Bread Sauce Porridge

An Inspired Purchase at Venice Airport

Carrot & Swede Bread Pudding

Not wasting food starts before you even go to the supermarket. If you find yourself staring at a fridge full of food fast approaching its use-by dates then you are already on the back foot.

As important for me though as not wasting food, is enjoying food. Every meal is precious.

In the battle to stay the right side of healthy, the opportunity cost of tasteless calories is high – every dry sandwich, every tough piece of meat, every soggy side dish laboured through is contributing to the waist line without contributing to the food enjoyment line.

Even if something still tastes as good second time round as first, if it just ends up being your fourth meal of the day this scores low for me in the game of optimal fridge management.

So a little pre-planning goes a long way in preventing food waste in this broader sense. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean going to the supermarket needs military precision, this would somewhat take the fun out of it and moreover be unsustainable for anything but the most predictable lifestyle. What I mean is that by building your repertoire of tricks and techniques, by building an understanding of the building blocks of recipes, you’ll be able to create your own innovative, tasty dishes from whatever you have to hand – the obscure ingredient which you so loved on your holiday to Venice but now seems out of place amongst the Oxo cubes and Worcester sauce, will actually get eaten rather than hang around for as long as deemed acceptable after the use-by date only to still find itself at the bottom of the bin.

Here are some of the things in my toolbox for successful jar emptying, packet finishing and fridge clearing. No random combinations in sight.

• Embrace the Freezer

Mary Berry had some great points when I saw a clip of her from the 1970’s teaching nervous new owners of this wonderful technology to get the best of it – all still relevant today. Jamie Oliver also has a lot to say about it in cutting-food-waste-fabulous-freezer-tips

Don’t be put off by thinking that basing your food life around the freezer condemns you to planning 24 hours in advance – many things can be used from frozen or can defrost pretty quickly.

Two of my favourites:

Bananas (Peel, halve, freeze in a bag ensuring they are separated from each other while freezing, then you can use them one at a time – from frozen in smoothies & porridge, thawed in banana bread (or try Extra-Light Banana Chocolate Cup Cakes) or flapjacks. Freezing somehow works magic on them to make the most delicious sweet syrup so that I tend to only use a half in recipes that might otherwise have had a whole fruit in. 

Eggs: egg whites freeze just fine. Egg yolks/whole eggs apparently need whisking and a pinch of salt (for savoury use) or sugar (for sweet) – label them! I’ve tried it and it works but don’t ask me why. Defrost in less than an hour if in a small tub, placed in cool water.

• Embrace Plastic Tubs: have whole Russian families of the things.

• Cook the Whole Thing: if you are going to the effort of getting a chopping board out & the oven hot to cook something unwieldy like a celeriac or butternut squash but don’t need it all, cook it all in one go anyway and save it or freeze it for another day. You aren’t likely to want to go to that effort twice in the vegetable’s lifetime.

• There are Three Meals in a Day: get creative and have cake for breakfast if that’s what it takes. With yoghurt & chia seeds it could still be healthier than the muesli you were going to eat.

• Buy Potted Herbs: as previously noted, even the least-green fingered cook should find these last longer than cut and therefore give more value for money. Even better, be green fingered and grow sustainable plants. Tell me your secrets.

• Food Saviours: Savoury bread puddings make a great alternative to your usual favourite carbs, soups can consume great swathes of vegetables and be easily frozen, ditto smoothies or breakfast pots for using up surplus fruit (more recipes to come on all of these).

• Cooking as a Science: Use the principles from one recipe to create another. Eggs set things. Chia seeds expand to act like a nutritious gelatin in desserts and breakfast pots but can also replace eggs or fat in cakes. Bread soaks up juices and thickens soups and stews. Lots of herbs are interchangeable, including with random herb mixes you picked up in the airport fine-food section to use up the last of your foreign currency.