Day 6 of Zero Waste Week

Yesterday's waste audit:
10g olive stones
12g tea bags
126g (two) banana skins

I don't think we'll be seeing any recipe suggestions for those.

But, of course, it's not this kind of food waste that we need to reduce!  It's the tube of guacamole, that's been in the fridge a while, that I can't eat, because it contains cream which I have an allergy to.  And probably because I can't eat it, no one else fancies it, and I couldn't hide it in soups or sauces that we were eating as a family - or I wouldn't have been able to eat those either.

What we should have done is give it away unopened to a food bank, the moment we realised the mistake.  But, when we bought it, I didn't even know we had a food bank local to us.  I've since found it that it had just opened up.

It's estimated that in the UK the average family wastes around a quarter of the food they buy, unnecessarily.  And that costs us collectively £12 billion pounds a year.

I've been having a think about the reasons behind avoidable food waste and this is what I've come up with:

1. Forgetting what we've bought.
2. Not thinking about portion control.
3. Unexpected / spur of the moment outings
4. Lack of communication between family members about plans.
5. Not reading the ingredients before purchasing something.
6. Allowing open stuff to creep to the back of the fridge / cupboards, and then not checking thoroughly before opening a new packet / jar.

This is what I'm planning to do about it...

1.a) More planning e.g looking what we've got before doing the shopping.
   b) Shopping list on fridge for when we use the last of something - if it isn't on the list don't buy it!
   c) Keeping open stuff in a prominent 'use it up' location - front of top shelf of fridge or bottom shelf of eye level cupboards
   d) Once a month rummage to bring stuff going out of date to the 'use it up' shelf.
2.  Being more aware of portion sizes, and working out which cooking dishes are best sized for various numbers of people.
3.  Planning at least two store cupboard meals per week to allow for last minute invitations/outings.
4.  Family calendar on wall in kitchen or on the fridge.
5. Taking any purchasing mistakes immediately to the local food bank or giving away to friends / family.
6.  The once a month rummage/ 'use it up' shelf will take care of this one!


By the way, the lasagne was reported to be the best veggie lasagne Junior Daughter had ever eaten, and the other meal we had today was a corned beef and lime pickle bap with a bit of shredded lettuce!  Some things are just too good not to have again.

Butternut Squash, Philadelphia and Sage Lasagne

* Source: WRAP, Nov 2011, http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/new-estimates-household-food-and-drink-waste-uk

Day Four of Zero Waste Week

Yesterday's waste audit looks like this:

30g of chocolate butter icing (lurking in the fridge for more than a year we reckoned)
3 chocolate buttons and 2 squares of chocolate hidden in the depths of the fridge for who know's how long!
Peel and ends of one carrot (I sometimes keep these for stock making or feed them to the rabbits)
6 tea bags
1 small pat of butter that's been inhabiting my cheese drawer unnoticed for way too long

Total weight: 138 grammes

Today I'm going for under a hundred grammes.  Doable, d'you think?

The Twittersphere has planned my lunch for me today.  And it's all about using up those lurkers still.

I have some corned beef and a cucumber in my fridge - again purchased for the cancelled cricket tea last Sunday, but I try to only buy stuff I'd use up anyway, because, let's face it, being a game that gets a little dangerous in the wet, cricket matches do get cancelled.

I'm planning corned beef and lime pickle sandwiches to finish my jar of lime pickle that's been hanging around a while. I've made a cucumber raita style thing which I'll make using the 4 small tubs of garlic and herb dip that has made its way into my fridge from various Domino Pizza-fests that my daughters have hosted.  Recipe as follows:

4 tubs of Domino's garlic and herb dip
Half a cucumber sliced and quartered.
Generous amount of freshly ground blank pepper.

The dip was delicious but I ate it all myself, as I needed a snack due to Junior Daughter finishing school later than expected.  That wasn't the plan, but at least I've discovered a new recipe for using up those tubs of dip!

Tonight will see another jar being used up as I'm adding an ingredient to my butternut squash and Philadelphia lasagne - the jar of sage leaves (picked from the garden prior to the sage bush having a much needed trim).

Getting there!  Here's what I've used up this week...

Bon appétit!

Day Three of Zero Waste Week

Sum total of waste on day three:

458g of manky cheese from the fridge clear out
94g of tea bags.

Once a cheese.

Yesterday's meal of Onion (and cheese soup) with pesto croutons went down well.  Not a scrap left (probably for fear of having it served up for breakfast).  But I did have to confess to the addition of the bits of ageing cheese, mainly because I didn't cut it up small enough!

So, lesson learnt.  Add the ageing cheese cut up into small bits at the earlier stage before you whizz it.  Then maybe they'll never know.

The family were dubious about the cheese, but they all went back for second helpings of soup.  I got a bit of unmelted cheese rind donated to my bowl though.  The pesto croutons will have to be repeated.  They were excellent.

Onto day three...

