Food waste is something that Amanda is passionate about. She hates throwing away food that has gone bad, whether it’s leftover that we didn’t eat or something that has wilted before we got to it. That’s why she always buys exactly the quantity of fruit and veg that we need and not one carrot more!
Apart from being wasteful, food waste can be a budget issue too. If you are throwing away food, you are essentially throwing away money too. So here are my top ten tips for reducing food waste.
- Plan your meals
- I believe in meal planning, obviously! If every item you buy has a plan for when and how it is going to be used, then you’ll have less waste
- If an ingredient is on sale, then plan two to three recipes in the week to use it all up
- Shop more frequently
- Plan for an extra trip to the supermarket over an overly ambitious meal plan.
- Shopping for 3-4 days allows for a spur of the moment meal out or for the unexpected to crop up which means that you miss a meal
- Shopping more often also means fresher ingredients and less likely for them to go off and get thrown away
- Buy only what you need
- Don’t buy what you don’t need. Sales and deals are great but only if you can eat it all or preserve it
- Buy for smaller portions or plan to eat the leftovers the next day. Smaller dinner amounts leave little to no leftovers, and also room for a dessert!
- Embrace tinned food
- Buy tinned produce that won’t go off
- Don’t impulse buy fruit and veg just because they’re on buy one get one free!
- Include leftovers in your meal plan
- Plan for leftovers for at least one night a week
- When Amanda and I were working in the corporate world, I would make recipes for 4 people and then we would have leftovers to take to work the next day
- Or turn leftovers into something new and exciting
- This is one of Amanda’s traditions and I am always surprised at how many meals English people can make from leftovers from the Christmas dinner: turkey curry, turkey pie, bubble and squeak, spicy turkey noodles and turkey ramen to name a few!
- Almost any leftovers can be turned into a soup, a pie, an omelette or fried rice
- Pasta sauces can be made into something new by adding chilli, a few spices or beans
- Preserve things before they go bad
- Freeze everything (well almost)! Herbs, leftovers, soups, raw vegetables, cooked vegetables etc
- Freezing leftovers always comes in handy for the night that you find yourself home alone
- Be less picky
- Are you sure it’s really gone off or are you being too picky
- Peel back layers or chop spots off to get to the good
- Tomatoes that are going off can still be made into a sauce
- Collect scraps for future omelettes or soups
- If you have small leftovers of veg, onions, peppers, mushrooms etc, then dice them and add them to the “omelette” or “fried rice” bag in the freezer. Then when you want a quiche, omelette or fried rice, use those frozen veggies
- Alternatively, if I have lots of leftover veg, then I whack it in a saucepan and make a soup: veggies + stock + onion = normally a very tasty soup!
- Or feed the scraps to the compost bin or the dog
- Compost any fruit and veg for the garden
- Or feed the scraps to the dogs!
