Don't throw food away challenge

Flat_Eric

I have been reading through this thread and must say that it has never occurred to me that I am wasting money when I cook too much and food ends up in the bin because I have too much on my plate.

Case in point. Did too many chips yesterday and threw away almost a portion ? I wasn't feeding three and a bit people ? I was feeding two !

I don't know what to cost them at because my OH bought them and didn't get a receipt. They were from the local co$tcutter and were branded chips so I am going to estimate 75p.

In better news, it was curry for tea but instead of cooking both the home made curry and the shop bought curry as planned, I only cooked the home made saving the shop bought for another day. We had the extras... onion bhajis and tandoori chicken, naan and rice so one portion of curry between the two of us was plenty and £3.49 saved :T

Cheapskate

So far today I've only thrown away leftovers from littlies' plates - both have colds so their eating habits are erratic just now, so can be forgiven as they're usually good eaters. Left some of my tea, too, though! Total cost about 40 pence.

I'm doing this as a multi-pronged attack on wastage of all sorts, including money,food and time, so we're using up all sorts of strange teabags (mostly presents from last Christmas!), rest of kids' chicken nuggets from tea (not served up) will be part of DS' lunch tomorrow, making soup with flesh carved from pumpkins and veg cooking water from yesterday... you get the idea! My SC is going to get some welly, too, as I've just remembered that my butcher sells rabbit, heart and other stuff I remember from childhood - cheap, yummy, healthy - can't go wrong!

DD and I will be having toasted things for lunch the next few days as we have odds and ends of bread/teacakes/muffins etc to use. A bit of grilled cheese and Worcestershire sauce will redeem them, I'm sure!

A xo

prepareathome

Can you use sheeps milk cheese as you would cows milk cheese - last week bought some after having a taste and it was nice, but since getting it home just not felt like it, it is very rich and its going to go off if not used up. I wondered if it could be used for macaronic cheese, anyone know. Never bought anything except cows milk cheese before.

Thanks

SpikyHedgehog

Allegra wrote: »

Clearly, I do not know which recipe Spiky used, but here is one (and a super frugal one at that) that I have used and enjoyed before:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/recipe-tomatoolivepudding.html?opt=rdinner

prepareathome wrote: »

Can I ask for the recipe for this I love olives and tomatoes, sadly only me, hubby cannot stand either

Thanks

That's the one I used from Weezl's Cheap Family Recipes website. http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/index.html I'm enjoying following it & it should create less waste as I've bought what we needed.

Except that my count has more than doubled today I'd bought 6 lemons in a bag as the planner called for 2 and they were 30p each or £1 a bag of 6 in M0rris0ns... Then I realised I still had lemon juice in the fridge so will use that instead. So, I went to make lemon cordial with them tonight (nice & if I do it again, I'll add some ginger root to make lemon & ginger cordial), and discovered 1 lemon was just brown & horrid inside... into the compost bin it went. As did the 8ounces of chickpeas DS1 had defrosted to make chickpea pate last week before going round my parents for a couple of days... The disadvantage of using marge tubs as storage is that you could think they have margarine in them...

Lots of dinner left over tonight - it would probably be a good idea if I looked at DS2's school menu when he's having school dinners so I don't do pasta for dinner on the same night that he's had pasta at school! That's my lunch for tomorrow though.

While I've been on the 'net, DS1 has been experimenting to make home-made cider from eating apples crushed up in the food processor, water so they blended up better and yeast... Something tells me I'll be calculating the cost of the ingredients there for more waste later in the week!

kixxie

Okay, this is a huge challenge for me. So, count me in! I'm going to start off slowly cos I know this one is a major area for me. It is not uncommon for me to thaw out an entire casserole that would serve 5 and then not be bothered to whack it in the oven! So, there it sits until I clean the fridge out. Needless to say, my first goal is to not throw away large portions.

mizmir

Nothing thrown away today except some chicken bones that had already been boiled up, stock made and stripped of all remaining meat - so short of making glue I think they were done to death. Or is there something else you do with the boiled bones. Since the chicken had already done two meals and the stock - and the leftover bits of skin and bits made a good tea for my convalescing dog - it doesn't feel like much wasted.

Interesting that some people are counting food scraps given to animals as thrown away food? I regularly supplement my dogs' food with table scraps and left over bits of fat/cheese/eggs/veg etc. - saves money on dog food and gives them variety - so I don't see this as waste. I guess I would if I had to give them a whole piece of ham or cheese or something because it it was past its sell buy. So that is the distinction I will make. Scraps eaten by dog = not waste. Food that is left so only good for dog = waste. Does that seems reasonable?

