Day 5 of Zero Waste Week

Yesterday lunchtime I had ambitions to get below the 100 grammes on my food waste tally.

Fail! :( 

I'm blaming the squash again.  I'd forgotten about the butternut squash lasagne.

Thursday's food waste:

124g butternut squash skin
58g tea bags
the stalk of a cucumber too tiny to register on the scales

There were also 46g of butternut squash seeds that I put out for the birds.

Total 228g including the bird food.

On the plus side though, the corned beef and lime pickle sandwiches were a big hit.

We had them mid afternoon when Junior Daughter got home from school along with her best friend.  I offered corned beef sandwiches and announced that I was having lime pickle with mine.  They know I'm on a 'use it up' binge.  I brought the corned beef, lime pickle and also the jar of Branston pickle from the fridge.

"I thought we were having lime pickle," comments Junior Daughter.
"I am, but that doesn't mean you have to."
"Lime pickle sounds good," agreed JD and BF.

I can report that corned beef and lime pickle sandwiches are more than good.  Next time I'm tempted to buy a jar of lime pickle, I don't think it will be any trouble to use up!

My made up 'Use it Up Lasagne' recipe consists of this:
layers of:
lasagne,
green pesto (it was lurking at the back of the fridge unopened and going out of date)
steamed butternut squash
Philadelphia cheese
lasagne
tomato salsa
butternut squash
sage
Philadelphia
lasagne
bechamel sauce (butter, flour, milk, black pepper)


Abandoned by the rest of the family to their various engagements, I decided that I'd keep the lasagne whole for Saturday evening and just have a plate of the rest of the ingredients without the pasta.

Here's my lasagne-less butternut squash, sage and Philadelphia cheese dinner.

I can recommend it!  I hope the lasagne is as good.

As for today's Zero Waste Week recommendations, it was all about juggling differing dietary requirements and I've got a case for that this week, certainly.  Batch cooking was on the menu.  I guess that's what my lasagne was all about.  It will be an in and out meal day tomorrow, so the lasagne is there ready and waiting, and I'm hoping that Senior Daughter will then be able to take back a couple of portions, frozen, when she returns to uni.

And as for new food ventures in my 'use up the jars' effort, caper purée was on my hit list.  On the side of the jar it suggests using it in a quick pasta sauce.  A tin of chopped tomatoes, stir in the caper purée and add some sliced black olives.  I tried it out and it was delicious and Junior Daughter enjoyed it too.

I made another new discovery today.  I made JD two pieces of toast and butter this morning, but she only ate one - which is unusual.  We dashed out of the door leaving the second piece (already buttered) behind.  When I got back I decided to experiment with reviving cold toast.  I got out a pancake pan, popped the toast in and sprinkled it with cinnamon. It was delicious. So my breakfast this morning was yoghurt, 'cinnamon revived toast' and banana.

All in all a pretty successful use it up day, I'd say.

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

Eight months in

Well, I'm now in month eight of my swishing year.

What have I achieved?  What have I spent and how does it feel?  I thought I'd ask myself those questions.

Firstly, what have I achieved so far in my swishing year?  Well, one of the things I pledged to do was to give away to a charity shop two items from my wardrobe for every month.  I started the year picking out two things each month, but by May I decided it was time for a real wardrobe slim down, so I went through the whole lot and gave away well...  I think the list is something like this:
6 scarves, 3 belts, 3 skirts, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 dresses suitable for weddings, 2 sun dresses, 2 jumpers, 2 shirts, 1 pair of trousers, 1 hat, 1 pair of shorts.  And that's just the stuff I can remember.

My wardrobe is now organised and I can see what I've got.  Things aren't getting creased from being overcrowded.  And I've found a few old faves that were lost or forgotten.  RESULT!

Charity shop prices vary enormously, but a conservative estimate for my donations would be around £40.  RESULT!

Secondly, what about the buying?
I think I've bought more clothes than ever before!  But, I've just done a quick tot up of my spending and I've spent around £70.  This has bought me 1 skirt,  1 jacket, 1 dress and 7 new tops.  I feel as though I have a whole new wardrobe!

At my Dustbin Diet workshops I was able to make sure that I wore at least one thing each session, that I had either been given second hand by a friend or that I'd bought from a charity shop.

The shirt is second hand from a friend and the skirt was from Oxfam.

