Tips For Cutting Food Waste

I’VE written before about food waste here. Since then I have gathered a few more tips from family and friends. Readers have also e-mailed me with their own tips (click here if you want to share your ideas) or left comments.

1 Before you go shopping take a good look at your stocks of food and write a list of what you need. Then resist the temptation to buy anything that’s not on your list, unless it’s a really good bargain and will not go off before you’ve had chance to eat it.

2 Once a week, do a stock check and see what’s close to its ‘use by’ date. If you have too much veg, make soup and freeze it. Chop up fruit that’s near the end of its life and marinate in something fruity or boozy for a fruit salad or cook it for the base of a crumble. Old fruits are great for making ice cream or sauces, while black bananas are perfect for smoothies.

3 If you have soft left-over tomatoes, remove stalks and place whole into freezer bags. Add the frozen tomato to dishes where you would normally use tinned tomatoes, like bolognese sauce.

4 Make sure you rotate your tins and packets so that the oldest items are always near the front of the shelf.

5 Don’t stockpile spices and dried herbs. They start to lose their flavour after a while. It’s better to buy little and often.

6 Boil a chicken carcass or left-over meat from a joint in the vegetable cooking water to make stock. You can freeze this if you want.

7 Always use fish within a day of cooking. If you have left-overs you can flake it and add it to scrambled egg or make into a pate by mixing with cream cheese.

8 We never get left-over cake in my house, but some people do! Cake freezes well so don’t let it go stale or mouldy.

9 Never cook more food than you need. Get some kitchen scales so that you don’t end up with lots of left-over pasta, for example.

10 ‘Best before’ dates refer to quality not food safety and can still be used if they look and smell fine. ‘Use by’ dates are more serious and you should not eat products after this date. If you’re feeling brave read this article click here. but take it all with a pinch of salt!

The Use-It-All Cookbook: review

THE trouble with oranges is that there is no way of knowing how sweet or juicy they are until after you have bought them.

So, there I was last week with two lovely looking oranges which, when I peeled them, were fairly dry inside. Normally I might have eaten them anyway, not liking to waste food, or hidden the segments in a fruit salad, hoping a good soaking in fruit juice would plump them up.

Then I remembered I had a book to review, The Use-It-All Cookbook. It had the tagline, “with an A-Z of leftover ingredients and how to use them”. I turned inside for advice on how to use leftover orange and found a recipe for Caramelised Oranges.

It told me the recipe was an excellent way of using up any slightly dried-out oranges. I’m not the best cook in the world but the recipe worked perfectly.

Author Bish Muir lives near Barnstaple in “an increasingly self-sufficient and eco-friendly farmhouse”. Her cookbook includes more than 100 recipes and ideas for using up leftovers. But it is not just a cookbook. There is a wealth of other information, including facts about how wasteful the western world is. There is also a section on planning your shopping and others on “must have” ingredients and kitchen tools and how to store leftovers.

The A to Z of leftover ingredients, mentioned above, is a clever concept. Each item gives suggestions for recipes; something “quick and easy” you can do with the leftover; and general tips.

I looked up bread, having half a loaf that was no longer beautifully soft and fresh. The suggested recipes included fish pie, rissoles, summer pudding and bread and butter pudding. Something “quick and easy” was bread sauce and the tips included making and freezing breadcrumbs and making croutons.

In these credit crunch times, this is an excellent book, packed full of information, hints and recipes. Now, instead of throwing away those wrinkly apples, I’m going to have a go at making an apple and onion confit to accompany roast pork.

• The Use-It-All Cookbook is published by Green Books and is available at £12.95.

How To Use Up Leftovers

I AM proud to say that nearly all the veg that was languishing in the salad drawer of the fridge was this week used up. Not only did I buy more sensibly (see previous blog) but I also made a real effort to use up leftovers.

I’m indebted to Sandra, from Ilfracombe, who left a recipe for Bubble and Squeak (pictured) in the comment section. See bottom of the page for the recipe. I tried this on Monday evening using boiled potatoes, broccoli, carrots, peas and chopped fresh herbs. I even included that wilted half an onion she mentioned and I found a square of hard cheddar cheese which I grated into it. It was delicious.

