Ways to reduce food waste

This week is food waste action week here in the UK. I pride myself in having no food waste in my house.  We use everything that we buy, get from the community fridge, or we grow ourselves.  This has not only saved me money, which allows me to stay retired, but it makes me be more creative, more mindful, and helps the environment (less landfill).    These are some of the ways we save on food waste.  It is not a comprehensive list, but just the thoughts off the top of my head.

Food storage

1.  Store food correctly.  Eg. check your fridge temperature.  If it is not cold enough things will go off a lot faster.  Make sure leftovers are cold before putting them in the fridge as this will higher the temperature.  Other examples are keeping vegetables in a cool dark place.  If I have a lot of potatoes I keep them in a cardboard box in a north facing porch.  Keeping fruit like blue berries or strawberries in glass jars in the fridge extends their life.  I also store apples when I pick them by wrapping them in newspaper and storing them in a cardboard box.
2. Preserve food so that it does not rot.  We make sauces out of a glut of vegetables, or cut, blanche and freeze food from the Community fridge if we can not use it in the next few days.
3. Make bread crumbs from stale bread, bake them and store in an air tight glass jar.  There are so many other things that you can make with old bread
4. Freeze leftovers if you do not intend to use them in the next couple of days.
5. Things like celery and broccoli can be watered by standing them in a jug of water to make them last longer.
6. Make pickles.
7. Preserve herbs
8. Use ice cube trays to store stock, herbs, milk, lemon juice and freeze.  Place them in a bag and label.
9. Learn to can sauces with what we have eg. a glut of tomatoes

Making the most of the food that you have

1.  Use ever bit that you can of the food that you have.  Some examples of things that I do is to eat the leaves of beetroot in a salad or use the stalks of broccoli in stews and soups.  Carrot tops make a nice pesto, potato skins make crisps, etc.  Cauliflower and sprout leaves can be used as a green veg.
2. If vegetables start to look past their best make a soup out of them, or add to a stew.  You can also grate them into mince or make things like fritters with them,
3. Revive food by plunging in cold water.  This works with things like lettuce or carrots.  Bread run under the tap and then heated in an oven or a air fryer is refreshed and no longer stale.
4. Put the ingredients that you have into an app like ‘Supercook’ and it will provide recipes that you can  make.
5. If you have left overs from a meal, switch up so that it seems like a different meal.  An example is if you make bolognaise you can serve it with spaghetti, but leftovers could go into a lasagne, or be spiced up to make a chilli to serve with rice, or used for nachos.
6.  Use vegetable peelings to make stock.
7.  Use meat bones to make stock or broth.
8.  Be creative with your cooking.  Cook with what you can find and use everything up. We make pasties with anything that we have.  Before going on holiday one year all we had was some left over mashed potato, cheese, onion, tomato sauce, and chorizo.  We love them and make them regularly now.
9. Stale cereal can be revived by baking it.
10. If you defrosted something and then don’t need it, cook it and then refreeze.
11. Turn any left over vegetables in to bubble and squeak or something similar like vegetable croquettes
12. Don’t be afraid to eat things that look ugly.  Wizened apples can be turned into compote, or peeled and added to a fruit salad with a splash of lemon juice.  Wonky fruit and vegetable at the supermarkets are cheaper.  When I was a child all the potatoes had big holes in them before you cooked them as you had to take all the eyes and black bits out.
13. Know your moulds.  I wouldn’t eat mouldy bread, but I have cut mould off cheese before.

Habits

1. Shop from your cupboards, fridge and freezers first before buying any new food.  So many people go to the supermarket weekly and buy the same things whether they need them or not.
2. Make a shopping list and add things to it as they run out.  Take it with you when you visit the shops. That way you will only buy what you need.  Be intentional with your shopping or when you visit the community fridge.  This will stop you buying or taking too much.
3. Meal plan around your life.  Use the slow cooker to get a meal when you come in from a late football practice, or have something quick on your plan like fajitas.  This stops you getting a take away and wasting the food that you had intended to have.
4. Meal prep using what you already have in the house.
5. Batch cook for times when you may not have much time.  We make things like potato waffles, pizza, salad boxes, compote, soup, lasagne.
6. Organise your fridge and freezers.  I have an inventory for my freezers, and have a shelf for jars, a box for cheese etc, so that I know where everything is in the fridge.  Don’t over pack your fridge or else things will get lost and forgotten.
7. Organise your cupboards so that items with older dates are brought to the front when new items are bought.
8. Portion out food and have a plan for the left overs.
9. Label and date everything if like me, you freeze things, or store them in glass jars.  You don’t want to take out what you think is chicken and it turns out to be apple sauce.
10. Only buy items in bulk that I use regularly.

Home grown food

1.  Grow the ends of food from the supermarket in water to get fresh growth.  The end of lettuce, spring onions or celery work well.  Just make sure that you change the water regularly.
2. Use the seeds from shop bought food to grow more food.  This works well with pepper seeds and tomatoes.
3.  Use banana skins to make a feed by steeping them in water to feed home grown food.
4.  If growing spring onions, just chop the tops off and they will regrow.
5.  If you are growing lettuce, pick the outside leaves regularly and they will keep growing.
6.  Harvest peas, beans, courgettes etc regularly, and the plant will keep producing more.
7. Compost any peelings that are not being used to make stock.
8. Divide supermarket bought herbs and repot them.  They will provide you with an abundance of herbs, some of them for years.

Dates on food

1.  Keep an eye on the dates on food in your cupboards and in your fridge so that they get eaten if they are going out of date.
2. Know the difference between best before and sell by dates.
3.  Freeze food if it is near the sell by date.  Even things like cheese, yoghurt, cream, hummus, pesto etc can be frozen.  Flour can also be frozen to prevent weevils.
4.  Personally I do not always go by the sell by date, though I am careful with things like meat and fish.  I use my senses to smell and go by the look of it.  An example is that last week I made some ice cream out of some cream that was 6 weeks out of date.  It was perfectly fine.

Donate

1.  Food that you do not like or are not going to use can be donated to friends, family, or to a community fridge or food bank.
2. If you have a glut of food that you have grown yourself you could swap or share it with family or friends, or  be given to a community fridge or food bank.

Please share ways that you save on food waste/