At my first session my swished outfit consisted of this quirky black and white blouse which my best friend gave me several years ago and it has become a firm favourite, teamed with a pale green long line M&S cotton cardigan/jacket bought for £9.99 (not pictured - it was hot under the lights on that stage!) and a pale green, black and cream dog-tooth checked Hobbs skirt, which was a whopping £17.99 both purchased together at Oxfam.

The skirt may well be my most expensive charity shop purchase.  It is beautifully made, I loved the style and colour and knew I'd get plenty of wear from it.  So I felt it really was money well spent.  I've worn it on both my Dustbin Diet pilot workshops,  to a waste reduction workshop / book signing at the lovely Octavia's bookshop in Cirencester, and to a Dustbin Diet workshop in a primary school.  So far I've also worn it several times to work, to meetings, out to lunch.  You may have heard this saying, that the cost of an item of clothing is its price divided by the number of times you wear it.  So, of just the times I can remember wearing it, I make that already less than two pounds a wear.  I have several more 'costly' items in my wardrobe!

But not only that, a quick look at the Oxfam website tells me that it spends '84p out of every £1 saving lives, improving lifestyles and campaigning for change'. So, adding in my other Oxfam purchases this year,which include the Fat Face top (pictured below) which makes up another of my Dustbin Diet swished outfits, a short sleeved lime green Jaeger jumper and a brown tie front lace cardigan, amounting to just under £50, means that I've contributed £42 towards this work.

Fat Face cotton top purchased from Oxfam

I've made a couple of purchase from other charity shops included this fab top (below) bought from my local community shop for just 50p.

I love this Monsoon top bought for 50p from my local community shop 

I also came across  Swishing.co.uk, a great website that allows you to swish online, using virtual money credits. This summer my daughters and I have tried it out.  You upload photos of clothes you no longer want onto the website and the Swishing team will let you know if they'll take it. There are guidelines on the Swishing website that tell you the kind of thing they will take, but it is pretty obvious and pretty much anything of suitable quality. Your items are then 'approved' and they will give you a 'virtual' price.  If the price is right to persuade you to part with your items and enough to cover postage then you post them off.  Once they are received, you get a credit on your account and you can spend the money on something new (well, new to you!). It is a great place to hunt down something for a party or a wedding. How many of us have an outfit that we've already worn in all our social circles and so it's now redundant in the wardrobe, because we don't want to go out wearing the same thing again?  Well, the answer is to Swish it for something else!

I added three new tops to my wardrobe, all of which I love, and all for a fraction of the cost of anything similar in the shops.  I think it is a great site and I plan to have a regular browse.  I've also decided that it's a much quicker way of finding an outfit for special events.

So...what have I achieved, what have I spent and how does it feel?

I've reorganised and reinvigorated my wardrobe.
I've donated around £100 to charity - from giving and buying.
I've gained around £350 worth of new to me clothes for around £70 (plus a bit of virtual swishing money).
I've had fun with my daughters helping them to go through their clothes and helping them to choose some new stuff on Swishing.co.uk - quality time with daughters - always priceless :)
And it feels so good, I'm not planning on giving up my new purchasing habits at the end of the year.  Eight months in and swishing has become a lifestyle choice I love.  Why not give it a try?

Coping with the Dry Spell

How is your garden faring in the hot weather?

I've just got back from holiday.   When I left we'd had a couple of days of warm weather already, but everywhere was looking green and healthy. I came back this weekend to find my grass looking very brown - not something I've seen for a few years I think.

My Dad came to tell me this morning that he's got all his water saving methods going.  He was heading for the garden carrying his washing up bowl to water the pots on his patio.

"And I've got my shower water to empty for later," he said.


The great thing about grass is that it will always come back green again as soon as the rain returns, so there's no need to water your lawn.  Containers will need watering, but that doesn't always mean you need to use water from the tap.  In dry weather, plants in the ground will fare much better, than in containers.  For the last few years since Frank told us his tomato plant tip, we've planted our tomatoes in the ground so their roots can roam to find their own water.  This is cheaper, greener and way less labour intensive than 'grow bags' which dry out so quickly.

From 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free

In May and June this year, I ran the first pilot of my Dustbin Diet workshops in a local secondary school.  These workshops aim  to raise awareness of how much we waste and to encourage students to think about simple ways in which we can all reduce waste. The students then put together their own version of my book, 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free, which the school can then sell to students, families and friends in order to encourage the waste reduction message.

Several of the students suggested ways of putting waste water to good use and here's a selection of their tips from the first school edition of 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free.