What tips do you have to reduce food waste and save money?
I like to store jars of things such as tomato paste, jams and mustards upside down in the fridge to great a seal, so the air in the top of the jar doesn't spoil the food. I also eat the green leafy tops of radishes and beetroot to get nourishing greens.
What tips do you have to reduce food waste and save money?
Never have food waste. I either use it in something else or cut it up and put in the freezer for later use.
Any peelings I have go into the compost or boiled up in water to make stocks for various things.
The ham bone from Christmas either goes into the freezer to be used later in Pea and Ham Soup or boiled up to make stock (if there's not much meat left on it.) I do the same with prawn shells and fish heads.
Some good ideas Sandi,we do the same with ham bones and myl wife buys fish heads from the local lfishmonger to make stock and some Thai dishes.For an Aussie she cooks pretty good Thai food.
Great ideas, thanks Sandi! :)
Lesh
I used to store jars upside down in the fridge :(
.... some leaked.
I found that too Abby. Some did not though.
Yeah, that has happend to me. Sometimes I cover the jar with glad wrap before tightening on the lid. It helps.
The biggest wastage of food I have ever seen was on cruise ships. People at the buffet piled their dishes so high and the amount left on their plates was disgusting.
The same goes for restaurants where you serve yourself. Why people don't go and get a small amount, eat it, go back and have more if they want, is beyond me. No need to pile your food with so much that it looks like a plate of slop with everything mixed together.
I am afraid I tend to waste a lot of food, ME BAD
the biggest wastage of food I've seen on Tv when the so called refugees traipsed through Europe ... kilometers of food and rubish everywhere.
any peelings go into the compost, if enough of a dish left over, and not enough for us two, i give a meal to lad next door, who doesnt cook much for herself. and tends to live on party pies and food like that, i usually do extra vegies with a roast and give her a meal, any meat goes to the dog, i hate waste, like you radish, i cant see the point in people piling there plate up and leaving it, its as if they think, have paid for it, will get as much as i can,
Yes, I do that sometimes too Cats. Used to have an old man living next door and I always cooked extra for him, especially a roast. He always complained that it was too much but I noticed his plate was clean when I went to get it to wash.
Now there's a young lad (45) young to me and I sometimes either invite him in or give him leftovers from meals which he can heat up the next night.
Yes Radish, I too was annoyed when I saw what was left on plates in the self serve area on the ship. Kids and men were the worst. Mind you some women were nearly as bad.
I do try and avoid waste but sometimes find it difficult.
and you have a pretty large waist my friend
I will look big to you when you are lying on your back with a sore nose looking up at me.
boxing kangaroo eh ?
probably taste good on a barbie
Carry a small knife when shopping and cut off all the bits of vegies you don't eat so it weighs less at the check out. I even remove the stalks off the tomatoes. Do you eat stalks? no so cut em off
When I buy broccoli or cauliflower, as my mob don't like much stalk on I cut it up ready to use in soup. I freeze it up until I have enough. Same if I only use half an onion, I dice it up and freeze ready to go into soup.
With some vegetables you can plant them and they keep growing. Celery is one, Just cut the bottom part off and plant it. When onions start growing I plant them and you get 2 onions later. In fact a have a garden bed full of them ready to pick soon.
Hey Sandi, I usually peel off the tough skin on the broccoli stalk and use the inner, softer flesh. A tip I got from a Jamie Oliver episode years ago!
Lesh I like eating the tough skin and all. When you dice it up and put it in the freezer for putting in soup, it doesn't matter so much because freezing it makes it softer. You can also peel the skin of asparagus bottoms. I boil them up in the water before I make asparagus soup with the spears.
I grow my own asparagus, their flavour is so much different to what you buy. Straight from the garden delicious and they are easy to grow and maintain.
Just like bulbs and they come up every year. Then at the end of their season you just let the little ones grow into fern and when they start dying down cut them off at ground level.
The ferny bit at the end of the season lets the bulbs regenerate to make more.
Cos lettuce stump will regrow a heart if you place it in water and the brocoli/cauliflower stems I munch on raw ... best part of the vegetable :)
Abby, sounds interesting, cos lettuce is a keeper in the fridge. Do you submerge the stump in water or what? Would like to try doing that. Any more info appreciated.
i do break the stems of mushrooms when i buy them, surpriing the diffence in weight, wouldnt be game to carry a knife with me though, thats going to far,
I'm just in the process of making fresh fruit salad to freeze ready for Christmas. Fruit freezes well and I just add bananas when I defrost ready to serve.
Just means that you can get your fruit cheaper now than you can buy at Christmas, also one less job to do later when I'm busy.
Wow, that's smart Sandi. You're full of great ideas :)
Lesh it comes from not only feeding my own family but when the kids were younger, having hordes of kids drop in. Those days shops weren't open over the Christmas period so you had to be well prepared.
It was nothing for one of my kids to ring me after training at hockey and say Mum can I bring a few home for a swim (we were the only ones who had a pool then) and there would be 20 kids turn up.
I always kept bread/rolls in the freezer and would make lasagnas and freeze them. Used to buy a side of lamb (25 cents per kilo then) half a side of beef and have sausages as well to BBQ. Have onions cut up and ready frozen to cook. Used to buy my meat from a local farm set up for recovering alcoholics where they managed sheep and cows and they had a slaughterhouse as well.
I froze fruit for use in desserts, so just had to take them out of the freezer, put in a tin. Make a topping and stick them in the oven for dessert.
If you freeze peaches etc I used to just cut them in half, take out the seeds, pack them in containers and cover them with water and freeze. That way if you needed them for desserts or you could make a jar of jam when needed.
We also used to go blackberrying and bring them home and freeze them. Can't do that these days.
Still freeze or bottle tomatoes left over from our tomato beds or what I can buy cheap. Frozen ones though you can only use in cooking.
From a man's point of view Lesh, the best way to save food wastage in the home is to invest in those trays that turn or pull out easily to give you access to food at the back of the fridge and cupboards. We did that years ago. Funny how you can waste a fortune by having to throw out things at the back of cupboards etc.
Yes it's a pain doing that so when I go shopping I always put the new stuff at the back and bring the older stuff to the front. For my store cupboard I used to have a sheet of paper with everything in there and as I took something out I altered the sheet of paper or if I needed to buy more I wrote it on my shopping list.
I'm afraid I've become lazy so must pull myself into gear.
We've also installed a few pull out shelves. Makes things so much easier. Love the freezers though with the drawers. Daughter pinched my big deep freeze when she moved into her house, didn't mind though because it was getting too hard to reach into the bottom these days. Now have 2 big ones with drawers.
I cut the eyes of my spuds and plant them with the peels and so get more spuds :)