What do you buy that you never manage to finish?!

[andannabegins]

I couldn't think of a less convoluted title but this morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had almost finished a bottle of lemon juice yes I had pancakes for breakfast, it's the summer holidays) before it goes out of date, that never happens! I always have to throw away lemon juice, olbas oil, vanilla essence. What do you never get to finish before use by dates?!

I hate waste, so I throw very little away. I completely ignore best before dates, and I treat use by dates as guidance rather than absolute deadlines. I use my common sense to decide whether out-of-date food is still edible. After several decades of taking this approach, I appear to still be alive.

The thing that gets wasted most often in our house is bagged salad.

Pesto. I'm definitely going to start freezing it! Shop bought pickled onions. Apples. Sweets from party bags (maoam / drumstick lollies / fruit salad and blackjack sweets). The sweets hang around in the treat box until they ooze stickiness and I have to chuck them.

Someone once said on a similar thread that she tipped out all the bendy veg including bagged salad into a home made soup that she brewed up every Sunday evening. Sometimes used the scraps of meat of the Sunday chicken or roast or an oxo cube.
Occasionally I’ve done it, and it’s amazing what you can churn out. It’s different every week. Even dollops of pesto or a few spoonfuls of cream help.
It does for lunches for a few days.

I do try and whizz up stale bread and freeze as future breadcrumbs but only if I catch the bread early enough... which is rare.

Knitting projects, although on the plus side they don't have a best before date.

Must finally come to terms with the fact I am a crap knitter.

I am going to start freezing pesto, curry paste and lemon juice etc. Fab idea, thanks

Has no one seen these? Ok not the best pesto (I've never found a jar of pesto that compares to homemade) but at least there's no waste apart from plastic waste

Bloody Philadelphia! I swear that stuff is bewitched, make a sandwich or whatever, put back in fridge and a few hours later it's all colours of the rainbow. I had some go an interesting fluorescent yellow and green last week.

If you have veg that you know you are not going to use then chuck it in the freezer and when you have enough make soup. Always delicious, never the same twice and saves a lot of waste.

Sauces - apple, cranberry, mint. When I remember I spoon into ice cube trays and freeze, but i rarely remember these days. Apple sauce in particular has a ridiculously short use by time, something like 2 weeks, but you can only buy one size. They should do a multi pack with say 3 little jars in rather than 1 big one

Bags of salad. Usually about a third goes to waste.

Bread - only DH and toddler DS eat it and even buying the small loaves it goes mouldy before we're through. I used to whizz it up for breadcrumbs but in the end I had bags and bags of them in my freezer which never got used

Fresh herbs, except I now do the Delia trick of freezing them in ice cubes - can plop a cube of frozen basil straight into a bolognese, no need to defrost!