Love Food, Hate Waste - How I'm Reducing My Food Waste in 2019!
Unfortunately, Jonny is a big waster of food! I say Jonny and not me, because it's nearly always food he was going to eat and then doesn't that gets thrown away. My biggest bug bear is bread. Jonny is the definition of a bread snob - he won't eat anything other than a fresh loaf of bread and refuses to eat bread more than two days old. He has sandwiches for lunch at work and I don't, which means more often than not, we're throwing away half a loaf of bread a couple of times a week. I shudder as I even write that, and hate to admit it but I've got to be honest! Similarly, baguettes. He likes a baguette every Saturday, but rarely eats the whole thing, leaving the small end that, realistically, he's not going to eat, in the cupboard to eventually be thrown away.
I'm no saint, though. I'm bad with fruit and vegetables. I overbuy peppers, mushrooms and grapes and don't get a chance to eat them all before they begin to go soft, squidgy and mouldy.
As well as eating better in the New Year to expand my taste palette and be a little healthier, I also want to work on reducing our food waste massively. After Christmas, we threw away so much left over food and I just felt awful. We're lucky to be able to afford whatever food we like, whenever we like and I feel like we really take this for granted. In 2019, I'm working to change this.
I stumbled across the website Love Food, Hate Waste and my mind was blown. Of course I'd seen their adverts at bus stops before and I was vaguely aware of their presence at the back of my mind but I'd never really looked into them before now. Well, boy have I been missing out!
The site is jam packed with useful information, facts and figures, tips and tricks and, best of all, 'leftover recipes', and I found myself pouring over each page for hours.
Did you know that we are saving almost £3.5 billion a year on food waste, and saving 5 million tonnes CO2? That's the equivalent of taking over 2 million cars off the road!
I began with checking my fridge settings, making sure that my fridge was set at the right temperature to make sure food lasted up to three days longer, and followed their guide to make sure I was storing everything in the fridge exactly where it should go. But before long, I'd made my way over to the 'Recipes' page, to see exactly what Jonny and I could be turning our leftover and 'waste' food into.
There are a tonne of amazing recipes, handily categorised into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced so you can find something you really can cook! There's sauces and starters, slow cooker meals and quick, last minute meals, there's vegan and vegetarian options and even some festive ideas too! I couldn't believe just how much there was and have definitely come away feeling pretty inspired about future meal ideas - even if we're not making them with waste food!
The final feature of the website that I absolutely loved was the portions planner.
The portion planner is a nifty tool that allows you to work out exactly how much of one food item you will need for any number of meals. For example, I asked it how many grapes I'd need to buy for 5 lunches in the week for two adults - and this was the result. It's easy to use, just select the food type and the ingredient from the drop down list, select the number of people eating and the number of meals it's needed for and voila - it works it all out for you!
Food waste is such a big issue in the UK, and with so many people now relying on food banks or even just becoming homeless and having little to no food options at all, it's something we all need to work on. If you're not wasting food, or if you have some food that you think you might not use but is still in date, donate to a food bank rather than sending it to landfill. If you have a food bin to dispose of genuine food waste, make sure you're using it!! The Love Food, Hate Waste website is such a nifty tool and if you're stuck for how to get started in reducing your waste, they have so many useful resources that I'd highly recommend checking out.
I know this sounds like a sponsored post but believe me, it's not - I just stumbled across the website by accident and couldn't believe all this great info was available in one space!! Go and have a look and see what you think!
How do you prevent food waste in your house? If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
Love from,
Florence Grace
Comments
Post a Comment