Reducing Food Waste
We all feel guilty about our food waste, and we should make a greater effort to reduce it, not only for economic and environmental reasons, but also as our food supply is now just that little bit more insecure due to a highly aggravated farming community. Jeremy Clarkson’s travails on Diddly Squat Farm have captured the national imagination, and have really brought home the staggering costs that farmers face and the difficulties of scratching a living off the land. Wherever you stand on the issue, we can all agree that food waste is NAGT: Not A Good Thing.
Wasting food in our house is anathema: I grew up in Africa far away from supermarkets. We bought meat in bulk, i.e. half a cow, sheep or pig, and stored it in a freezer, which we consumed with whatever was in season. Not a scrap was unnecessarily discarded, and the idea of avocadoes all year round was just … bonkers. Now, I live in a household of seven people. Yes, seven: my strange addiction is collecting annoying relatives. Short of forcing everyone at gunpoint to eat everything on their plate, inevitably we generate a bit of waste, and overall, we could do better. Here are some tips on how to do it:
First, a bit of meal planning never goes amiss. My husband is a Type 1 diabetic, the kind that doesn’t produce enough insulin, so pasta, potatoes and rice are out for him. All food is turned by the body into sugar eventually,
but he has to stick to the stuff that is converted very slowly, so we’re always well-stocked with protein: meat, fish, eggs, obviously, but also vegetable pulses, legumes, beans, whole-grains, seeds, nuts and industrial quantities of vegetables. When we have spaghetti, he has the Bolognese sauce over courgetti or wilted spinach. We cook a lot of aubergines, chopping them into small pieces and frying them in hot oil with garlic and chilli, which we then use as a base for chilli con carne, Bolognese or stew.
Before you go shopping, take stock of what you have already and plan meals around existing pantry items. A good way to avoid impulse buying in the supermarket is to avoid shopping when you’re hungry. Only buy perishables in the quantities you need or freeze the excess. Make good use of your freezer space: plenty of food items freeze well, and it’s always nice to be able to defrost something hot and wholesome if you don’t have time to cook. They say you shouldn’t freeze things for more than three months. I don’t worry about this too much. If people have eaten defrosted woolly mammoths that have lain in the frozen tundra for thousands of years, I don’t think a bit of freezer burned curry will do you any harm, but make sure you bring it up to piping hot temperatures first.
Store food properly. Onions, potatoes and garlic should be kept cool and dry. Don’t put bananas in the fruit bowl, as they speed the spoilage rate of other fruit. Store opened food and leftovers in sealed Tupperware or ziplock bags. Use the FIFO method (First In, First Out) in your cupboards and your fridge: put older items in the front and newer ones at the back, so older food is used first. Consider pickling, canning or drying vegetables that are a little elderly, and chop and add fruit into crumbles. Crumbles are very forgiving of wrinkly apples. I chuck all the fruit in, ageing or not, and it always tastes good. Instead of adding sugar, I use up all the odd bits of jam we have floating around, adding depth and flavour. They’re never the same twice. I chuck spotty or soft bananas in the freezer in their skins, and once I have four or more I make banana bread, a very easy crowd-pleaser, delicious with a bit of butter.
Leftovers can easily be turned to stews, soups, curries or added to stir-frys. Ask ChatGPT to give you recipe ideas: you can tell it what you have and it’ll give you a recipe. You can then ask for ingredient substitutes or modifications, such as ‘How can I add more protein?’
Make it a challenge to throw away nothing except bones and peelings. Even these can be boiled up for stock, which can be used as the base for a delicious gravy or sauce.
I’m baffled by people who slavishly follow sell-by dates; the sniff test is an excellent guide. There’s a difference between ‘Use by’ and ‘Best Before’. Although I ignore both, a lot of food can be used after the indicated date if its stored well.
Use your food waste bin or compost heap for peelings, coffee grinds, bones and all other scraps to reduce the volume of waste going into landfill. Hand on heart, with seven people in the house and frequent visitors, we generate enough waste to fill our food waste caddy each week, and seldom more. I don’t want to sound unsufferably smug: just this morning I threw away a bag of stir-fry vegetables which I’d allowed to go to mush in the fridge. I’d accidentally covered it with a whole load of new veg, violating my own FIFO method. This is not the only area of my life where I often ignore my own excellent advice. Let’s not get started on organisation and exercise!
Written by Cathy Evans
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