Just Eat It

Last week I was invited to be on a panel of experts at the Oxford Brookes Document Club screening of Jennifer Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin's "Just Eat It".

My fellow panelists were Rina Melendez from SESI Oxford, Jasmine York from Brookes Hub and chairing the panel, Hannah Fenton from Good Food Oxford.

I felt that the Q&A after the screening really deepened the thinking about the messages in the film – for me as a panelist as well as for the audience. It made the experience one of sharing thoughts and opinions and questioning the messages by relating to our own local experience. Having a discussion about the film deepened the understanding of and reaction to the issues in the documentary. Both the post screening talk and the opportunities for further discussion afterwards made for a powerful evening that was thought provoking, and I feel, more likely to encourage behaviour change than if people experienced the film alone.

It was a documentary equivalent of a book club, which I love.  I always find I get more out of a book when I get the chance to discuss it afterwards, particularly in a diverse group of people who have different opinions.  I find things are brought to my attention that I might otherwise have missed and the whole thing seems more memorable and enduring than just having the experience of reading a book / seeing a film or TV programme on my own.

"Just Eat It" charts the experience of the film producer, Jen and director, Grant as they embark on a challenge to live for six months on food that would otherwise be dumped.

The discussion, as well as considering the content of the film, revolved around practical actions that people might actually take themselves. There was a high level of engagement in the room and there were lots of further questions afterwards, which was very inspiring.


If you missed the screening but would like to follow a bit of the conversation around the topic, you can listen to the  Brookes Radio podcast.

You missed our last screening ?Listen to this @BrookesRadio show feat @SESIOxford https://t.co/m9X2zeOdqF #JustEatIt #FoodWaste

— OBUDOC (@OBUDOC1) October 14, 2016

Mum, I need your help

JD has been away for five months teaching skiing in Switzerland.  She has been sharing a chalet with 11 other ski instructors for the season. Last Sunday, a couple of days before she was due to come home, I got a WhatsApp message saying, "Please can I ring you?"

As I message back, "Of course," my heart is racing and my stomach is churning. What is wrong? The three minutes it takes her to ring me back seemed like three hours. Then finally...

"Mum, I need your help!" Her voice is shaky. I am scared...really scared.

"Mum, it's awful, there's so much food left. I can't use it all up. I am trying to pack as much as I can but I can't fit it all in. What can I do?"

My answer (after silencing my massive sigh of relief)...The pub, of course!

JD's favourite pub was Pub Montfort.  It's a popular pub with 'seasonaires' and JD was a regular visitor.  Although there would be lots of seasonaires leaving, I felt sure she would find a few people staying on for the famed mountain biking in the resort.

So JD and one of her fellow instructors packed up the remaining food from the cupboards and fridges into a couple of big bags and set off up the hill to the pub.  She said she was a little tentative, but in fact, when she got there she and her food offerings were very well received.  Everything was welcomed - yes, the pack of pasta with just one portion left,  a 'random mustard and honey sauce', half a bottle of cooking oil, the remains of three boxes of salt, various more interesting and complete items, two part rolls of cling film and she said she could never have imagined the excitement caused by dishwasher tablets.  Apparently no-one ever wants to buy dishwasher tablets so they are a rare luxury in a seasonaire household.

I was very glad that my daughter managed to waste nothing and was interested to hear about the last Verbier feast, which apparently mixed baked beans and lentils - who knew that was a thing?  And, 'not gonna lie' as they say, it was a proud mummy moment when I realised that I have set a good example to my children, and one they are happy to follow.

But... sometimes things back fire, don't they?

Not long after enjoying listening to the tale of the food bags and their trip to the pub as well as JD's interesting innovations in the kitchen, that she has promised to repeat for us sometime, disaster struck.  On unpacking one of her bags, she was puzzled to find some brown powder on her ski jacket (well technically my ski jacket, but we won't go there!). She thought it was some form of make-up spillage, but when I start to poke my nose in, I discover the tub of cocoa, with its lid half off.  It went everywhere.  In fact I can smell cocoa as I write this. We both keep going back to the task of hoovering everything clean and we are still not done. The creatures in my compost heap will probably be on a chocolate high for weeks.

