Foraging fortnight

Autumn is a great time for foraging.  I’ve been picking apples, blackberries, pears and plums from my garden and hedgerows.  I’m planning to go blackberrying again and I’m hoping to add in some elderberries too.

We are also lucky to have a vegetable patch which is producing carrots, spring onions, beetroot, courgettes, celery, beans, and spinach at the moment. But it isn’t just the outdoor foraging that I want to invite you to think about. Now is a really great time to go foraging in your fridge and freezer. What better time to cut down on spending than after your summer holiday and before you start thinking about Christmas. Read more...

ZWW 2017 Day 5 - It's #FoodWasteFriday

It's #FoodWasteFriday and what better day to publish my book, Leftover Pie: 101 ways to reduce your food waste, hey? This was the challenge that Rachelle Strauss, founder of Zero Waste Week set me a little over a year ago.  Although I thought I'd finished writing the book a while back, there was still a lot of work to pull it together.  Chatting with Rachelle, I was sharing my concerns about the whole food waste issue.

Last summer we decided to rent out my daughter's house, in the lovely city of Bath, while she was 'back home' with us for the summer.  It was a great experience but it really made us realise that other people don't deal with waste in the same way we do. After one young couple had stayed for three nights, I was sorting out the rubbish they had left behind - wondering how the bin was full to bursting! But it wasn't just recycling that I had to pull out from the rubbish.  I was stunned.  In that bin there was more food wasted, then I would have bought for my family of four for a whole week.

That's how I came to be having the conversation with Rachelle:

"I've got to finish Leftover Pie."

"You have!" she replied. 

I was shocked into action you could say.

A few months later Rachelle decided that the 10th annual Zero Waste Week would cover a different topic each day and that Friday would be dedicated to Food Waste.

"Why not publish your book then?" she suggested.

So there you have it.  Leftover Pie is out in paperback today.

We're renting the house out again this year, but we've made a few changes.  The food waste caddy used to live on the kitchen windowsill. Now it lives right next to the general waste bin.  There's a sticker on the general waste bin, that says, "No Food Waste".  Maybe that sticker needs to be bigger!  We still have to pull out food waste on occasions.

We had a recycling bin in the garage, but we decided to put a recycling container right next to the bin too.  This has helped considerably.  I guess it is that problem of "out of sight, out of mind".

So why is food waste such an important issue?

Here's what I think...

It's not just about saving money, it's not just about respecting our food producers, or our friends and family who are preparing and cooking food for us, it is not even just about people elsewhere going hungry, while we let food go to waste.  It is those things, yes.  Of course it is. But it is bigger than than.  It is about climate change.

As Marcus Gover, CEO of WRAP, said at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Food Waste:

"If we can't fix food waste we can't fix climate change." 

So, as you see, it is important and we all have the power to do our bit and put that right.

5 ways to deal with food waste

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10 top tips for reducing food waste

I’m often asked for my top 10 tips on reducing food waste, so here you have them.

1. The big number one tip has to be…  Buy less food! Try to think of each shopping expedition as one where you will buy the minimum amount of food to get by rather than one where you are going to fill your trolley and pack your fridge full to bursting.  It is a small change in mindset that makes a huge difference. 

Read more...

Guides cook up a feast

Yesterday evening 2nd Kidlington Guides were challenged to cook up a feast from the food they could find that needed using up in their fridges.  It was suggested that they bring any leftovers or odd vegetables and that the idea was they shouldn't buy anything specially.  This was about foraging in our fridges or cupboards to make a meal from what we already had, with the idea that we could reduce waste as we did so.

We talked a bit about the food waste issue and the extent of the problem.   It was encouraging that 17 out of 27 households were using their kitchen caddies for their food waste, keeping it separate from general waste.  We discussed some of the reasons behind why others didn't use their kitchen caddies.  Three families didn't have one, so I suggested that they contact the local council to ask for a kitchen caddy as they are free to all households and they can ask for one to be delivered. Another family didn't use a caddy but put any food waste always straight into the outside brown compost bin, so that's perfect.  Maybe the others might have a think about whether they could use their food caddy too.  There are people who don't like the idea of using food waste caddies in their kitchen. Putting their food waste straight into their outdoor compost bin after every meal might be a solution for them.

On to the cooking...

We had a table full of ingredients to work with and the Guides split into four groups each picking some ingredients and talking about what they would make with those ingredients.

We had dried egg noodles in various forms - clearly a popular store cupboard essential.  These made a great base for various dishes.  We had some leftover cooked vegetables which included mashed potato, peas and carrots.  We had an iceberg lettuce, 5 tomatoes, two thirds of a pepper, about three quarters of a cucumber, some fresh broccoli florets and stalk, a potato, one and a half avocados and half a lemon.