Dorothea,_call_me_Dotty

Hi prepareathome,

re your query about freezing bananas. Yes, I peel, chop and freeze bananas and use them to make a smoothie for breakfast. It's fairly quick and the kids like it. I mix the bananas with my hand blender with fruit juice/ tinned fruit/yogurt/ pears or peaches from the fruit bowl, or all of the above. Nice . Hope this helps.

squeaky

mizmir wrote: »

Nothing thrown away today except some chicken bones that had already been boiled up, stock made and stripped of all remaining meat - so short of making glue I think they were done to death. Or is there something else you do with the boiled bones. Since the chicken had already done two meals and the stock - and the leftover bits of skin and bits made a good tea for my convalescing dog - it doesn't feel like much wasted.

Interesting that some people are counting food scraps given to animals as thrown away food? I regularly supplement my dogs' food with table scraps and left over bits of fat/cheese/eggs/veg etc. - saves money on dog food and gives them variety - so I don't see this as waste. I guess I would if I had to give them a whole piece of ham or cheese or something because it it was past its sell buy. So that is the distinction I will make. Scraps eaten by dog = not waste. Food that is left so only good for dog = waste. Does that seems reasonable?

Beats me

Set your own targets - set your own rules.

ALL my food waste goes either into the compost or into the cat. And the majority of the composted waste has been used for stock before it gets there... so if I discounted these I'd be on zero waste.

For everyone struggling with leftover food on plates... I used to have a lot of this. The portion in the cooking pots never looked big enough, and then, once it got dished up onto the plate I was left wondering if I should be eating this pile of food or climbing it!

So my first step was to cook the "normal" amounts but only serve up between a half and two thirds of it. THEN if I hadn't served myself enough I just simply dished up some seconds. Any food left in the pots was then stashed away for a snack or to be used up in something else another day.

Gradually over time my "cooking portions" dropped in size until these days the only time I have leftovers is when I deliberately want them i.e. making a single portion of chilli is a waste of time and energy - so I make four or five portion's worth and stash the extra in portion sizes.

Oh, and puddings... I only make those AFTER I've eaten my main course. About half the time I plan to have a pud, which is not every day anyway, by the time I've eaten my main course I don't actually fancy one. That's been worth having to tighten my belt by two notches over the past year btw... lazy slimming

If I somehow manage to cook myself less than my tummy wants to eat - I can always pad the meal with a slice of bread and butter (or a roll) on the side, or follow the meal with a piece of fruit, or even (yum) a bowl of cereal

Between sorting out portion sizes, doing less puds, and a few other things like switching from whole milk to semi-skimmed, sugar in coffee down from two heaped teaspoons to one level one, a higher veg to meat and taters ratio, more fruit IN my puds or better still AS my puds - not to mention eating fruit instead of cake when I get the munchies for something sweet I've gone from wearing tight 38" jeans to 32" jeans (that I have to wear a belt with or they'll fall down) over the course of the past year. No "diet". No calorie counts. No food rules. No "omg I'm so hungry"... no guilt. No misery

All this was actually driven by my need to get my budget under control, spend less, waste less... but the benefits have been amazing.

Edit: My budget had been under control, but the previous year what with price rises, utilility and fuel costs, rent... they had gone up by a total of £92 per month while my income had only increased by £4. Shopping around using the various boards on MSE helped reduce some of the bills - but the rest of the shortfall had to made up by me, iyswim? Done deal - I'm back in charge

Doom_and_Gloom

I'd like to join this. We don't throw a lot out as it is but I really want to get it down to nothing!
At the moment we have very little excuse to throw anything out as our huge freezer is basically empty - it has ice in it, 1 steak for my partner and 6 home made ready meals that are my partners.
As we need to fill the freezer waste should not happen but we shall see.

For November I would like to not waste more than £2. Would love to say £0 but I don't want to be too strict yet.

franby64

Hi

I would like to join too - again I like to think I don't waste much mainly as I usually incorporate leftovers into my own lunches and that uses up a lot of stuff. This will be a really good check on me though - I hate the thought that food has been grown, picked, packaged, transported, bought and binned - what a painful waste of resources and money.

My main bugbear is chips. I can't recycle them (any suggestions?) and I think everybody here is getting a bit sick of them so I'm going to rest them for November except with fish.

I haven't had a proper check of what's lurking yet but I know I have a desiccated bunch of spring onions in the fridge so I will either use or chop/freeze them today.

So I'll keep tabs on what I throw out now and I really hope I don't get to a tenner!