Cocoa filled hoover!

Shame the cocoa missed the trip to the pub!

Zero Waste Week Day Three

So today is all about food waste and how to avoid it , and how to reduce the packaging associated with it. My speciality! But today it is going to be harder. Much harder as I am now in France, separated from my food waste bin and my compost heap. On the plus side, to minimize packaging, we've brought our Onya weigh bags and the supermarket here were fine with them. There are no single use bags in French supermarkets, but we brought a plentiful supply of reusable bags. All our fruit and veg was packaging free. Meat on the other hand was a challenge. In France meat packaging is often polystyrene and no recycling facilities exist here for that. Plan is to have not much of it. There's also no separate food waste so we have already thrown some melon skin and seeds in the general waste. I don't know what happens to it thereafter. To minimize avoidable food waste we brought the contents of our fridge with us in a cool bag and that provided us our first meal. We plan to get inventive with bread. Croutons for goats cheese salad is our first use it up plan. Bon appetit!

The Best Food Waste Bin Ever

Yesterday I spent the day talking rubbish!  I do a lot of that.

I was at the RWM Exhibition - which is all about Resource Efficiency and Waste Management Solutions.  My Dustbin Diet mantra is 're-thinking rubbish as resources' and at RWM more than anywhere, that mantra is very apt.

I was researching a topic very important to me and that's recycling the stuff that many people think can't be recycled and in my explorations around the vast exhibition hall I was able to add to my list of things that get recycled or reused in and around the UK. Look out for the book next year!

One thing that caught my attention towards the end of the day was this fabulous food waste bin.

500L Food Waste Bin by Storm Environmental Ltd at RWM 2013

I'd love a mini one of these as my kitchen food waste caddy, wouldn't you?

Earlier in the day, I'd attended a session about behaviour and habit in relation to waste reduction, and we heard about a project looking into reasons why people still put their food waste into their landfill bin rather than using the food waste caddies their council provide.  One of the reasons given was that the food waste containers are ugly and spoilt the look of their lovely kitchen.

This brought to mind one of the outcomes of my first Dustbin Diet course at The Marlborough School in Woodstock.  The students suggested that instead of ugly recycling containers hidden away in dark corners of the room or school site, recycling collection points should be bright and colourful and a pleasure to use.

Wouldn't you agree?

Day 7 of Zero Waste Week

Day 6 waste:

A big fat zero!

BUT...  I made a flask of tea, so I think the tea bag must be still in the flask.  Whoops.

We did eat, I promise!

At various times, Junior Daughter, Senior Daughter and I all had a portion of the reheated lasagne, which was a big success.  I'm so glad I wrote down what I put into it for this blog, as it is certainly going to be made again. Though, I'm told it could have more tomato and less cheese for JD's taste (despite being the best veggie lasagne she's ever eaten).

The Iceberg lettuce is still keeping it's colour.  There's not much left now but it is 8 days since I first cut into it.  Each time I've used a bit, I've changed the water - I'm treating it better than I treat my cut flowers!  It seems to work.

The best 'use it up' last night was three quarters of a bottle of rosé wine.  I was on my own, so I needed a plan, because I wouldn't have drunk it own my own! But a quick text, found me a willing helper, and I trekked off down the lane with bottle of wine and a torch.  It is Zero Waste Week, after all.

We are out to dinner tonight with family, so we offered to bring pudding.  I've got a jar of mincemeat to use up.  It is still in date, but I always think uncooked mincemeat looks a bit iffy, so I'm going to make the pastry, cook one mincemeat tart and then if it doesn't taste nice, I'll use the pastry for jam tarts.

Lunch was a cooking experiment: omelette and salad.  Senior Daughter is investigating cheap, fast, healthy meals for her forthcoming second year at uni, so she made a cheese and spring onion omelette for the two of us. We finished up the iceberg lettuce with hardly any waste, thanks to our new @myzerowaste way of storing salad in water like cut flowers.  We added cucumber and grated carrot. JD slept.

Food waste from lunch

*** Later ***

As it was the day of reckoning for my collection of jars and the weather was a bit iffy, we had a cook-in this afternoon, to use up what we could before the big chuck out.

