We’re lucky in Galway, our city council operates a composterie (there’s that word again!) and every fortnight the contents of our brown bin get whisked away to start their new life as wormfood. Which brings me seamlessly to my point, our brown bin has too much waste in it.
It’s mostly my fault, I get notions of greatness, rush out and buy a load of organic veg at the weekend with the intention of making delicious dinners, I make one or two delicious dinners, then the veg starts to look decrepit, I say “tomorrow that’s all going in a soup” then I forget about it, and the following day the veg is fluffy. I hate fluffy veg, so into the brown bin they go! And as you know, organic food ain’t cheap, I may as well chuck a few fivers into the bin each week instead!
No more, I say! I’m taking control and I’m starting by keeping a food waste diary for a week. I got the idea from Love Food, Hate Waste, a UK site devoted to getting people to reduce their food waste.
According to them, a full third of all food bought in the UK gets thrown out!
We’re not that bad in the HPP household, but there is room for improvement.
Food waste has a big environmental impact, it’s not just about what happens the food after it gets thrown out, consider this..
Around 20% of our climate change emissions are related to the production, processing, transportation and storage of food, but we are throwing away a third of all the food we buy.
If we stopped wasting all this good food, we could have a huge impact on the environment, the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off UK roads.
The website has lots of great tips, from storing food, portion sizes and recipes for leftovers to tips on weekly meals planning and cupboard essentials.
It goes without saying that as a government initiative, this site is soooo not vegan, but there are great tips there such as these ideas for your freezer…
Make Lollies from leftover smoothies, apple juice or orange juice. You can buy plastic lolly making moulds to use in the freezer. We also make lollies from Soya yogurt, very yummy and creamy, they taste naughty but they are actually officially un-naughty
Pitta Bread can be warmed or toasted straight from the freezer: sprinkle with water and warm through. Use straight away for hot fillings, or leave to cool for a sandwich. You see, call me dumb, but I never thought of freezing pitta breads and they go off so fast, it’s an excellent idea!
If you have any leftover coconut milk you can freeze in ice-cube trays. Once frozen transfer to freezer bags. It will keep for up to 3 months. And then you’d always have a bit of coconut milk to pop into your curries or your summer smoothies.
If you have bread going stale, make bread crumbs and freeze ready for the next time you make stuffing or bread sauce. I must admit most of my bread going stale ends up as toast for me!
Use up the last half glass of a bottle of wine (or wine that’s been left open overnight, or even just wine you didn’t really like) by filling an ice cube tray. Just pop one or two out straight into a sauce or casserole when you need it. A great idea for me, I like the occasional glass of red, but just the one and it pains me to have to throw out the remainder.
Buy fresh French sticks and cut into 3 portions. Freeze those you won’t need immediately and when you do need them pop them straight into a hot oven for a few minutes to revive. Or slice them, freeze and later put olive oil and grated garlic onto them before you put them in the oven!! Yum!
We bought a full size freezer a few months ago and it is wonderful. There’s always a supply of organic spinach, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, petits pois, soy ice cream, berries, chips(!), homemade things like soups, chilis, pizza sauce, bean burgers, the list goes on…. And most importantly, as I discovered one day, it has an alarm to tell you if you’ve left the door ajar! Now that is a clever freezer!
I must say, broccoli is at its best very fresh, but it’s so hard to find very fresh, the broccoli from our freezer is absolutely delicious, we’ve stopped buying the fresh stuff, we are frozen broccoli fans now!
The food diary is available for download here, you fill it in for a week including any big fridge or cupboard clean-outs, and then you look through it to see how you can improve. I’m also going to get more disciplined and start meal planning, I think getting into the habit of making a big veg soup every weekend with any remaining veg is a great idea too!
So what about all of you, what steps do you take to reduce your food waste? Any tips or hints you’d like to share?
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i get a fab organic veg box delivered every week, so at the end of the week just before the new one comes, i gather up all the leftovers and make a pot of soup. yummo. in the summer i will probably go back to juicing up older looking fruit and veg. i also have a scrap bag in the freezer where i put peelings and ends and other things and when it gets full i make beautiful vegie stock for my soups and risottos and whatever.
I mentioned to my husband last summer the idea of petitioning our town to start a composterie and he looked at me like I was absolutely insane! I am so happy there are cities who actually have a system like that in place!
My husband says I’m the worst waster of food ever,especially for someone so “green”. Maybe I should go download that.
I am also wanting to make a planning about meals but just can’t get organized.About wastes?I try my best but still end up wasting at times.
I always chop and freeze greens (parsley,mint, basil,spinach) or vegetables if I can’t use them before their use by date.
We like using sun dried tomatoes in oil or artichoke.When the jar is empty,there is lots of oil left.I don’t waste them,use them when I cook.
Left over rice is used in wraps or soups.
This is all I can remember for the moment
I am always at a loss for what to do with the waste. We have gotten better since arriving here at being more “just in time” with our produce purchases, but we could still improve. I love the coconut milk tip! I won’t hesitate to open up a can now!!
I’m guilty of the same thing. I sometimes forget about my veggies and have to throw them out. It sucks. I need a better system.
Great tips! I’m going to have to remember this next time I open a can of coconut milk.
And I’m jealous of your giant freezer!
I wish we had room for a decent sized freezer. Will take a look at this site, we eat a lot of “what’s kicking about the fridge” curries in our house!
I’ve been looking forward to re-reading this post and exploring the love food hate waste site since I scanned it yesterday. Meal planning and sticking to my daily naptime routine of cooking has really helped. Even if something comes up (dinner out with friends or just not feeling like eating what I’ve cooked), I still try to cook and can then freeze it for another time. I also share a lot of produce that’s “on the verge” with my neighbors…either roast or steam it for them, or just give it as is if they think they’ll get to it before it resembles a dust bunny. Love so many of your tips here, HPP; and join the ranks of posters with freezer envy!
Hi everyone, glad you all like our monolith freezer
I can just see us all with freezers full of coconut milk ice-cubes in a few weeks time! yumm… coconut milk ice-cubes sound so delicious!!!
[...] Half Pint Pixie talks about Love food, hate waste. [...]
We’ve been working on the same thing. It is actually a lot of fun trying to think of new ways to use left-overs and we try to only buy food once a week and then I tend to use it all instead of letting some of it go bad. We compost in our backyard, but it is still better to not waste those great organic veggies. I love the site you posted.
Great post. We are also guilty of wasting far too much food. One of the reasons is that the Farmers Market is only on Saturdays and though I buy for the week, I don’t always manage to find the time to cook for the whole week before the greens etc go icky. I am always full of good intentions, but quite often a whole bunch of buk choy or coriander ends up in our compost.
Before Lily was born I always cooked around 3-4 meals on the weekend to stop this from happening. Now that she is bigger I will, hopefully be able to do this again.
In addition to coconut milk, we also freeze tomato paste and prune juice in ice cube trays. I love amberjee’s tip about freezing scraps to make stock. That is a great idea!
Your government actually cares about the environment? Oh how I wish I didn’t live in George-Bush-Land.
vegandarling, that program is in the UK. We’re not too bad in Ireland though, we have fairly good curbside recycling and compost collection so that’s a good start