We had some tinned carrots,  part of a tin of sweetcorn - correctly stored in an airtight container rather than in the tin and a pack of chopped tomatoes.

We had some cauliflower and broccoli cup-a soup, some pancake mix, some Orio cookies and some white chocolate chips and a box of cheese crackers.

I brought the green leafy ends of some leeks, some green ends of spring onions and a box of assorted vegetable peelings which included onion skin, the core and seeds and stalk of two red peppers, some celeriac, swede and carrot ends and peel.

Here are some of the things that were made:

Dips with crackers and potato wedges
This group made an avocado dip and a yoghurt dip to eat with the crackers and some oven cooked potato wedges. They made sure they scraped out all of the avocado from the skin before putting the skin ready for the compost bin.
The potato wedges were cooked in a little oil with a sprinkling of sea salt.

We missed a trick here as a perfect accompaniment to the dips would have been the stalk of the broccoli. You peel off the tough outer edge of the stalk and then cut the inner bit into strips like you would cut carrot, celery  or cucumber and it is delicious and very good for you.

Avocado salad
The avocado salad was made from mashed up avocado, chopped tomato, lemon juice and chopped up ends of spring onion.  It was very tasty.

Pasta salad
This was made from a "mug shot" instant pasta dish combined with some chopped ends of spring onion.  The spring onion really added to it visually and taste wise as it gave it a lift. A good twist of black pepper was a nice addition to this too.

Pancakes with Orio cookies and white chocolate chips
The pancakes were using up a packet of pancake mix, which was a just add water kind of recipe, but it became so much more with the addition of Orio cookies and white chocolate chips.  Some interesting lessons were learnt here.  The cookies turned the mix a light brown colour.  This meant that it was hard to tell when the pancake was cooked.  The girls doing the cooking also had their doubts about whether it would be nice.  The colour didn't look appealing. We decided we needed to taste it, so I was the guinea pig.  On tasting I could tell the pancake wasn't cooked enough.  So we cooked it some more and then I tasted it again and it was good to go.  The girls weren't totally happy with their creation, so I suggested they cut up small pieces and take it round to people to taste.  The came back saying people loved it.  Taking a small piece and tasting meant people were judging by taste not look and they enjoyed what they tasted so that gave the girls confidence to cook two more pancakes to share round.  "Don't judge a book by its cover" was an important lesson here and we talked about the importance of tasting your cooking as you go.

Noodle soup with sweetcorn
The base for the noodle soup was a packet of super noodles with a stir in sauce. Then the vegetable peel stock and some of the leftover peas and sweetcorn were added. Some carrot was peeled and pre-cooked in the microwave before adding into the soup.  I heard the word delicious get mentioned but didn't get to taste it myself.  It did smell very good.  I added the carrot peel to the vegetable stock.

Mixed Salad
The mixed salad was chopped iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomato and sweetcorn.

I took on the challenge of making sure nothing got wasted from what was left. Here is what I have made so far.

I mixed the rest of the yoghurt - about a desert spoonful - with some porridge oats for breakfast.

I used one of the packets of pasta in sauce and cooked the rest of the broccoli.  This made a tasty lunch.

Last night I kept the remaining stock and added in the mashed potato, the rest of the peas.  There were a few stray noodles in the stock as we used the same colander to strain the noodles and then the stock.  There were a couple of loose florets of broccoli on a chopping board as we cleared away so they went into my soup pot and there was some of the cooked carrot left, so that will be a nice addition to give sweetness to the soup.

I brought all this mix to the boil,  and then simmered it for 15 minutes to let the flavours come together and then whizzed it with a hand blender.  The next important step was to taste it. It needed some seasoning so I added about a teaspoon and a half of salt, tasting after each half teaspoon, and a generous amount of black pepper.  I then added in the egg noodles, cooked carrot and leek ends that one group had prepared.  The soup was lovely and I now have two portions in the freezer and one in the fridge for tomorrow.

This evening I am cooking another batch of soup using the cooking water from the broccoli I cooked for lunch and the salad off-cuts from Guides.   I have also put in the ends of some asparagus that I had in the fridge.  The ends take a long time to cook, so I always trim them otherwise you get either overcooked asparagus tips or chewy bits on the end.  I think the ends work better blended in a soup.  

I have added the remaining lemon juice to a lemon cake and then I put the lemon in the freezer as I will candy the lemon peel when I have a few more used lemons.