JD joined us after her sleep catch-up and made a ham omelette with an interesting addition of paprika.

The tester mince pie was a success, so we made a mince and apple tart to take for tonight's dinner.  We tried the remaining jar of unidentified chutney and concluded it had a bit of excess vinegar which I poured off.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.  That's probably why it didn't get eaten.  SD came up with a plan.  I made more pastry, SD caramelised some onions  and I grated cheese.  JD did maths.  The caramelised onion and cheese tart is now sliced up into a tupperware for lunches and snacks.

Green tomato chutney (we think), cheddar cheese and caramelised onion tart

Tart recipe: short crust pastry (100g butter, 200g flour and around three table spoons of water - if you want to make it yourself), one nearly full jar of unidentified chutney, 125g grated cheese, 3 small onions (and a bit of brown sugar to caramelise them).

Roll out the pastry into a rough rectangle, spread over the chutney, sprinkle on the grated cheese and then sprinkle the caramelised onion over that.  Cook at around 200°C for about 20 minutes.


While I was puzzling over some kind of sweet and sour mustardy chutney looking thing, JD came up with the idea of using it with some chicken and rice.  So we put that to one side for tomorrow night.

Senior Daughter also made some flapjack, using up a packet of dates and some seeds.  When rummaging for the dates and seeds we found a packet of mixed seeds had spilled and there was a spillage of couscous in the drawer too.

We took everything out of the drawer and went through what was there and then tipped out the spillage to the birds.  I didn't think to weigh it, but it was about a handful.

I already knew I needed better storage for dry goods such as pasta, couscous, rice, seeds and dried fruit,  so I've been gradually collecting up glass storage jars.  I keep these on the kitchen window sill where I can see them, and that means I always know what I've got in stock and what I need to replace when I shop, as I get a daily visual reminder.  And I think it looks nice too!

Improving storage has helped me reduce food waste

We made a cherry and coconut loaf cake to use up the last of a packet of coconut which still hadn't made it to a storage jar.

Cherry and coconut loaf cake

The remaining jars amount to a salad dressing, which we've realised my dad might use up, a jar of mint sauce, so we'll put some lamb chops on the menu for when Mr Pitt returns and a jar of red current sauce, which we're going to have with baked camembert to account for the one that's on the use it up shelf.

Oh, and there's the guacamole.  Sorry, but that's going in the (food waste) bin!

Food waste day 7.

52g eggs shells
8g stub of the lettuce
16g onion peel
22g remains of half a lemon
44g tea bags
a bit of stringy skin from the outside of the spring onions (too light for the scales)

also... going to the garden for the wildlife
20g carrot peel and an apple core
a handful of seeds and couscous

and...
240g guacamole

That brings us to a weekly total of an almost full food caddy.  My food waste goes on my compost heap so, the food caddy has been topped up along the way with kitchen roll, the packet from some sugar, bits of dust/cat hair swept up from the floor etc.  These bits make up the 'brown' material needed along with the 'green' material for the compost.

So, it's still food waste, but it isn't really being wasted.  By this time next year it will be well on the way to being usable compost and might be growing the following year's veg.

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!

The Food Waste Scandal

It is good to see that the horrendous amount of food that we waste is a hot topic in the press this week. This is something that we have to act on to keep the conversation going until we actually do something about reducing the appalling waste that is a global concern. It is hitting the headlines because of a new study by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. They say "it is estimated that 30–50% (or 1.2–2 billion tonnes) of all food produced never reaches a human stomach. Furthermore, this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts of land, energy, fertilisers and water have also been lost in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste. This level of wastage is a tragedy that cannot continue if we are to succeed in the challenge of sustainably meeting our future food demands."

When I was researching my book about reducing waste, 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free,  I read Tristram Stuart's Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal.  Reading Stuart's book and writing the Reducing Food Waste section of my book, made me realise how much food we waste in my family, even though we have long tried not to.

 I'd carefully store leftovers in the fridge so as not to waste, only to forget about them.  'Why throw it away now when you can put it in the fridge and throw it away on Thursday?' was a common family joke. But in writing some of the shocking figures about food waste that you can find in my book and will be hearing in the news this week, we became only too aware that we could do a lot better.

