Stop Food Waste Blog

I don’t think my mum ever got over her children leaving home. It took an age for her to stop cooking for five instead of two; force of habit, I suppose, as I suspect it would have been hard readjusting her memory of measurement and quantities. Even now, living on her own in a retirement village – quite happily I might add – she still tends to overcook, but that comes in handy for an older lady who doesn’t want to prepare a meal for herself every evening.

So, the move is over, we are happily settled in our new home, the housewarming party has been and gone and we have about 200 pieces of finger food left over from the festivities. Apparently our friends don’t eat nearly as much as we thought.

This is, of course, a major food waste issue and as much as I love mini foods like pepper pies, quiches, chicken drummettes, pizzas, samosas and meatballs, I fear for my waistline – especially with Christmas bearing down on us. What to do?

A lot of your routines go out the window when you’re in the process of moving house. Among the first things to go are all your good intentions. This isn’t helped by the fact that this particular move of ours seems to have gone on for months (a long settlement) so our cupboards have been half empty for ages and the spare room has become an impenetrable maze of boxes. On the upside, the cats seem to think it’s a purpose-built playground, even though they sniff warily each time a new box enters the fray. (Wait till they meet Shirley - the dog we’ve named but don’t actually have yet and who will become incredibly useful in our food waste campaign).

It’s been a bad couple of weeks in our environmentally uber-aware, and trying-very-hard-to-be-frugal household.

Things got off to a bad start with a severe case of freezer burn (more on that later) and didn’t get much better when I mistakenly threw out some perfectly good biscuit dough that I thought was old pizza dough. Just goes to show I need my glasses for more than reading.

Monday: “Should we have the corn for dinner tonight?”
“Nah. Don’t feel like it. Let’s have it tomorrow.”

Tuesday: “Should we have the corn for dinner tonight?”
“Nah. Don’t feel like it. Let’s have it tomorrow.”

And so the conversation goes for the rest of the week, until Sunday night…

Either we’re not buying nearly as much fresh produce, cooking in more reasonable portion sizes or the god of food waste is looking kindly upon us, but there seems to be a distinct difference in the amount of rubbish we’re throwing out. And when I say rubbish, I mean food…

When you have too much food to go around is it weird to offer it to your neighbours? Obviously I’m not suggesting you offer your leftovers to the people next door if they’re complete strangers but most of us would know our neighbours well enough to exchange passing hellos and how are yous. 

Caroline discovers the joys of composting food and shares her experience participating in the Stop Food Waste! campaign.

As part of the Stop Food Waste campaign, Notebook editor, Caroline Roessler keeps a blog of the trial and tribulations of cutting food waste in her own kitchen.