come from a family where wasting food is a huge sin. To the point where we all over eat because throwing away half a potato would make my mother cry. This means I’ve grown up to be the type of person who abhors wasting food.
Not only do I hate wasting food, I also hate wasting money so I’ve come up with a few methods to make sure I don’t end up throwing away piles of valuable food every week. Here are a few tips to help you reduce food waste and save money.
1. Shop more often
This is a difficult one for families who need to condense grocery shopping trips to once a week but if you have the time it can be a huge money and food saver to shop every few days and only buy the things you need. We’ve all bought a bag of lettuce on a Monday, promising ourselves we are going to have salads every day only to be invited out for dinner every night, leaving the bag of lettuce to liquify in the fridge over the course of a week. My partner and I shop at least twice a week, sometimes every day and only buy fresh stuff that we’re going to use in the next few days.
2. Meal plan
If you spend a few hours in the kitchen making healthy stews and bakes to be kept in the fridge it’s the perfect way to make sure your fresh produce doesn’t expire before you have a chance to eat it. Cooked vegetables last a lot longer than fresh ones so you can make a vegetable bake, put portions in the freezer and it will keep for up to 3 months.
3. Stock up on good quality storage containers
I have a mixture of Tupperware (actual Tupperware because it’s the best) and Pyrex glass containers. Poor quality containers are no friend of your food so make sure you use air tight, good quality containers to keep your left overs fresher for longer. Most leftovers have a fridge life of a few days so be quick with eating your leftovers too.
4. Keep your fridge and freezer neat and tidy
If your freezer and fridge are full to brimming with barely used bottles of sauce, leftovers containers and god knows what else, it’s basically just a cave where food goes to die. If you can’t find your container of leftovers, you’re obviously not going to be able to eat them. Make sure you clean out your fridge regularly and this will stop a lot of out-of-sight food wastage.
5. Start composting
If you really want to get serious about food wastage, you could start composting your vegetable scraps. An easy way to do this is to use a Bokashi bucket. It creates a nutrient rich liquid you can use to fertilise your plants and they can be used on balconies or in larger gardens.
6. Learn how to store food properly
Most foods keep better if they’re stored in the fridge or freezer but here’s a guide that will help.
7. Be smart about using up food before it goes bad
Some people can be a bit alarmist when it comes to eating food that isn’t 100% fresh but eating an apple with a tiny bruise on it, isn’t going to kill anyone. Old fruit can be cut up to use in smoothies, slightly wilted spinach can be used in stews and black bananas are perfect for baking. Make sure you absolutely can’t use the food at all before you go throwing it away.
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What’s the food wastage situation at your place? Do you eat every morsel? Or do you occasionally have to ditch some past it apples at the end of the week?
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