My bananas have long been in solitary confinement away from the rest of the fruit.  And I can't remember the last time I threw away a black banana.  Mine go into Banana Bread - I usually use the recipe from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' but I'm never particularly careful about the actual ingredients (the fruit and nuts part).  I just throw in what needs using up usually and it is always delicious.

So onto the rest of the day three challenge...

1. Food Hygiene

I cleaned out the bits of the fridge that I didn't do yesterday as I extracted the lurkers, and I continued the use it up, by making pasta and turning a jar of tomato salsa into the sauce.  I added some blue cheese into mine too.  I think blue cheese in pasta sauce is excellent but Senior Daughter pointed out that really you'd have to like blue cheese!


This evening we are going out for dinner, but I have plans bubbling away to use up another jar of salsa and the tomato puree tomorrow in a butternut squash and Philadelphia cheese lasagne.

What to do with the rest... any ideas?

The remaining lurkers have until the end of the week!

2. The White Board

I have a black board I used to use to plan meals on, but I stopped using it when Junior Daughter and/or Friends decided to plan the week's meals for me.

It read something like this

Monday - nothing

Tuesday - leftovers

Wednesday - nothing

Thursday - crisp sandwiches

Friday - out

Saturday - nothing

Sunday - roast

There it remained as the years passed by until one day it was mysteriously wiped clean.

Maybe it's time to start using it again, but it's main purpose would have to be to write down who's in and who's out each evening as that's what causes us the biggest headache for meal planning.

However, what today's email really inspired me to do was to use the magnetic 'Shopping List' that's stuck on the front of the fridge to write down each time I use up the last of a jar of sauce.  If it's not on the list it doesn't get bought.  That way I might not end up with two jars of open salsa, two jars of mustard, two jars of mint sauce etc.

Will it work, I wonder?

3. Turn it on its head.

Well, I have now made sure most of my jars are stowed in the place designed for them in the door.  That frees up the top shelf, which has become my 'Use it Up' shelf.  The next shelf down is for things that need to be used up this month, and then further down are the long life things such as chorizo and the jars that are too big for the door, e.g pickle and mayo.

The veg, fruit and salad are still at the bottom, but only while they have lots of life in them.  I'll move them to the top shelf as they need using up.

I feel cleansed and organised, and I haven't bought a single food item this week!

Bon appétit, my fellow zero heroes! 

Day Two of Zero Waste Week

Yesterday's food waste amounted to this:

2 banana skins
4 tea bags
The ends of some green beans
Skin and ends of 4 onions
Skin of half a squash.

It weighed 524 grammes - I blame the squash!

Day One - Food Waste 524 grammes

Today, we're challenged to 'Use Our Loaf' and also to check out what's lurking behind the yoghurt pot!

So, for me, Day Two started with 2 pieces of toast & butter for Junior Daughter before she heads off to her first day in Sixth Form.  I decided to have toast too, to make a bit of progress on our excess bread (from Sunday's cancelled cricket tea).  With it, I finished up my mother-in-law's grape jelly (which I fished out from the back of the fridge) and I'm now chomping my way through the remaining blueberries from Friday's party.

I checked on my half Iceberg Lettuce which is now resting in a tub of water - cut side down -  and it hasn't gone brown yet.  If you haven't signed up for the daily emails then you can check out Day One here: http://www.zerowasteweek.co.uk/zero-waste-week-2013-day-one-salad/.

Yesterday I made an onion soup, and we usually have this French style with croutons and grated cheese.  So one way to use up some of the bread crusts would be to turn them into croutons for tonight's dinner.  I was also fairly sure that the cheese drawer would be where most of my use it up stuff would be found.

The rest of my spare bread was already safely stowed in the freezer.  I find this is a great way to store extra bread as it only takes a few minutes to defrost just the amount that you need.

Of the ingredients that needed using up yesterday, the only things that didn't go into yesterday's dinner or tonight's soup was some leftover dip from Friday's party and two beef burgers from Sunday night.  I had burger shaped rolls stored in the freezer (from the cancelled cricket tea on Sunday) so I took out two of those to defrost and have with our burgers.

The lettuce was still in good order so there was no waste.  I used the two outer leaves to add to the burgers and I used up the tomato relish on mine and Senior Daughter had some barbecue sauce on hers.  It made a great sandwich.  We had some sliced cucumber with it and I used my cucumber to dip into the leftover guacamole.

Onto the zone behind the yoghurt pot.  Scary!  I decided I'd have to pull everything out of the fridge and see what was lurking at the back.  Most of my lurkers are jars of conserve and pickle or various long life sauces, but I know my worst offence is the cheese drawer.

I'm really the only person in my family who likes cheese other than cheddar or parmesan. For a long time,  I've only bought other cheese when we've had dinner parties.  But still it gets left over.  So now my new rule with cheese is to buy a selection of different cheddars for a dinner party with maybe just a goat's cheese or blue cheese, which is easy to use up in pasta.  I have cut my waste by doing that, but there's bits of cheese in my fridge that are verging on veteran.

Brace yourself, here's the photographic evidence of the fridge clear out today!

