Help please RE: Mum's food waste

candygirl

iammumtoone wrote: »

can you suggest a week on / week off rota. With a rule that the other person is not allowed to interfere

One week she does all the shopping and cooking and you pay half at the end of the week. The next week is your turn. Hopefully when she comes to paying her half for your week she will see the savings she has made and will have enjoyed the food that she will start to see things from your point of view. Likewise you might find that you don't mind the odd meal her way.

Surely it would be nicer for both of you if you can find common ground so you can share the cooking and eat the same meals together.

Good luck. I hope before you move out again you will have helped her save herself some money.

That's a brilliant idea:T

VfM4meplse

Watch a few of the Greg Wallace programmes on iPlayer. It might encourage your mum to think about things a little differently.

Or use a tactic that used to be applied by the older generation to their fussy eaters: remind her of the 1 million undernourished people on this planet.

babyshoes

I don't see a difference in safety between ready made meals and leftovers - they are both pre-prepared food that you warm up when you want to eat it. The ready meal has almost certainly been sitting around in various fridges for a lot longer than the leftovers, actually, which is why it needs all those preservatives.

As long as the home made food is prepared hygienically, cooled quickly, kept cold or frozen (3 days in the fridge is the official advice, a few months in the freezer - it will still be safe for longer but may have a less appealing flavour or texture) and heated up thoroughly just before serving, it will be just as safe as the factory produced stuff, with a heck of a lot less artificial additives. I often dish up straight from the pot or pan into containers for the fridge or freezer at the same time as I serve onto plates, so it's not like I've scraped half a meal off a plate.

How would she be with food like soup or stew that you 'made in advance' and called 'home made ready meals' to 'save time on a busy week night'? The language you use to describe the food might help to influence her opinion, along with trying some of the other suggestions you've had on here.

Hermia

FrugalWorker wrote: »

I've friends who won't eat left overs. They roast a chicken, eat some of the breast and the remainder gets chucked. criminal as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not going to change how they eat, so I'd be recommending that they buy chicken breasts only. leave the thighs for me to buy cheaply in the shops.

I have never liked leftovers so I buy small amounts or buy large amounts and immediately put half in the freezer.

OP - when I briefly lived with my mum as an adult we just shopped for our own stuff and cooked our own stuff with just the occasional joint meal. We didn't really like the same food so it was much easier than trying to find recipes we both liked. My mum loved M&S ready meals, but I never tried to stop her eating them as she could afford them and often came in from work late so I wasn't about to tell her she shouldn't eat like that.

dandy-candy

I think domravioli was unnecessarily rude to you. Please don't think that is typical of people on here.

You mum may be adverse to leftovers and yellow stickers because getting food poisoning when you are older can be much worse and take longer to bounce back. Making smaller dinners will mean cooking daily, but there won't be much waste.

I would definitely get her to watch a few cooking programmes and looking at some books or magazines for inspiration. Maybe ask what were her favourite meals as a kid and at a weekend make them together? If she really is adverse to cooking then there are simple meals like jacket potato and salad or pasta dishes she or you could whip up in no time and are much cheaper than ready meals.

catkins

I too think the post by Domravioli was rude and unnecessary and am quite surprised it was thanked by so many.


I can quite understand your frustration that she throws perfectly good food away and that she won't entertain the idea of yellow stickered items.


I would do as another poster suggested and see if you can watch the Greg Wallace programme and see the comments made about food waste. There have also been other tv programmes made about using food leftovers. I can't recall what they were called but they may be possible to find say on youtube.


Does she use the internet at all? If so could you get her to look at any of the threads on her or sites about food waste and/or using up leftovers?


I absolutely hate any food being wasted and rarely throw anything away - I even use veg peelings, leaves etc for soup

Mr_Singleton

catkins wrote: »

I too think the post by Domravioli was rude and unnecessary and am quite surprised it was thanked by so many.

It was thanked/liked so many times because it was spot on! How would you feel if somebody came into your house and started to lecture you? If you don't like it then you know where the door is,

Need2bthrifty

I dont want to make too many assumptions but perhaps your mum didnt consider it worthwhile making homemade meals for herself and ready meals were the easy option, but they also come with their own warnings which she perhaps takes very seriously. You know the ones - make sure food is piping hot, do not re-heat, do not freeze/re-freeze.

Another downside is these meals come with added sugar, fat, salt so unless you are a masterchef you may have difficulty replicating them. Why not try replicating the food that she cooked when you were younger and living at home - eg "remember that casserole/pie/stew/soup that you used to make, lets do it again or is there a recipe for it"

Might be worth a try, but if she has been on her own for 10years she may well have lost all interest/confidence in cooking "real food".

Although I hate waste of any kind I would also suggest you tread sensitively. Personally I wouldn't take kindly to a member of the family moving in and trying to change a system that has worked for me for years.

sooty&sweep

Hi
Have you tried agreeing a menu for the week & from that a shopping list ? You could then build your build your menu around what you already have & only buy what you need.
I know I'm guilty of being a spur of the moment shopper, forgetting what I've already got.
Some people lack confidence in their own ability to judge whether something is ok or not so they avoid yellow stickers & food that is open just in case.
Jen

ancientofdays

I wondered if your mum might worry about yellow stickers because they might indicate that the food needs to be used more quickly than she might find convenient if she is usually just cooking for one.
Perhaps you could identify some nights each week when you cook, you could introduce some meals that are economical but tasty. You could possibly suggest that the time she would have spent cooking, ok, reheating, could be special time for her to relax.
My mum is the other way round, she does sometimes decide to ignore food warnings, if out if date, thinks it will be fine, just scrape those green bits off....