So, we started our 'Waste Not' campaign.

Plan you meals
First of all, we went back to planning our meals, like I used to when the children were little. In planning (see Tip 3 from 101 Ways...), I'd always make sure I included something that either cooked from frozen or from store cupboard ingredients as we'd often find we'd all be out on occasions.

Portion Control
Secondly, we made an effort to portion control.  You don't need to cut up and cook a whole head of broccoli and/or cauliflower for a family meal for 6 people.  I know roughly who eats what in our family so I started cutting a set number of florets for each person - and that's often only one of each..  That way we had some left for in the week or we'd use the rest the next week.  We cut down on the amount of meat we bought for a joint.  We'd long had a habit of cooking enough for unexpected guests.  But in fact, you can always do a bit more veg from the store cupboard if you do have extras.  We managed to get the portions under control.  My husband said, 'Oh dear, I didn't cook enough' the first few times it all got eaten in one sitting.  But we just kept reminding ourselves that we were reducing waste.

Do You Need to Peel?
We also made sure we wasted as little of what we were preparing as possible. So, if carrots didn't need peeling, we didn't peel them.  If they did need peeling, we'd put the peelings and the ends in the stock pot to boil up for soups (see Tip 6).  We'd cook up the outer leaves of the cauliflower instead of having cabbage. And we always eat the stalk of the broccoli raw.  Just peel off the outer bit, which tends to be woody, and cut into strips.  Taste it for yourself! It is delicious and nutritious.

Leftovers for Lunch
I started checking the freezer for small portions of frozen leftovers that I could have for lunch while I was at home writing, instead of always making a sandwich.

Bag a Bargain
When we were shopping for something to eat on the day, we started to check the reduced items in supermarkets, .  Not only did we feel we were reducing food waste, we were bagging a bargain at the same time.

Finish Up What's in the Freezer
So for 2013, we are going to keep up the good work. Money is tight this month - it took a five month break from work to sit down and write my book! - so we have decided to use up the stocks in the freezer as well as continuing to reduce waste and squeeze every ounce of goodness out of any food we buy.  That way we will be able to let our finances recover as well as making sure we don't end up with stuff that's been in the freezer for five years that we no longer fancy using.

So, January is going to be the month for 'Wait and See Pie', 'Surprise Stew' and 'I'll Decide What's for Tea When I've Defrosted It'.

So far, we've had turkey curry and turkey, bacon and leek in white wine sauce. And it wasn't even this year's turkey - our portion control is now so good we used up all the turkey within 3 days, except for a bit of stock we froze for soup.

The turkey curry was an adaptation of Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall's chicken curry recipe from  The River Cottage Family Cookbook and the turkey, bacon and leek dish was made using a béchamel sauce.

Tonight's delight will be Jamie Oliver's Prawns with Chilli, Parsley, Ginger and Garlic on Toast (Happy Days with the Naked Chef - remember that one?) as I found two packets of prawns at the back of the freezer from when we'd bought them on BOGOF probably! Bon appetit!

The kitchen compost caddy

Do you hate emptying the kitchen compost caddy?

I don't like the idea of using bags in my compost. It can surely only add to the time it takes for everything to decompose and besides, you have to buy them. But I did recently try out a new trick for my compost caddy. I have found that when I empty my compost bin and rinse it out it helps if I then tear up some egg box cartons to line the bottom. I've found that whatever gloopy mess I put on top comes out more easily when I have a cardboard layer on the bottom, making the emptying job much easier and the caddy needs less rinsing.

New Year’s Resolution

This time last year we decided to get rid of our rubbish bin. It was feeling a little sad and underused already so we gave it flash label "Plastic Recycling" and bought it a friend "Metal Recycling". In addition to this we had a basket for burnable rubbish, a compost bin, various containers to collect bits to put out for the birds, and the bottles collect in a cupboard until someone can be bothered to carry them out to the kerbside collection bin.

Okay, we do get some funny looks when someone asks "where's your bin?" but we are all getting used to saying that we don't have one.

