Don't Throw Food Away Challenge

Mint1955

Put the lot on free cycle with the note about dates someone will take them of your hands and be grateful for them.

Gers wrote: »

In anticipation of moving house (early next year) I have been making a start in the kitchen cupboards. I have found, and want to discard the following:

• 1kg of penne pasta –bbe May 2010
• 1 small tretrapack of organic cannellinie beans- bbe July 2012
• 1 tin of organic chick peas – dated Sept 2012
• 1 tin of cannellinie beans – dated April 2012
• 1 tin of red kidney beans – dated Jan 2012

Not as bad as I thought but we really won’t eat any of these foodstuffs. Would it be OK to donate or does it all just need to go out?

Have found and will use a jar of Gordon Ramsey Comic Relief butter chicken sauce dated May 2012 and a tin of coconut milk dated April 2011. Don't mind eating these ourselves, just worried about the donation really.
Thanks

piecemeal

aplaceinthesun wrote: »

Hi all, can I ask a bit of advice please?? Made chicken stock last night with a cooked chicken carcass that had been in the fridge a few days put it in the oven to cool down safely away from the cats and only remembered it at lunch time when I went tyo put some pasties in to cook. The kitchen is quite cold but obviously not as cold as a fridge where it sdhould have been!i did strain and refrigerate it but my questiion is...would you still use it bearing in mind it had over 12 hours not in the fridge?!?! Thanks all, love reading this thread!

Before we had fridges, people would keep a stock pot on the go for ages; it was just boiled up every day with new bones, veg or veg water added when available.

piecemeal

cornishchick wrote: »

Just realised i have mash left in the fridge from Saturday, would you still eat it, freeze It?

Yes, I'd cook it and eat it. After all, ready made mash that they sell in supermarkets is older than 3 or 4 days. I would add flour to bind it, shape it into cakes and fry. Great with bacon, egg, beans and brown sauce.:D

Firemunchkin

cornishchick wrote: »

Just realised i have mash left in the fridge from Saturday, would you still eat it, freeze It?

It will keep for about a week in the fridge - and makes excellent hash browns for breakfast on a Saturday!

[Deleted User]

Just been reading about the amount of food wasted in this country.Its horrifying to think of good food being binned.I do try my best to have as little food waste as possible I no longer buy bread and am happy with crispbread,not practical in a family I suppose.But I look after four of my DGS before and after school and they have got used to their afternoon snack sometimes having the crust of the bread when I am making them beans on toast or a cheese toastie.DD did tell me once that the bottom two or three slices were binned because they had opened a new loaf and the top crust of that was binned as well.Not any more once Granny has got her mitts on it they become a cheese toastie or beans on toast If the crust is very thick then I will carefully take a thin slice off but that's about all.I hate waste of any sort.Last weeks left over lamb bone from DDs went into my SC and made along with a few bits of veg a couple of litres of lamb broth which I had at lunchtime during the week.

Her dogs, for some reason, she finds bones upset them so I came home with a couple of free meals .This weeks one will make me a pot of stock for soup making.What do you all do to stop wasting stuff, and like me refuse to make more waste to fill landfill sites ?
When it comes to food everything can get recycled .Even stale cake can make a nice trifle base with the addition of a jelly and some blancmange :rotfl::D My children call me Frau Frugal but to me wasting good food is a sin when there is so much poverty in the world

taurusgb

I love to read the common sense views you put forward on here Jackie, I am in full agreement with all you say. I never waste anything if I can help it. One of our favourite things to do with stale cake if I want a hot pudding is to turn it into "Nella Last" pudding, so called as I read about it in one of her wartime diaries. It is simply a layer of any fruit, fresh or tinned, topped with stale cake, pour over custard and sprinkle with coconut if you like/have any. Bake until hot. Yum!

Hearing on the news earlier today that Tesco was going to stop BOGOF on large bags of salad I was shocked by how much waste they say this causes both instore and at home. Personally, I have issues with the amount of miles travelled and how much water is used to offer this convenience food and never buy it myself, but if I did and had some left I couldn't use as salad I would add it to a batch of home made soup. I would not throw it away.

I keep a bag in the freezer for odds and ends that have no immediate use, when the bag is full I make soup. None of this is rocket science, and seems so obvious to us oldstylers, but I think there are so many people out there who only know cooking as heating up a readymeal, opening a tin or grilling fish fingers (nothing wrong with fish fingers unless they are your staple diet by the way). It is scarey how many folk have no idea on budgeting for food, let alone cooking it and reusing leftovers.

jenster

Red tape again in this country is so annoying - why cant food that is due to have a best before date soon be given away to food banks hospitals etc - why because some bright spark say they would rather waste it then risk health and safety issues they members of this forum and the money-saving old style board could probably solve this country's food waste in a heart beat

we all know that a vast majoity of food is still good after the date given the problem is these so called best before dates etc they have im sure got shorter and shorter every time you buy anything and a lot of the time theres nothing wrong with the food

also why do we have to have the so called perfect veg - misshapen means its just that not bad or off

something really needs to be done about all this waste for the benefit of all not just the supermarkets

catznine

Well said Jackie! As a country we should be ashamed of ourselves for all the waste, though I doubt much of it is caused by us oldstylers I still have to think carefully about how I use things up. Last week we had bubble and squeak from leftover cabbage and mash, this morning I made dh an omelette using up a sliced cooked sausage and a sliced mushroom. Any leftover veg or salad goes into soups which I can let simmer away in the slow cooker all day. Leftover meat goes into curries and I used to make a filling pie with leftover chicken pieces, mushrooms, peas and top with mash potatoes. My fridge is always full of little dishes of this and that to use up and I try to tweak my normal recipes in order to use things up. I menu plan (which saves lots of money) but prepare to be flexible and include any surprise oddments in the fridge.

If you know you won't have time to use things up then quickly prep and pop into freezer for later use. You can freeze cooked pasta, rice, veg, fruit including tinned fruit, gravy, hummous, pate, cooked meat (but only once) and mash potatoes as well as lots of other things. We should have a list of freezable leftovers and their many uses. Doing this alone has saved me lots of pennies and I can often pull together an odds and sods (fried rice, mini pasta bake meal type meal)


There are some good books about also this and other websites full of great ideas.

lynsayjane

I have to admit I'm not great at this myself and probably waste things that people with more OS skills than I do wouldn't waste. But I do try, I end up rather not buying things though. We don't eat much fruit or veg in the LJ household and so I tend just not to buy rather than buy and have it wasted. It's not promoting a healthy diet though so is something I would like to change.
I do freeze things though, last week I needed one leek for a recipe but @sda only had a bag of, so I took that and used the one I needed then chopped and froze the rest for soup. Likewise when I did make soup last week I didn't need the whole neep but grated it all and froze what I didn't use. I also froze half the soup once made as I knew it wouldn't be eaten while it was good.

Hoping that through spending time on the OS board though I can pick up hints and tips on running a more efficient house

LJ
x

THIRZAH

I like the idea of the "Nella Last Pudding", taurusgb. Not that we have much leftover cake in this house! I usually slice cake and freeze it so we can take a piece when we go walking on Saturdays.

My grandmother, who was about the same age as Nella Last used to roll out leftover pastry into squares. She would cook it while she had the oven on for something else then store it in a tin.She would serve the pastry with stewed fruit to make a more substantial pudding.

I freeze most leftovers . If there is only a small amount I'll eat them for lunch otherwise I'll turn them into another meal.

Today I'm going to freeze some carrots which are going a bit soft and will add them to stews.I also have some pears which need using up so they will go in the slow cooker to make pears in red wine.