Waste Not Want Not - My 5 Tips to Help Reduce Food Wastage

For 6 years now, we have been making a concerted effort to reduce our level of food wastage, and making the money we spend on food stretch further. An article from the Guardian written in 2015 highlighted a very real food waste problem in the UK and the impact this has on us as consumers.

"In the UK, 15 million tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year, and consumers throw away 4.4 million tonnes of edible food each year, this equates to £700 of perfectly good food per year or £60 per month".

When the average household spends £50-100 per week on food for the family, you can see that wasting a weeks worth of food shopping is not something any of us can afford to do.

In order to reduce our food wastage dramatically there are a few tweaks we can make to the way we shop, cook and dispose of our food, over the past 6 years, I feel we have perfected these changes and therefore have reduced our spend on food considerably.

1) Plan Your Meals

This is such a given and has been talked about in the press, in Facebook groups etc, but how many of us actually sit down and plan a whole week of meals?

Planning meals ensures we only purchase food that we actually need for the week and keeping leftovers and wastage to a minimum. Also meal planning can expose how repetitious we are with our eating habits, maybe eating the same meals week in and week out, and therefore persuade us to learn to cook something new.

2) Get Creative!

I love trying new dishes and combining different flavours together. Pinterest has long been my go to site for new recipes and meal ideas and is without a doubt the best place for ideas on reducing food waste. I use Pinterest when meal planning as I can access ingredient lists and just transfer them over to my shopping list. I usually aim to try at least 3 new recipes a month.



3) Plan for leftovers

I love leftovers! I get a real sense of satisfaction when I can make a roast chicken last for 4 meals and when I cook something really tasty with the leftovers of the previous day's dinner. Personal favourites include Chicken and Pearl Barley soup; Cottage Pie "cakes" made by mashing up leftover cottage pie, coating in egg and breadcrumbs and either baking in the oven or frying in a little oil to make them extra crispy; and Jumble risotto (I haven't found an ingredient that doesn't go in risotto!).



4) Save your Scraps!

Only a few months ago I saw a video on Facebook about saving veggie scraps to make stock for soups and stews. Any vegetable scraps you have just pop them in a freezer bag and place in the freezer. Keep topping up the bag and when full chuck the lot in a large saucepan or stock pot, cover with water and simmer for 45 minutes. Drain the scraps and pour the stock into ice cube trays and freeze. You can then pop the stock cubes into a freezer bags and use at your leisure!



I also made Ham stock cubes using the bones from 2 ham hocks I purchased last week - perfect for ham and pea soup, casseroles and stews; and when my husband brought home a bag full of garlic that was going to be thrown away at his restaurant, I chopped up the lot in my food processor, divided the mixture into 2 ice cube trays and poured olive oil over the top and froze them. I can just use a cube every time I cook and no need to peel and chop any garlic for months!



5) Invest in a dehydrator

I bought my dehydrator from Lakeland 5 years ago and I absolutely love it. Overripe fruit can be turned into a healthy snack for my daughter, leftover chopped onions and mushrooms I dehydrate and pop in a sealed jar to use in soups for the autumn and winter, and cherry tomatoes that are a little too soft I turn into "sun dried tomatoes", which are placed into jars and covered in Olive oil. Once the tomatoes are used up the remaining oil can be used in a variety of dishes and dressings. I want to try herbs next as I always seem to have packets of herbs that go bad really quickly and don't want to keep throwing them away!



These five tips I will go into in more detail over the next few weeks and will include my favourite recipes for you all to follow and enjoy yourselves! Cooking for my family is my main passion and I'm always looking for new dishes to feed to my daughter and soon my son.

If you have any tips or recipes that you would like to share with me please do leave a comment below, sharing is caring!

Leanne x





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