Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

Well, m'dears. If anyone had been hoping for an erudite discussion tonight, this is the wrong diary, as tonight I will mostly be talking about potatoes!
So, I was enjoying my first cup of caffiene of the day & scrolling through the News on my phone when I came across a story about food waste. Apparently UK households are not wasting quite such a disgraceful amount of food as they were, but it is still appallingly high & if I recall rightly, amounts to an average of £700 worth of food per household each year. And as some of us have a zero waste food policy for both financial & environmental/ethical reasons, then that means some households are wasting 'our' share too, so their figure will be higher.
And the most wasted food of all? Potatoes! Yes, that's POTATOES....surely one of the most versatile foods nature ever created. Well, I won't lie - this news story really wound me up because it's such a stupid unnecessary waste of food & money. I think there are probably a few reasons why potatoes are the most wasted food. Firstly, many bags will carry a 'best before' date. Now, we grow potatoes & lettuce & tomatoes & a lot of the other foods which regularly make the top ten list of food waste items & one thing I DO know is that when you go out to pick them, they haven't grown little dates on them to suggest when you might like to cast aside any idea of eating them & instead chuck them in the bin. That's because dates are completely unnecessary on fruit & veg. They are very good at developing visible signs of no longer being edible & mostly they last a lot longer than arbitrary dates applied by supermarkets who benefit by people chucking out what they've got & heading off to buy more. So I think taking notice of dates is one reason why so many potatoes head straight off for landfill. Another reason is that they take a bit more work than sending out for takeaway or sticking something instant in the microwave. They've got peel on them, which needs taking off....that kind of thing.....& they might have been purchased with good intentions about maybe cooking more from scratch, which haven't really taken off......& then we're back to the date on the bag, etc, etc. And if they've sat there for a while, they could have started sprouting. That could look a bit off-putting, but unless the sprouts are simply massive & it's clear that all the energy in the potato is now going into making a new plant, they are still perfectly usable if there is a bit of sprouting. I would certainly use them. Instead of a load of old potatoes being seen as a nuisance & fit only for the bin, they are such a versatile vegetable, they should be seen as a resource. You can do so much with them:
Mashed potato
Mashed potato-topped pies
Potato cakes
Potato scones
Potato bread
Normandy potatoes
Jacket wedges
Rosti
Hash
Meat & potato pie
Egg & chips (including the lovely round ones our Mums made in the frying pan)
Leek & potato soup
And yes, I know there are plenty of people who'd say 'It's alright for you, you like cooking & have got the time to do it'. & I get that, but really, who doesn't have the time & ability just to stir some seasoning & grated cheese into a pan of mash & pop it in the oven for a lovely cheap, filling cheese & potato pie?
When I say we have a zero food waste policy here, that's exactly what I mean. Of course like everyone, we occasionally find we've got a furry lemon or satsuma & when that happens, they go in the compost bins. There's no way I'd eat anything that I knew was dodgy. But that's just it - too many people are binning food which isn't remotely dodgy, but because a little date on the bag suggests that it could be.....or because they can't be bothered to do anything with it. £700 of wasted food per household each year is a shocking amount. I bet those people wouldn't go & poke £700 of good hard cash down the nearest drain, but that's the problem, it is a gradual thing....a bag of spuds here, a lettuce there, a tray of tomatoes the next day, some apples the next week......but it all mounts up. We shouldn't be feeding the bin. It' must be a blimming expensive habit.
I'm aware that I'm sounding like my Nana - & unlike her, I haven't lived through two world wars, but I do find food waste is becoming more & more of an anathema to me these days & reading that news story this morning just underlined how much it winds me up!
And now I shall do something which doesn't involve ranting online about potatoes!
Hope everyone is having a nice Friday night,
F x

wishingthemortgaheaway

Ooh Foxgloves. That has quite totally rattled you hasn't it? I agree with everything you say. Food waste here is also very little/non existent - I was hoping you were about to share how you put your peelings to edible use, but, alas, they shall remain compost bin bound.

So, between you and me, not creating £700 of waste - where are these wasteful people?

Chrystal

wishingthemortgaheaway wrote: »

Ooh Foxgloves. That has quite totally rattled you hasn't it? I agree with everything you say. Food waste here is also very little/non existent - I was hoping you were about to share how you put your peelings to edible use, but, alas, they shall remain compost bin bound.

So, between you and me, not creating £700 of waste - where are these wasteful people?

I'm very much afraid that I am one of them

I keep saying that I'm going to get myself sorted out,... but Procrastination is my first, as well as my middle, name.:o

DawnW

One of our go-to easy meals is jacket potato - with anything. Good for using up small quantities of leftover cooked food, or simply with cheese or beans. What could be easier? And if you start them off in the microwave they only take half an hour in the oven (for crispy skins, the best bit) or if you don't like the skins you can do them completely in the microwave, quicker.