I’ve started to look at food in a different way. I try not to have leftovers – with a little bit of imagination and ingenuity, they are the basis of another dish. No doubt, I will have some culinary disasters along the way (no change there then, my partner might say!) but by trial and error I’m aiming to slash my food bill.

Here are a few more tips:

Don’t throw away that chicken carcase. Break it up into pieces and boil it in water to make a stock. Strain and use as a base for soup using any leftover veg you have. Here’s a very basic recipe: three-quarters fill a medium saucepan with finely chopped veg. Use anything you have in the house, from potatoes and parsnips to cauliflower and carrots. If you haven’t got enough veg, open a tin of something – tomatoes, red kidney beans or peas, for example. Pour on the stock to cover. Stock made from a cube is fine you haven’t any home-made or other type of stock. Simmer for half an hour. Blitz up the veg to make a nice substantial soup. Add more stock if it’s looking too thick.

My sister told me that lettuce makes a great soup. I was dubious but had a go and it was lovely. If you’re a gardener, it’s an ideal way of using up lettuce that has bolted. Add mint or peas (tinned, fresh or frozen) if you want.


Other tips for leftovers:


(Refrigerate leftovers promptly and use within two or three days or freeze. Never re-freeze uncooked food, although you can freeze it again once it’s been cooked).

Dice leftover meat like roast beef, pork or turkey and use it in a casserole.


Leftover bread can be used to make bread pudding.

Bread can also be used to make croutons. Cut the bread into cubes. Toss with melted butter, seasoned salt and whatever other seasonings you like. Bake in a hot oven till the cubes are golden brown. Use these croutons to top salads or casseroles.

Cheese looking like it has seen better days? Grate it up and use it as a topping for all kinds of dishes, from tuna casserole to vegetable bake. Use it for a lasagne or any other dish that requires cheese sauce. Grate it, add a splash Worcestershire sauce; pile it onto bread (doesn’t matter if it’s getting a bit stale) and grill it for a delicious Welsh Rarebit.

Buy a very cheap pizza and liven it up with extra tomato, grated cheese, leftover ham, sausage or pepperoni. Even better, make your own base.

Leftover onions or peppers can be chopped, sealed in bags and frozen. It's economical and time-saving. Next time a recipe calls for chopped onions, just get them out of the freezer.

Leftover puff pastry? Roll in cheese and make into cheese straws.

Leftover yogurt? Try adding it to Indian dishes. Apricot yogurt goes well in chicken korma, for example. They can also be added to a marinade. Experiment. Try cherry yogurt in a marinade for duck, for example.

Tomatoes going soft? Use them up in a pasta sauce.

If you have any tips or recipes, leave a comment.
Here, as promised is Sandra's recipe.


Sandra’s Bubble and Squeak
A bubble and squeak type dish is one of my favourite ways of using up quite a few of those left over bits and pieces lying in the fridge and my kids love it. Use left over mash potato or mash up some cold boiled spuds. I have even mixed in some mashed up cold roast potatoes but if you do this, blot them first to get rid of as much oil as you can. Finely chop any leftover cooked veg you have – cabbage is traditional but I use anything I have left from Sunday lunch, like carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, broccoli or peas. I quite often have half a wilting onion lying in the bottom of the salad drawer so I finely chop that and cook it. In fact, you can use any odds of ends of raw veg as long as you finely chop or grate it and cook it first. It doesn’t matter if the veg has seen better days, it will all plump up in the cooking. You can also throw in any finely chopped cooked meat or cooked fish you have or you could fry off some bacon to go with it. If you have any dried cheese, grate it up and mix it in. I never worry about the proportions – sometimes it’s very veggie and sometimes very potatoey; sometimes very cheesy and sometimes with no cheese at all!! Form it into separate patties or one big round “cake” and fry in a little oil. With the addition of a poached egg and a nice salad or more veg, it makes a lovely Monday night meal.