I read the ingredients of the remaining pack of pasta and because it contains cream powder I can't eat it due to an allergy. When you find yourself with food that you can't use for whatever reason you can offer it on the food sharing app Olio
.

Reducing your food waste with help from Facebook

I have recently joined a new Facebook group run by Zoe Morrison, author  of Eco Thrifty Living blog, with a little bit of help from me.

The Facebook group is for anyone who is interested in wasting less of their food and making even the food that many people might regularly throw away into something tasty.

Tomorrow, Monday 6th March, Zoe is introducing a challenge:

The #STILLGOOD DECLUTTERING CHALLENGE!

Zoe is challenging the Reduce Your Food Waste Facebook group members (and readers of her blog and mine!) to have a clear out and use up anything that is approaching or beyond its 'Best Before' date.

Starting on Monday 6th March, the areas to be tackled are:

Week 1: drinks - both dried and in liquid form e.g. tea, coffee, alcohol, juice and so on.

Week 2: tins, jars and dried goods e.g. flour, rice, pasta, herbs, spices.

Week 3: Freezer foods and/or the condiments in your fridge

Week 4: The food you keep outside your kitchen - e.g. in your office drawer, in your car, your secret stash of munchies :)

I decided to get a head start on next week's challenge and just have a look at the drinks, starting with the tea and coffee drawer.

I had no idea that I had 5 tubs of cocoa powder.  I do make a lot of cakes as I make cricket teas throughout the summer. So I know that this will get used up. Two of the pots were no doubt brought home from the Junior and Senior Daughters' houses and each had less than half a tub. So I decided to set to work and use some of it. We were going for dinner at a friend's house so I made some truffles to take with us. I had an ageing but in date tin of condensed milk, so I used three table spoons of cocoa powder in the tin of condensed milk, which I heated up until it bubbled, then added about 50g of unsalted butter, which you stir in until it melts. Then when the mixture is cool enough you just roll it into balls with your hands. It is surprisingly mess free.  I then rolled the balls in more cocoa powder and I coated a couple with some candied peel I made last weekend.

They went down well last night and I have more for after roast dinner today.  Gutted, Sis, that you can't join us today. I will try to save you a couple.

These used up the two tubs that were started.

However, I think I need to get a bit more chocolate cookery done as I have some dubious looking packets of drinking chocolate that look past their best and a tub of Nesquik that my nephew brought here a couple of years ago. Now what am I going to make with that? Ideas please.

Here is the link for anyone who would be interested in joining our Facebook group.

Reduce your food waste!386 members

A Food Philosophy

Yesterday I read this interesting article called 7 Small Ways to Begin Your Journey to Sustainable Eating posted by @ReFreshfood on Twitter.

As I read the article, I thought: "This is pretty much my own food philosophy".

1 Meatless Mondays
 We do like to have a roast dinner with all the family on a Sunday, so for us, Mondays often involve eating up the leftover meat from Sunday's joint.  But then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as long as I've used up all the meat I will then try to keep the meals meat free on at least two out of three days.

2. Buy food with less packaging
I always buy my meat from the butcher in my village.  I take my own containers so there's no plastic packaging.  I also know that my meat isn't going to leak juices all over my fridge so that's an added advantage.


I bulk buy food like flour, dried fruit and nuts, couscous and pasta, again taking my own containers.

I buy veg and fruit from a small greengrocer in a nearby town.  When you buy their produce, which is locally sourced, you will get all shapes and sizes, but it is loose, so you can pick out the shapes and sizes that you want.  If I know I'm going to chop up the fruit and veg, then I'll pick out anything that's a bit wonky, because I want to support them and support local farmers in cutting down waste.  Most of the time, I'll be chopping it and cooking it so I really don't often need it to look pristine.

3. Buy sustainable meat
As, I mentioned, the meat I buy is from a local business, and they source locally.  I make sure I use up every scrap of meat that I buy.  If I want some chicken, then usually I will buy a whole chicken rather than buying chicken breast.

4. Forgo Fish
I do eat fish and seafood, but I look for sustainably sourced and don't eat it often.  I do get my fix, though, if I am by the sea, picking local fish and only where I can sea that wherever is serving it they have a sustainable sourcing policy.

5. Eat seasonally
Absolutely!  As far as I'm concerned, you can forget strawberries most of the year.  Seasonal eating is what makes it special.  The one exception might be that I usually manage to freeze a few batches of blackberries from the abundant supply on my hedge at this time of year.

6. Eat locally
I think we've covered that one already!

7. Lose the bottled water
It is probably getting on for three years now since I bought water in a plastic bottle.  I have a couple of different water bottles and I always take one filled with good old Oxfordshire Tap every time I go out.

