To ask for some advice on not wasting food?

[usernamefromhell]

I've become much more conscious of the amount of food I waste: DD's school had a campaign about it and the children had to fill out forms detailing how much food they throw away.

It was a good initiative which I supported but it was hard for me and made me feel pretty guilty: I'm a single parent and I work about 60 hours a week so the normal "rules" for budgeting/meal planning and generally managing meals efficiently don't really apply to me.

I basically don't cook for DD at all in the week: I'm out of the house by 7.45am and don't get back until 7pm. DD has breakfast at home but lunch and dinner at school/summer club and with childminder. I generally give her a snack or light meal before bed and have a light meal myself (salad/pasta etc) but I usually have to work (at home) every evening for at least another hour so don't have the time to cook properly and can't really justify the expense of preparing a whole meal just for me. I eat reasonably healthily, but just end up throwing a ton of stuff away.

I do like to cook proper meals for her at weekends when I can as its the only time I can so I will do one or two small weekend shops and top-up shopping during the week but the big week family shop doesn't make sense for me apart from one or two long-lasting staples as stuff just won't get eaten. The upshot of this is that I end up wasting a shocking amount of food, to be honest. I don't like doing it because its a waste and it sets a bad example, but I haven't found a way to crack this yet.

Time is a very valuable commodity for me more so than money and meal planning is one of the things which has to give after all the other stuff I need to get done. It's also not strictly necessary as its only DD and I and we don't have that many meals together. But I can see that its pretty bad that I basically chuck 75% of the stuff I buy :(

Anyone else in a similar position and have any tips at all?

What are you buying that gets binned?
For two people one weekly shop is enough. I work full time and am crap at meal planning, and it's just me and DS.
I stick to easy and repetetive meals during the week, pasta, veggie burger and vegetables, salads etc. Meals that you can use the same ingredients various ways. I buy a load of veg, fruit and things like rice, olives etc every week, as well as packed lunch things, yoghurts and whatever DS has on a daily basis.
My food shop usually comes in between 60-70 (vegetarian) and very little gets thrown away.
You can freeze milk and bread, and most veg last a week. Salad gets used at the start of the week etc.

You should be able to get everything you need in one weekly click and collect supermarket shop

Store cupboard meals? Pasta puttanesca (dried pasta with tinned toms and tinned anchovies, add in fresh mushrooms or spinach if you have), tuna salad with kidney beans frozen green beans, whole grain mustard....make a list of a few and have those ingredients in.

Batch cook one weekend day a month so you have stuff in the freezer? Freeze veg and bread to avoid wasting fresh.

Sympathies....

We eat healthily and don't meal plan, but we have learned how to make just the right amount for a meal, which in turn means we buy just the right amount of food. It's very rare that we throw something out. For instance, if we have company and make things we wouldn't normally then left overs might go off. We might sometimes make a one pot style meal with the dregs of things to be used up but we only do one shop a week so nothing is older than that. One of the negatives to this is we don't have a great deal of variety, but we go out for the odd meal meeting up with friends and this mostly covers the need for variety.

So my situation is not dissimilar if you substitute DS for DD and nursery for school. Like you, I don't cook for DS during the week, maybe a bit of toast/fruit in the evening.

Essentially the freezer is your friend, you only need to do one shop a week, split all your meat etc up and freeze and get it out the night before. If you're cooking at the weekend, bulk cook and freeze. I also eat very similar foods most nights (I am very happy with this but appreciate this may not be for everyone)!

You need one of these...

Stop buying stuff. Get pain au chocolate/crumpets/cereal in for dds evening snacks. Get yourself some little bits in for dinner for you, quick bits.

Weekends just buy ham or chicken; a bagged salad some cucmber and thats lunches for both. Dinner - frozen (either from shop or home made) meatballs, salmon fillets, etc ideally ones that can be cooked from frozen with some rice and frozen veg.

Its a myth that it takes too much time to cook really - the issue is planning

Slow cookers are great to make a curry, bolognaise or casserole or meatballs in sauce, all that is then needed is rice or other carb.

You can get rice packets for less than a £1 that you can do in the microwave. Walk in open packet, microwave on, plate out serve up meat serve up rice - within 5 mins you have meal on plate and other portions can be frozen.

Fish or chicken can be gridled - flat frying pan, in less than 10 mins - with salad and nice bread (can even gridle this a bit to toast too)

If money isn't much of an object preprepared meat that can be popped in the oven can be bought and then served with rice as above and a few veggies (even frozen ones can be good)

You could also go snacky with humous salad and bread - or taramasalata or pate or even toasted nice bread with salsa like topping and some basil

you need to change habits really and could get son involved and he could have small portions as a supper (I never found school food particularly well rounded and often tea was a snack in my view and no before you all start DD is not overweight by any stretch