Food wastage is unnecessary. There is utterly no need to add to the already gloomy statistics that every New Zealand household wastes on average $570 of food each year. Food rescue starts at home.
Not only can you make your budget stretch, there are simple ways to make your food go further too:
PLAN ahead
- only buy quantities of ‘fresh’ that you know you can eat or can preserve for future consumption
- make a menu planner to specifically use fresh food before it goes to waste
- regularly acquaint yourself with the back of the fridge; bring ‘best before’ items to the front
- know the difference between Best Before and Use By!
- eat a variety of vegetables and have meal ideas that utilise many at once (eg: homemade pasta sauce, stir-fries, casseroles, soups)
- ask a friend to share their favourite family recipe, buy a cookbook or get inspired online and GROW your repertoire
- store your food well to ensure that (a) cheese doesn’t go hard; wrap cheese cloth and (b) vegetables don’t sweat; take out of plastic bag
GROW everyday fruit and vegetables if you can
- not only will growing your own vegetables save you money but you can harvest food as you need it
- grow salad mix that you can pick and eat the same day; no more wilted, slimy leaves!
- save seeds from your best croppers and plant them again next season
- you can grow in just about ANY space so don’t let small spaces get you despondent (eg: growing sprouts in a jar)
SAVE what you can’t eat
- be a ‘creative left-over chef’ for the next day (eg: breadcrumbs from stale bread, frittata from left-over roast vegetables)
- learn how to preserve, dehydrate and freeze food safely so you can enjoy it another day
- recycle glass jars and bottles to reuse for your own preserves; keep freezer bags and twist ties handy
- use every last piece of your food; from broccoli stalks to fish frames, stock is easy to make or, save and freeze cuttings/peelings to make a big batch later
- compost the scraps that have no further use for (eg: a worm farm is excellent to create your own garden fertiliser)
SHARE your success and excess
- get to know your neighbours, your local old folks home or surprise your workmates with edible goodies
- contact your local Community Fruit Harvester who will happily harvest and take away any excess fruit for free, rather than go to waste
- create your own Community Vege Patch at your garden gate
- seedling or crop swap with other keen gardeners in your area
- whip up some baking, share with the kind souls at Good Bitches Baking and make someone’s day
So, before you throw another shriveled carrot away, or avoid digging around in your vegetable bin in case something moves, be a food rescuer in your own home.
This is certainly something I feel strongly about as you will see by the many posts in my blog! If you have come up with your own food saving ideas I’d love you to share them with me.
