To ask for the rest of the chicken?

[startwig1982]

I recently went over to a friend's house after dinner and she and her DH had had roast chicken plus the trimmings.

While she was making cups of tea, she started to bag up the rest of the chicken and the carcass to go in the bin! There was at least half a chicken left and so I expressed my astonishment at her throwing it away.

Apparently she never keeps leftovers and always bins whatever is left, even if it's half a roast!
So I asked her if I could have it instead. She said yes but was a bit about it, but I couldn't bear all that going to waste when you could get another 2 meals out of it. So WIBU?

I would probably have said something like "Ooh, hang on, I'll take that for sandwiches tomorrow if you really don't want it, it's too nice to throw away!"

I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to ask for the chicken, and I would have judged them totally. What a waste of food and a life that was killed to support ours. Disgusting behaviour. I struggle with certain cuts of meat and also the smells of cooking meat. Don't know why I just do. Cheap mince is the worst, and lamb! Hate even touching raw meat. But I always make sure we buy only what we need, the best cuts we can afford and to use as much as we can. I struggled making stock for a while. Would make it for dh and the kids and have something else myself but now I love my magic chicken soup with homemade stock and its the one meal we all drool over.

Argh, posted too fast. My dm is the worst. They didn't have much food growing up and even then it was a huge stock pot filled with meat, veg, water and salt. She now will buy huge stocks of food from M&S all ready made or nicely prepared and will periodically freeze a few trays of meat. She will then decide she doesn't fancy what she has at home and buy food by the day and throw the perfectly good food in the bin! She cant stand cooking thawed meat so that goes in the bin too. Lately I've managed to get filled steaks, salmon fillets and whole trays of prepared pasta meals out of her before its gone in the bin. This is the same mother who would hoard "nice" food in her locked bedroom for months so me and my brothers would break into her room and eat secretly. So yeah, I have quite the issues with food now.

I used to be one of those people who never ate leftovers. Had it instilled in me as a child that it caused food poisoning. Wasn't even allowed to link the cake mix spoon after the salmonella scare came out :(. But then one day I realised that leftovers are the greatest thing ever. Pizza for breakfast mmmmm. If I'm cooking a big dish for the family I sometimes leave spares in my best friends fridge and she loves it. So IMO there's nothing wrong with sharing the leftover love!!!

Where does she live? We'll be round with pitchforks to drive her to her bonfire.

Unmagicking a chicken= MN burning offence.

"Niece was about to put remaining wraps in the bin."

Seriously, where do people learn that this ok?!

It reminds me of something someone said on another thread. That her SIL, who has very little money, refuses to donate anything to charity shops because she refuses to even be seen inside one, even for a few seconds.

Making a point of throwing away edible food kind of marks you out as someone with something to prove.

Eatingcheeseontoast

With you

I sometimes ask for left overs for the dog if I see food being thrown away but generally know the people quite well

If I was your friend I'd be chuffed you thought the meal was decent enough to want to take the rest!

I know people who did/do this. Various reasons - couldn't be bothered with leftovers; thought eating leftovers was shameful and unhygienic; took pride in being rich enough to be able to discard food; thought leg meat was unpalatable (fair enough) or unhealthy (just no).

I never asked but my mum always did.

I probably would have asked for the chicken too in fact, friends have given me leftovers "for the dog" but probably because they saw me staring at the food and knew I wanted it

Unbelievable how many people would waste good food. What a waste of animals' lives, that makes me really

Besides, picking the leftovers is the best bit

You might want to give your pal a copy of the Sarah Wilson book Simplicious, it is all about reducing food waste, using your leftovers and she even asks people for the untouched stuff from their sharing plates in restaurants.

I wouldn't go that far FlindersKeepers but I remember someone on one of these threads expressing horror that I salvaged leftovers from my family's plates.

Didn't I know they put their forks in their mouths so therefore the leftovers were contaminated by traces of their saliva? I thought about it for a moment and then though as long as I wasn't harvesting spat out gristle, it passed my food hygiene test.

I have asked for the chicken.

We were students, and my housemate was about to throw half a chicken in the bin. I was but apparently she only eats the breast, not the leg meat. I had lovely sandwiches the next day

Bluntness a chicken will do me, DH and the two dc(5 and 2) Sunday lunch, Tuesday curry and then stock for soup later on in the week.
Wow! Half the chicken already gone and you are still Mumsnetting the fuck out of it. :o

YANBU. Sod etiquette - you don't throw good food away like that.

I can't imagine a life without leftovers; OP YANBU.

I'd have done the same, OP.

If she was a really good friend I'd have returned with some chicken soup or stew for her freezer!

Of course people can do what they want. I please myself all the time and regularly champion people on MN that other posters think are grabby and entitled - I fucking hate those words, BTW.

But I find it odd that people throw perfectly good food away or waste money on other things. I'm not poor and did not grow up poor. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But sometimes from these threads I get the impression that it's only acceptable to dislike waste if you have experienced poverty.

I'm not saying you can't blow money for the hell of it and should be a joyless cheeseparer who scrapes the mould off when she doesn't have to.

My heart sings just as much at seeing a yellow sticker on a chicken in Sainsburys just as it does buying a Fendi selleria bag at full price. I'd rather get it at a discount though

Im shocked at how long people can make a chicken last. I buy a chicken crown from the butchers (never super market as they are mostly water) and it lasts us for one meal for 3 of us and i scrape as much off as possible for the cat.

SpreadYourHappiness sounds remarkably like the poster who was so outraged and baffled by peoples comments about her tumble drier usage a few months back. Her point was she pays for the electricity therefore she was justified in using it whenever she could, even when it was sunny, even though she had a big garden. She simply couldn't see how anyone might have an issue beyond that.

the meat will decompose

Actually it won't. It will go to landfill, be starved of oxygen and release methane, which is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2. That's why putting food in landfill is a bad idea, quite apart from the space it takes up and the amount of vermin it attracts.

I can't bear wasted food - it is a bit of an obsession of mine. I would have asked her what the heck she was doing!

I've regularly brought home bin bound food from my wasteful sister.

I can afford my own, I'm just horrified by the waste.

I have a washer/tumble drier but never use the tumble dry feature because a couple of times it's sometimes conked out and trapped my clothes inside for days.

These days I use the washer feature only, it allows me to open the door every time. This is a private arrangement I have with my washing machine that's allowed us to co-exist for 15 years.

I dry my washing on an indoor rack and sometimes on my radiators, even though I've been warned by a manly MN guru of ManThings that this is very bad and will result in condensation that will make my house fall down.

If that happens, I will take it like a woman.

I have a garden but the wind doesn't blow freely so my knickers would end up mildewed and covered in pigeon shit.

OK limited. And the chicken?

Chucking out meat is a double whammy, what with the methane livestock produce before an animal is slaughtered. No idea if eating the meat results in less methane than landfilling it, but at least it's actually fed a person (who'd be producing methane whatever they ate especially if they're me ).