The MSE Food Waste Challenge Thread

Tink_04

I try hard to keep the food was down as see every meal as saving me money rather than throwing it away - anything I can freeze gets frozen for another day. Do you wrap your cucumbers in foil? Some one mentioned it once and it does help them keep longer I find.

Islandmaid

Thanks Tink - I will give it a go

katkin

Cucumber, celery and most lettuces seem to keep really well in the fridge wrapped in foil. I'm amazed by how long they last with such a simple solution.

Thanks Tink.

melanzana

I have learned that use by dates in some products is waaaay too early.

Milk (full fat for me anyway) is ok for days. Must be irradiated!

Same for yogurts. They are fine way outside the dates especially if faffed up with fresh fruit and honey.

The danger zone is defrosting food from the freezer and not getting around to using it within a day. I am religious about that sorry.

I use up spuds with the sprouting things by peeling within an inch of life and either steaming for mash or par roasting, all into the freezer.

My biggest waste is bread. I make my own wholemeal soda bread, but for some reason always forget to freeze the leftovers, but still, that kind of bread just always tastes divine out of the oven anyway!

There will always be a bit of waste, unless one is totally organised. But the less the better.

[Deleted User]

I always wrap cucumber,celery and even cabbage in foil. In fact I have half a sweetheart cabbage in foil at the moment that I bought about 10 days ago.
As I live alone and only eat around 4-5 nights at home often it takes me a fortnight to get through a cabbage.It keep perfectly well wrapped in foil, and I buy the really inexpensive stuff around 50p a roll for wrapping veg with.

I have a round plastic lettuce keeper in my fridge that is excellent and keep an iceberg very well. I bought it from betterware about five years ago and its saved me a fortune. This week all that's been binned is some egg shells and some used tea bags and some coffee grounds wrapped in kitchen roll. I usually have one small plastic bag of rubbish per week if that.I have a large recycling bag for paper etc that gets filled about once a fortnight I suppose. As I live close to a precinct there is a metal recycling bin there so if I have empty tins I wash them out, flatten them and take a small bag over to the big bin every few days. There is also a glass bin over there for recycling glass jars and bottles as well

Envelopes get recycled for scrap paper for Tuesday quiz night.

The dustmen get very little rubbish from me to dump in landfill

Slowly57

I had a Saturday night custard disaster (wanted to make half of an 'as directed' portion - but forgot to half the cooking instructions - so ended up with an abominable yellow custard blob). Main cost in milk - I'm thinking about 70p.

Do folks here not have an entire posse of wheely bins? We have a raft of bins that recycle our waste - so:
paper+card bin
plastics + tins bin
glass/garden + kitchen/food waste bin
and finally the evil 'bin' bin (which is half the size of the recycling bins and the contents of which goes to landfill)

Our bin bin is usually full of packaging that can't be recycled - even though I avoid it whenever possible.

Thriftkitten

Hi and sorry if this is the wrong place to ask a question, it is related to not wasting food..
So I have lots of veg left over from yesterdays Sunday roast... I have pulsed it all together in the processor and also whizzed up 2 slices of bread which I am hoping to coat them with... my question is do I need an egg or some flour to make them into little flat cakes/hashbrowns and do I fry or put them in the oven please.... Many thanks and here's to my first non waste day.

[Deleted User]

Shape into patties dip in flour then egg and myself I coat it again in dried sage and onion stuffing to give a bit extra flavour then either fry in a shallow pan or dry roast in the oven ,or if not needed straight away freeze for another day Basically rissoles as we called them when I young, more veg content than meat but a tasty addition for a mid week meal with maybe chips and beans

Caterina

Now that's it's only DH and myself, and we are not at all squeamish about creative leftovers reuse, there is very little, if any, waste. If there are any leftovers of dinner, say, veg stew, bean casserole, stir fry etc, they get turned into soup for the next day lunch.

Yesterday I threw away a small cup of cooked porridge which had sat in the fridge, forgotten, for a week. It was leftover because DS had come and stayed overnight and did not finish his. We normally eat all the porridge we make because we know and cook exactly how much we want.

Outer leaves of lettuces and cabbage, green hard bits of leeks, overgrown runner beans etc, get chopped, cooked and turned into soup, if still too tough they get pulverised in the vitamix (that was so expensive, but has paid for itself several times over!).

Any scraps go into the compost bin for back garden or allotment.

I have two peeled oranges in the freezer that I did not have time to eat or process before our hols, now waiting to be turned into quick marmalade, or maybe mixed with cooking apples which need using soon, for a few evening meal puddings, with a bit of cinnamon.

[Deleted User]

No wheelie bins for me, I was offered one for garden waste a few years ago,but as my gardener takes all the grass cuttings/waste away with him I declined the offer, plus the fact that it would have to sit on my drive which isn't mega large and I need for parking my car on. Ihave a large recycling bag that I keep in the kitchen to put paperrubbish in .Our council also supply us with thin clear plastic bin liners to go inside the big blue recycling bag so once a fortnight. I just have to tie the top off and place the plastic bag out on the pavement the last thing at night and its picked up about 6.30 a.m. They did try running a trial of small plastic recycle bins for the kitchen waste, but it never really took off ,and one of my neighbours actually uses hers as a hanging basket type of container and grows trailing tomato's in it :):)