Make Friends With Your Freezer
I must admit, when we first started Watford’s Green Grandma and made our vowel to work towards zero food waste in our house, GG and I put on a lot of weight. We found ourselves eating things just so they didn’t go to waste. However, eating things just for the sake of it is a waste too - it’s not only cattle that create methane when over eating!
So what’s the answer?
We’ve made friends with our freezer. We no longer just freeze portioned down, batch cooked meals, and frozen items from the shops.
We now freeze an odd sausage or half a chicken breast, or a tiny bit of mince, rather than just cooking more than we need. Then the next time we have sausages, the odd one gets added again or thrown in with the new ones. I love it when we end up with a few different, odd bits of mince - a bit of beef, some lamb or pork, maybe a bit of veggie mince, and mix that up in 1 dish, makes a lovely chilli or Shepard’s pie.
We also do the same with veg. Say a recipe calls for half an onion, We chop up the remaining half. - the outer skins go in the scrap bag we have in the freezer ready to make stock, and the sliced onions go in a tub ready to use in a casserole, stew, curry etc (I would only recommend the frozen onions for slow cooked recipes as they can tend to loose their texture once frozen). This method works great with peppers and chillis too.
Scraps Bag for Stock
We batch cook quite a lot, GG’s chilli con carne is simply the best, so I always ask him to make an extra large pot full. Previously, when portioning down, if there wasn’t enough to make up one last portion, I use to either put extra on our plates, or put a bit more into each tub to freeze. But now I will freeze the odd bit on its own, even if it’s just quarter of a portion. You can then either add more chilli to it next time you cook up a batch, or get creative with it:- a part portion of chilli, mixed with rice and some extra beans then stuffed in to peppers, or mix with a portion of spag Bol, to make a great jacket potato topping, or use as a stuffing for home made roti or flat bread - writing this is making me hungry!
Stuffed Roti
I also do the same with fruit too. I often put half a peeled banana, odd berries, half a tin of drained peaches, in the freezer, they’re great for popping in a cake, defrosting to go on pancakes or ice cream, - the juice, from tinned fruit, works really well in a smooth, curry dishes, sauces, I love using it instead of cold water when making jelly, also works really well in white wine sauce served with chicken.
Smaller portions
Yes I know smaller portions are a no brainer when it comes to loosing weight, but how does it help reduce food waste?
We’ve found that by putting smaller amounts on our plates, we can add more if we’re still hungry after, but if not, the untouched food we didn’t dish up, is ready to go into containers to use later. - it’s more appealing than scraping leftovers off of someone’s plate.
I know for some people, putting leftovers in a tub is easy, but they either forget to use it, or don’t know how to.
Use a search engine
My first tip is to get confident using a search engine. A few weeks back I had half a portion of chicken curry. So I did an internet search for “ideas with leftover curry”. There were so many suggestions. The one I went for was adding a chopped apple and mayo to make a Coronation Chicken style sandwich filler. It was delicious.
This also works really well when you have odd ingredients you have no idea how to use. GG search “recipes using cabbage tomatoes mince” and got a lovely stuffed leaf recipe. He still hasn’t made it for me yet though.
Plan to use your leftovers
The next tip I’d give, for leftover, is to plan a day in your weekly schedule to use them. Bubble and squeak is a quick, simple, go to for most leftovers but there’s so many different ideas out there on the internet, or why not use your imagination and see what you come up with!
I’d love to hear, what you’ve made with your “leftovers