Taking Stock

Caroline Roessler - Editor, Notebook: Magazine

In the spirit of practising what we preach, I’ve decided to embark on this weekly blog to keep a record of my household’s attempt at cutting down on the food we waste. We are totally committed to doing this and this column is a good way to share with you the perks and pitfalls of our journey. Every month in the magazine I’ll be sharing with you some practical solutions and recipes and tips on how to tackle the issue and I’ll be reporting on the results of putting those into practice right here. 
As the first step in organising anything means actually starting from scratch (and yes, there is some initial throwing away of food) we started in earnest this morning by cleaning out the fridge, freezer and pantry.

In the spirit of full disclosure I can tell you that we threw away:

• 6 bags of frozen meat (I think there were some lamb shanks, sausages and steak among it but they had turned so white from ice inside the freezer bags that I can’t be sure)
• ½ a bag of frozen blueberries
• 3 bags of assorted frozen vegetables
• two jars of horseradish
• ½ pack of stale crackers
• ½ jar of sauerkraut
• 1 almost full jar of anchovies
• a jar of kalamata olives
• a jar of chutney
• a container of week-old cooked brown rice
• ground hazelnut meal
• ½ loaf of spicy fruit bread
• 1/3 loaf of soy linseed bread
• 2 bunches of asparagus
• 1 capsicum

All up, it totalled about two bags of groceries. Everything thrown away was either spoiled or well past its use-by date.  What amazed me, as we were sorting through the cupboards, was the number of products that we had two or more of, including mustards, butter, mince, tomato paste and jam. I don’t know why we’ve doubled up on these particular items – it just seems that most times we’re shopping we think we need them so just drop them into the trolley.

Obviously, I’m not thrilled about the amount of food that we’ve had to throw away, but the process means that we now have a better understanding of what we have in our cupboards and fridge, and it’s also highlighted some shortcomings in our storage methods (freezer burn, anyone?).

The next step will be to take inventory and make some lists. Let’s save that for next time.