Lightening Online

Image by ciao-chow via Flickr This is a follow up post to Stop Food Waste. Make sure you read all the way through as there are some winners mentioned at the bottom of the post.

Your Ideas

Thank you to everyone who submitted their thoughts on this issue. I love reading through them all and we have quite a collection of ideas here.

Cook less, buy less, freeze food in smaller portions, mix appropriate leftovers into pet’s food (saving on pet food), buy less pre-packaged food and cook more from scratch.
Jayne

I give the girls small servings so that if they are not hungry there is little to throw out. They are welcome to seconds but must eat what they have on their plate first.
Marita

We try not to waste food in our house.. it is too expensive to waste. But I admit that sometimes I don’t plan so well, or the kids ask for food and don’t eat it…. At the moment that is what we are working on, trying to explain to the girls about wasting food and finding a balance between allowing them access to food and not having a million half eaten biscuits!
Kate

We have very little food wastage around here. For starters DH eats just about anything, so if the kids can’t finish their meal - he finishes it. I don’t actually consider peelings etc “waste”. The skins from onions and bananas etc are not meant to be eaten! (They do end up as chook food though). I also started serving smaller portions. If we are still hungry after dinner / lunch, we eat fruit or cereal or toast.
Gnometree

My Ideas

1. Compost

A few of you mention you already either compost or have composting worms (or both?). Composting is a great way to recycle food scraps back into earth rather than leaving them to rot en-masse. The resulting compost is fabulous for the garden.

One quick and easy way to compost food if you don’t have your own area for compost is to bury scraps in the garden. Jason Hodges was talking recently about how he does this in his own garden which doesn’t have enough room for a dedicated composting area.

I have to admit that we don’t really have ENOUGH scraps around here. By the time the chooks, cats and dog all get dished out scraps and leftovers, there is very little LEFT to be added to the compost. We do, however, have long term plans for making better use of our chooks as garden fertilisers. In the meantime, they are busy turning our scraps into eggs - so who am I to complain? The cats keep the mice down and the dog helps with the sheep work so they all earn their keep!!!

2. Menu Plan

This was listed highly by many of you as being THE most important way to avoid food waste. I completely agree. Menu Planning deals with food wastage BEFORE you buy the food. What you don’t require, you simply don’t buy. It also helps you to evaluate what you already have on hand and think about ways to use it up BEFORE it is too late.

3. Using Up Leftovers

We actually have very few leftovers in our home. Unless I actually plan it that way. However, here are a few of the ways we do use up leftovers:

• Fried Rice - this is a great way to use up leftover meat and vegies and stretch it into another meal. I usually cook 2-3 cups of brown rice for our family and add whatever meat/vegies I have.
• White Sauce - white sauce is a fabulous way to stretch a few leftovers. Add some cheese on top and you have a very yummy casserole for very little.
• Soup - soup is a fabulous way to use up small portions of meat, rice, vegetables and pasta. I use Passata (tomato puree) as a base for my soup and add whatever is on hand for a cheap and cheerful meal. Soup is also a great way of using up vegetables that are getting close to their “use by ” date.
• Gravy - any gravy or sauce can help stretch and revamp leftover meat and vegetables.
• Quiche - mixing a couple of eggs with a small amount of milk and any chopped up leftovers can easily turn those leftovers into a new meal.

Poll:

If you haven’t yet responded to the poll on food waste, please take a few seconds to do so (yes, if you’re reading in a feed reader or email, you will need to click through to the blog to do so). It would be great to get as many people as possible to respond to the poll and give me a good indication of the cross section of people that read this blog. It is totally anonymous.

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Winners:

The following people have won themselves a copy of Notebook magazine (with a cover in my favourite colour!!!).

Cat

Bettina

Katie

These have been kindly donated as a thank you for helping them promote this very pertinent issue. If you could send me your postal details (use the contact form above or email lightening at lighteningonline dot com) and I’ll arrange to have your magazine sent out to you.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond. I believe we are ALL winners if we take a few steps to reducing food wastage and keeping those dollars in our pocket rather than landfill.