standards, including cosmetic standards, to confusion about such things as “use-by” dates take a toll. So, too, does familiarity: Papaya losses are high, for example, because many of us do not know how to tell if the fruit is ripe or how to cook with it once it is. There’s also an unwillingness to use something bruised or otherwise puny looking.

Other things go into the 31 percent loss, too. When meat is cooked it loses weight; that’s considered food loss. So, too, are such things as mold and shrinkage (think wrinkly apple). We can control some of those causes but not all of them.

There are things we can control, however. The “I don’t like it” factor is one — we can decide either to avoid purchasing foods we know family members don’t like, or, I suppose, we can simply insist that everybody eat everything set in front of him or her.

That latter is difficult, certainly. Family meals marked by children crying over Brussels sprouts aren’t pleasant, and even — at our house — the obligatory no-thank-you bite can be a problem if someone thinks a dish is genuinely nasty. At home, we can control portion sizes, though that’s difficult at restaurants, some of which operate on the idea that more is better, no matter what.

And, we can make far better use of what isn’t eaten the first time around. Leftovers can become parts of meals that look nothing like the original.

Rice, for example, lends itself to all sorts of things, from the underpinning of a plate of Chinese food to the base of many a casserole. Fried rice is a meal by itself if you put a bit of meat or egg in it, and plain old rice makes light soups a bit more substantial.

U.S. News & World Report has several other suggestions to reduce family food waste. One, buy a better refrigerator, is a stretch. The others make more sense.

The magazine suggests more frequent, better planned shopping trips, which may help control impulse shopping. Learn how to store things so that when butter’s on sale, for example, you’ll know you can keep extra in the freezer. Finally, learn to figure out how long you can keep something before it goes bad, perhaps from the Internet — some foods will keep longer than you think.

Combined, these tips will help control food loss, which is important. Methane gas from the landfill adds to global-warming problems, for one thing, and the less garbage, the less gas. If there’s a downside, it’s this: While you make better use of your family’s food, that effort won’t do a thing for all the food-insecure kids in Oregon and elsewhere.

— Janet Stevens is deputy editor of The Bulletin. Contact: 541-617-7821, jstevens@bendbulletin.com