And then I thought about one more thing that has become really important to me. So here's my step number 8...

8. Forget the packaged snacks
Last year (2015) my family took on the challenge to go for a whole year without buying anything in single use plastic.  Although we didn't succeed 100%, we did pretty well.  One of the things that I had to do to succeed was to ditch the idea of ever buying packaged snacks out on the go.  This is a habit that we've developed over the last few decades, I'm sure.  I look around me and I see people eating snacks, everywhere, whatever time of day or night.

I'm sure I used to do the same too.  But not now.  I do buy nuts and dried fruit in bulk in my own containers and if I know I'll be out for a while and I'll be likely to get hungry then I will take a container with some fruit and nuts out with me.  But recently, I'm dong that less.  I just came to the realisation that if I'm eating properly, 3 meals a day, there's really no need for the snacks.

Snacks are often just empty calories, full of sugar and salt and SO OFTEN they are packed in non recyclable packaging - my pet hate! So I don't bother (unless I've taken my own.)

Zero Waste Week - 2016 - Day Four

Yesterday's waste weighed in at 158 grammes. I had a cooking morning so there's  always a bit of waste as the by-product of that, even though I try to get every last bit of goodness out of everything.

Yesterday's baking

But yesterday as my fridge became clearer I found my first fridge casualty, a small piece of haloumi cheese that wasn't properly wrapped and had gone mouldy.

This amounted to around a third of the day's food waste. And this could have been avoided. I also found a couple of individual milk cartons.  I have no idea how these came to be in my fridge. I drink black coffee and herb tea so no milk required when out and about. I only have tea with milk if it is not from a plastic pot like this as I feel it is unnecessary waste. These pots rattle when I pick them up and I don't think they are meant to be milk powder. I will investigate tomorrow.

Fridge Lurkers

I had a bit of a delve in my freezer. It definitely needs some reorganisation even though Junior Daughter and I had a use it up session this summer. But I am away now for 2 days so that will be for next week.

My banana skin curry and apple sauce cake are for my Love Food Hate Waste event on Saturday when I meet up with the other LFHW champions to talk about what we have learnt over the year from events we've held. So last night's supper was a sausage casserole from the freezer which was taking up too much space in an over sized tub. That made room for the vegetable peel stock and some soup that made to use up the last of my broccoli including some extra stalks, some cauliflower and the rest of my lovely Oxford Blue, rind and all.

I served yesterday's casserole with some horseradish mash, so that was another jar finished. I had almost forgotten the delights of horseradish mash. Yummy!

It was very pleasing to see my dishwasher full of empty jars too.

It is great to see that loads of people are downloading Leftover Pie. I will be back to finish off the complete book on Monday. In the meantime please do let me know what you think. Here is the link again.

Yesterday's Food Waste - 158g

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!

Cooking up the stock

It is amazing how delicious stock made from vegetable peelings can be! It is so easy and costs hardly anything at all to make.  I can't believe we've only just realised.

We've been cooking up our chicken carcasses for many years, usually adding a bit of onion or leek and some herbs to the pot. In an effort to reduce food waste and get more from our food generally we started to add bits of vegetable peel, carrot tops, the trimmings from leeks etc, which featured in my book, 101 Ways to Live Cleaner and Greener for Free. This makes a most delicious stock which we use as a base for making soups and risotto, both of which are great ways of making a cheap meal and using up leftovers as you can put anything in them really. (It's Tip 6 on page 23!)

But then we didn't have chicken for a while.  Gradually the stock in our tiny freezer diminished but the desire / need / longing for lovely warming home-made soup didn't.  That's when Mr Pitt had the idea of trying just the vegetable peel.

So out came an old ice cream tub and all week long we gathered up all the off cuts and peel from every meal we made. In went the carrot ends, the onion peel, potato peel, the floppy green ends off the leeks. A couple of apple cores went in and some orange peel and then into the stock pot to get boiled up just like we'd do with our chicken carcass, but without the chicken.

The vegetable peel stock in progress.

It works!  The ice cream tub is now fully and permanently employed. We've been collecting all our vegetable peelings, keeping them in the ice cream tub in the fridge so we can have a regular boil up even without the meat.

The compost heap doesn't seem to mind.  The peelings get there eventually, but we get more value from them first.

Bon appetit!

Risotto made with vegetable peel stock.

 I think the people at Part-time Carnivore, Come Veg With Me and Love Food Hate Waste,  will like love this, but I wonder what Nigella and Jamie would say?