Feeling smug that we had no rubbish, I felt tempted to ask for an extra recycling bin. However, I realised that was probably not the answer. Just as rubbish has a cost, so does recycling, and the thing that is going to drive manufacturers to reduce packaging is consumer demand. So, as a consumer, I decided that I was going to demand less packaging. Most shop assistants no longer give me strange looks when I insist on using my own bag, or plonk my fruit and veg bagless at the till (though I draw the line at sprouts!). I have managed to cut down the amount of packaging I produce for recycling.

However, the sin I plan to attack in 2009 is the food waste.

I have a compost, a wormery and I feed the birds with my food waste, which is better than it going in the bin. I already plan for leftovers to be used as much as I can but I think there is still room for improvement. So among my New Year's Resolutions this year is to focus on food waste.

Want to join me? Have a look at Love Food Hate Waste for some ideas.

Last night’s curry

I used to be one of many who felt the need to plan every meal for my family. I thought that in doing this I would make sure I only bought the food I needed, so saving money and saving waste. But I have come to realise that I can take an extra step.

Even though I planned meals, tried to only buy what I felt we needed in the quantities we needed it, I still found that I would end up wasting a shameful amount of what I bought. It is all very well carefully storing your leftovers in the fridge or freezer, but what is the point if we are just going to throw it away a few days, a few months, a year later?

I now plan into my week at least two 'unplanned' days. These unplanned days are the times when we will eat up leftovers, use up something from the freezer or get creative with anything that needs using up before it goes out of date.

The Lovefoodhatewaste website tells us that if we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off the road. I like the sound of that. I also like the fact that in times like these, when everyone is saying their food bills have rocketed, it is a great way to save money too.

Recession Buster

In an attempt to reduce the number of miles we travel taxiing our children to and from their afterschool activities we decided to eat out in the hour and a half we had between dropping off one child and picking up another. So we picked a nearby hotel / restaurant which we knew did good, reasonably priced food.

When we checked with the landlord if he was serving food the reply was 'sort of'. He went on to explain that he really wasn't busy enough on a Monday and Tuesday evening to employ a chef so there was just him on his own to do everything. So he had set up a new initiative. On Monday and Tuesday nights he was serving what he called a "builders' supper" for the overnight guests. His guests would 'get fed' but they would 'get what they were given' so on the Monday night he had served cold beef, cold pork, bubble and squeak and salad to use up the meat and veg left over from Sunday's carvery. Last night's offering was spaghetti bolognaise served with garlic bread and it was going to be ready in fifteen minutes. Perfect! The upside for his guests was that it was just £5 a head. "And that," he said. "... is my recession buster."

Out came two large bowls – one of spaghetti, one of bolognaise - a smaller bowl with freshly grated parmesan and a bread basket piled high with garlic bread. The plates were in a pile by the side and everyone helped themselves to what they wanted and went back for more when they wanted. Delicious!

With the price of fuel these days and the hike in food prices I thought we probably couldn't have driven home and back and cooked spaghetti bolognaise for much less than £10. With the spotlight we've had earlier in the year on the 4 million tonnes of food wasted in the UK every year initiatives like these should be praised. Next week I will probably be eating pasta salad served out of an old ice-cream tub in the car reading my book, but I think before long I'll be back for a builder's supper.

Read more about food waste.

Go Bananas

Did you know? All bananas sold in Sainsbury's are now Fairtrade.

It is hardly surprising that they are announcing a 5% increase in banana sales (35 million bananas) since the switch to Fairtrade. Read More

A few times recently I've found myself in other supermarkets and of course they sell Fairtrade bananas too, but more often than not they are in a plastic bag.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that bananas are particularly green, although most seem to be these days especially when you're hungry and you want to buy one to eat now, but they are nice – when they're not green – and so I do buy them. I just like the fact that when I'm in Sainsbury's I don't have to think about whether they are Fairtrade or not as I know they only sell Fairtrade bananas now.

The main thing is though, why do they have to be in a plastic bag? We are going to peel them anyway so it isn't a hygiene thing.

Talking of which, how do you dispose of your banana peel?

I use my banana peel to fertilise my roses. A tip my mother-in-law gave me, when I noticed how perfect her roses looked. Just lay the banana peel on top of the soil around the base of your rose. I guess it is the potassium the bananas like. Takes seconds, costs nothing.