Getting the Most Out of Your Weekly Shop
The way I see things, there are two really good reasons for not wasting food:
- Uneaten food has been grown, transported, stored, displayed and sold for the purchaser, many things have really high carbon footprints. If you’re going to buy imported french beans from Kenya, the least you can do is *eat* the darned things!
- It wastes your money.
My feelings about which of these things are the most important vary hugely with how fat my bank balance is. At the moment things are very lean, so I’m firmly on the side of number 2 up there. Why should I spend my money to fill up landfill? I could be spending it on something I’d like instead – a bag full of slimy salad really isn’t a whole bunch of fun for £1.26 (unless you happen to be one of my children’s fledgling tadpoles at the moment – I’m having to let lettuce go slimy *on purpose* for them. Augh!). I could buy a bottle of cider instead. Or some new felt-tip pens for my daughter. Or three newspapers. Almost *anything* is more interesting to buy than a bag of rotten food.
I think that what has lead to this is a lack of joined up thinking. If you’ve got something left in your fridge that needs eating up, think about what kind of meal you could build around that leftover. It requires a little more thought than, “I fancy pizza. I shall buy pizza.” (Although the good Lord knows that I crave pizza on a fairly regular basis in THIS house – in fact, we used to refer to it as ‘the blessed food that comes in boxes’…)
I had a dear friend come to visit at the weekend, one who is cut from the same “waste not, want not” cloth as me. I showed her my allotment. She spotted chard. She picked and cooked the chard, cutting out the stem part. We had the chard with the chicken I’d roasted. Yum! We then sweated the chopped chard stalks and boiled the chicken carcass the next day. I added some potatoes and a single leek that had been sitting in my fridge looking unloved for a while. We had chicken and vegetable soup. One chicken and an armful of stuff out of my allotment formed the basis for 2 full meals for seven people.
It’s all about altering how you think.
But, whatever you do, don’t think like this woman (I have an overpowering urge to shut her head in the fridge door and slam it repeatedly…) :
What a waste… my family is throwing away £1,800 worth of food a year | the Daily Mail
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Comment by The Magician
The biggest problem with the original Daily Mail article *for me* is that it is far too reminiscent of how I used to shop back when I was eating food (am on packeted diet at moment, so no grocery shopping for eight weeks!) … I’d go to the supermarket hungry, pick up *bargains* in the “about to go out of date” area (usually too much stuff), load up with bread and vegetables (as well as canned stuff) and some minced beef or similar …
… and I’d not pack a lunch for work, and I’d come home so late in the evening that picking up a takeaway on the walk back from the station seemed like a good idea … and I’d be out two or three nights a week, and away on many weekends, so food would go well past best before date (though if you keep eggs refrigerated you would be surprised how much past due date you can eat them and they are still edible, ditto yoghurt, butter etc.) and onions would not only be kept until they sprouted, but would have the sprouts cut off and still used in bolognese etc. … so I combined the wasteful culture of buying more than I could eat (given my actual meal habits rather than what I planned to do) and throwing a lot away, with using vegetables right up until just before they became totally inedible.
Last Monday I finally christened my compost bin! It’s only got lawn clippings in at the moment, but as I’m emptying out the fridge, I’ll compost as much as I can
Comment by Janet M
I say to thee, apple crisp.
Comment by Chris C
See also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/magazine/7389843.stm about joghurt. Especially the ‘live’ varieties and those with “real fruit” in the joghurt have a very short shelf life, so people who buy 6-packs often end up throwing half away (the Muller corners are better, because the fruit is kept separate until the person is ready to eat it).
The supermarkets do come in for a lot of the blame. This evening I saw an advert for joghurt which said “Buy one get one free” — but the ‘one’ was a pack of 6! All too often people see that “it’s half price” and thus buy twice as much, when it doesn’t keep. (And those of us who want only a few slices of bread for a weekend are totally out of luck, we have to buy 20 and throw the rest away — or do without, like I do.)
Comment by Bendz
Hi,
Nice post.
You’re correct. Wasting food is useless not only for us but for others too.
http://insurance2us.blogspot.com/2008/06/short-term-health-insurance-health.html
Comment by Talis
You want to shut the fridge door on – oh! I see. On the woman who wastes, not the chard-spotter. Good…
I’m really getting into the challenge of feeding the household on a fixed budget. I swear we’re eating better as I think more about it, and there is almost nothing wasted. I should keep a note of my best leftover rescues, and I’m even trying new recipes! Wholefoods are your friends. I’m also trying to work my way through all those unlikely ingredients that lurk in the cupboards unloved and will not be replaced, but ought to be eaten somehow. The lavender jelly is proving tricky, though.
Also, I have a green cone. When I have installed it properly, then it will get fish skin, meat scraps, dairy and cooked waste (not that there’s much of that).
Um – you do know that chicken poo is fantastic on the garden, right?