I had a collection of cheeses that ranged (from right to left in the picture above) from the pefectly fine, through edible in sauces/soup to definitely straight in the food waste caddy.

The fresh and healthy cheese went back into the nice clean cheese drawer along with the cheddar and butter.  Then I started work on the rest.  I cut up the bits of camembert - there wasn't much left and put it into my onion soup.  I grated up some of the smoked cheddar and put the rind into the soup.  I also snuck in the dodgy cheese slice that was left behind by friends rather a long time ago, but as it's so processed anyway, I figured it'd probably outlive most of my family before going off, so in it went!

But, sad to say, I had to add 408 grammes of manky cheese to my food waste caddy.  Just think how much that would have cost me!  Still, it will serve as a reminder to never again buy a cheese I'm not likely to use up, if my dinner guests don't eat it all.  Who am I trying to impress anyway?  No need - here's to my cheddary future!

As for the rest of the lurkers - just look at that collection of jars!  I've got to get using up some of that.

I went through the jars and put back in the fridge the recent and frequently used stuff like, mayo, pickles, mustard, ketchup, horseradish etc.  But that still left me with a dubious collection.

What did I manage to use up?  Not a lot as yet.  Well, I had about an inch of green pesto left in a jar so I combined that with the remaining oil from my sun dried tomatoes and decided the croutons would be pesto croutons.  Lush!

Day Two dinner - onion (and cheese) soup with pesto croutons.

Other than than I put everything to one side to deal with another day.  But, urged on by my Zero Waste Week email, I made a tough decision that if it was not gone by the end of the week, it was out - forget the aspiration and admit it's never going to happen!


Now, I just need to get creative and find something to create with all those saucy ingredients... roll on Day Three!

Zero Waste Week

Did you know that this week is national Zero Waste Week.  The zero waste week campaign is now in its sixth year and each year tackles a different theme .  This year's campaign tackles the problem of food waste and it starts today.

You can sign up to get a daily email about how to reduce your food waste.  There are some good tips in there (I know because I edited the emails!).  You sign up on this website: http://www.zerowasteweek.co.uk.  Every day, you'll get an email with some tips on how to reduce food waste and there's a challenge you can take part in too.

I've signed up even though I already know what's in the emails.  As an editor you have to keep your backside firmly glued to the chair and concentrate on how the words work together, and whether they get the message across as efficiently as they can. Every time I sat down to edit one of the daily emails I was tempted to go running to my fridge to see what I had that needed using up.  That's why I've signed up.

Given that food prices have rocketed in recent years, it seems a great thing to focus on when you want to reduce your waste.  Because let's face it, if you are throwing away food that could have been eaten, that's pretty much like throwing away money.  And, that's pretty much always in short supply!

The savings from looking at how you deal with food waste are two-fold.

Most people end up throwing away a quarter of the food they buy. So, firstly, there's the simple fact that if you make the most of the food you buy and don't throw it away, you can cut your food budget by a quarter.  If you spend £60 a week on food then you could be saving £15 of that every week by making sure you use all the food you buy.

Secondly, the more food you waste, the more it costs your local council to deal with it.  And that cost is part of what YOU have to pay for in your council tax!

Many local councils now provide households with a kitchen caddy and a food waste bin. If you have one and don't use it read on...

When I met with the head of waste management at my local council he explained the huge financial advantage of householders using their food caddies rather than their landfill bins.  For every tonne of food waste diverted from landfill to be taken to our local anaerobic digestion plant gives a saving of around £50.  This is because sending waste to landfill incurs a tax, called Landfill Tax.  This is currently set at £72 a tonne and is set to rise to £80 a tonne in April 2104.  In addition to the landfill tax, the council has to pay a gate fee of around £21.  So, the average cost of sending a tonne of waste to landfill in the UK is currently £93*.  The cost of sending food waste to anaerobic digestion is on average £41.  Did you know that on average one household generates around a third of a tonne of food waste every year.  So that's only three households that share that cost and YES, of course, it goes straight onto your council tax bill!

It would be nice, wouldn't it, if those who still send food waste to landfill had to pay more in council tax than those of us who avoid food waste and compost the unavoidable bits, or dispose of them in their food waste bin.  That doesn't happen anywhere in the UK yet, as far as I'm aware, but maybe it will come!

 We can all do our bit to reduce our council tax bill:

• by reducing the amount of food we waste,
• by disposing of the unavoidable food waste in a compost bin or the local council's food waste bin,
• by encouraging friends, family and neighbours to do the same!

So, if you haven't already signed up to Zero Waste Week, why not give it a go.  And don't forget to talk about what you learn, the things you try out and the money you save!

I plan to photograph and weigh my food waste caddy every day.  I hope it won't look too grim so I can post it on here!

Monday lunchtime, the food waste caddy contains
 two banana skins and three tea bags.

My fridge is rammed full of food, so it will be a challenge this week.  But we'll see.  Bring on the Zero Waste Week challenge!

*Source: http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/wrap-annual-gate-fees-report