I think one reason why potatoes get wasted is that people don't know to store them in a dark place, and they go green And they really can't be used if they are green, as they then contain a substance called solanine which is poisonous. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine

If you cook them (which you would of course anyway) it is supposed to detoxify them, but it really isn't a very attractive idea, is it? So more information for the public on potato storage would prevent some of this waste I should think. Not everyone learns this kind of thing from their Mums / Grannies now unfortunately.

DawnW

Chrystal wrote: »

I'm very much afraid that I am one of them

I keep saying that I'm going to get myself sorted out,... but Procrastination is my first, as well as my middle, name.:o

It might motivate you to think what else you could do with the money you spend on food that ends up in the bin instead - maybe pay off debts, or put towards a new car, or a holiday, or new clothes, an emergency fund, or a house deposit. It really does add up.

carrielovesfanta

wishingthemortgaheaway wrote: »

So, between you and me, not creating £700 of waste - where are these wasteful people?

My dear mil. It's a myth that all boomers are amazingly good at cooking and thrifty with food. Mil believes that things magically turn into deadly poison as soon as midnight on the bbe date appears.

Other things I have known her to deem inedible:

*slightly overripe bananas (my freezer is FULL of ones that I have rescued from her)

*An egg with a speckled shell

*A plastic tub of bolognase that some ants crawled across (she even binned the plastic box!)

*A courgette gifted by her neighbour from his allotment because it was dirty

foxgloves

Dawn - yes, agree totally re jacket potatoes. Every couple of weeks on my meal plans, I write 'JP/freezer dive night' & we decide which toppings we fancy. Often we have different things. This is a great way of using up single portions of things in the freezer, isn't it? I also like more inventive salads than Mr f, so I'll sometimes put a portion of some saladdy creation (from a round-up of fridge contents & in season, some garden snippings) with my jacket potato & then top it with something simple like tuna mayo, grated cheese or hummous. It's a cheap usually healthy meal that we both like so like you, we are happy to eat it regularly.
F

foxgloves

Wish - No, I don't have a use for potato peelings - I expect even in wartime they went to feed livestock. Ours go in the compost bins or into the worm composter.
I know it's possible to make marmalade just from saved orange peelings and also an apple drink from boiling up apple peelings, but I have never tried either of these & am not sure I ever intend to do so. Never say never, though! If in future as an ancient resourceful old crone, I am caught up in a national emergency, I may be off with my purple hair & walking stick to round up people's peelings, lol.
F x

foxgloves

CLF - Oh dear, there's some daft examples of food waste there from your MIL, lol. My Nana never wasted anything. She'd lived through 2 wars & hadn't had much when she was growing up. I used to tease her for carefully unpicking the glued folds on sugar bags to shake out every last grain, but she used to say 'If you'd lived through the times I've lived through, you wouldn't be laughing my girl". My Mum was a baddie for food waste though. I think I've posted before about how on one of my visits down to see her after Dad had died, to take her for a big grocery stock up. I was looking at a very generously filled yellow sticker section to see if there was anything sufficiently bargainaceous to buy to take back home with me. Mum told me never to buy anything from those shelves. She said "they put those yellow stickers on all their old stuff they want to get rid of" & she certainly wouldn't buy it! If she asked me to check the date on something in her fridge & it was tomorrow or the next day, she'd ask me if it would still be 'alright'. So you are right that not all 'baby boomers' (I don't like that term because I was apparently born in the final 'boomer year' & I absolutely don't feel like one whatever they feel like!) have all these frugal anti-food waste skills/knowledge. I know Mum would have rather chucked a chicken carcass in the bin than have to cook anything with the leftovers & I@m sure she frequently did!
F x

foxgloves

Chrystal - Oh dear, what are we going to do with you, m'duck? Mind you, I have to be honest & say that while I am very hot our zero food waste target, I am a procrastinator in other areas of my life & always have been. In fact, I've been thinking quite a bit about this lately, as I want to have a year of getting lots of outstanding stuff done. I've decided to look at it like this - that procrastination is actually a fine long word but really we are talking about choice. So, if I take a task I've intended to do for AGES (I am talking years) such as re-covering my little conservatory armchair, instead of saying I haven't done it because I keep procrastinating, I'm going to re-frame it as 'I haven't done it because I have chosen not to'. That now rankles with me because I really do want it done & even found some lovely fabric locally at a good price which has probably sold out by now. But by putting it off & putting it off some more, I have chosen not to do it. All I have to do to get out of my stuck loop with this chair (& lots of other tasks) is make a different choice.
Hmmmm. I think I will look for that fabric next time I'm in town.
And maybe next time you have some interesting leftovers, you could decide to make a really nice dish from them as a conscious choice. As Dawn says, it's surprising how much of a saving it can contribute to grocery expenditure.
Mr F is roasting pork shoulder tonight & I'm already thinking what I might be able to get out of the leftovers, lol.
F x