To think managing zero food waste is impossible

[Blanc8447]

I’m talking every last floppy carrot, forgotten half bag of salad leaves, ends of bread…Really trying with this but there is always something. If anybody manages this- how?

I do this with bananas - split up into smoothie bags. Chop the fruit though first!

Mine refuse to eat mushrooms. Must be because they smell ‘off’ to them

Get chickens! Immediately solves most food waste issues 🤣 and you get the most delicious eggs in return! every morning I go through the fridge and see if there are any bits that they can eat with their breakfast. They love pretty much all vegetables, salad and fruit, and will eat leftover rice, potatoes, pasta etc

I’ll admit to being one of the bad people in this respect. I live alone and don’t have chance to go to a market and buy just what I need (opening hours of the market and working full time).

Disabled which is partly a good reason for not managing to freeze stuff I don’t use up which means waste. (if not properly packed things ice up and not good when defrosted.) However I could do better than I do now. This thread will spur me on for this week.

Between the dog, the rabbits & the guinea pigs we manage to get through most stuff 😅Not the most practical option.

I do try & freeze stuff before it goes off if we don't get a chance to use it, but miss the odd thing. I'm not militant about use by dates so will use things if they look & smell good.

I keep meaning to make croutons with loaf ends but never seem to get around to it. I wonder if I could freeze them & then defrost later for croutons /breadcrumbs though...

The key is to buy in small quantities, and be prepared to eat repetitive meals/strange combinations to use up food.
My parents are from the post-war generation and have very little food waste. Their fridge only contains the next one or two meals, and they visit the shop frequently.

There is evidence that people with larger fridges throw away more food. It just gets hidden and missed before its inedible.

As a single person with a small appetite I do find online shopping for food is very difficult as most things are family-sized or at least two portions. I don't want single ready meals, I want real food.

I buy many things frozen, or spend my time splitting up packs to freeze, but not everything freezes well. Salad is a great example and I used to love the Waitrose growing lettuce plants that I could use over a couple of weeks but I haven't seen them this summer. I really should start growing my own!

I make stale bread into breadcrumbs and put it in the freezer. I would love to buy a nice artisan loaf occasionally, but they are all just too big for me and there is a limit to how many breadcrumbs I want in the freezer.

Unfortunately the community pig idea is a non-starter. It is now illegal to feed kitchen scraps to pigs!

What about left over rice?

Avoid bags of salad because they keep for about two minutes. Buy a couple of little gem lettuces or something.

Bread goes in the freezer before it's stale.

Carrots keep for easily a week before going floppy, probably two, so that's easy.

Check what you have before buying more and plan your leftovers in.

Just don't cook too much rice.

Left over rice refrigerate as soon as possible ( cool it with running water ) then you can add it to a salad the day if it’s a little ( ditto potatoes and pasta )

or if you have enough fry up with eggs and ground swetuan ( no idea on the spelling sounds something like that ) pepper and it’s one of my favorites

dont leave it more than 24hrs though

@Allthesnowallthetime @Tiredjusttired
In the UK there are very strict laws on what can be fed to animals reared for food. It's a consequence of the BSE disaster (mad cow disease).
There are a few 'alternative' projects near me that used to keep pigs, but stopped when regulations got tighter.

I know lots of people tell you not to reheat rice but I do frequently and haven't had a problem (yet).

I really recommend following Elly Curshen on Instagram for excellent tips and recipes for preventing food waste (she also writes recipes for Waitrose, BBC etc) - her IG is at ellypear. For instance I learnt from her you can freeze hummus!

Egg fried rice the next day!! Also a great way to clear some veg out of the fridge like spring onions, peppers etc

I pop stale bread into the freezer, when I have enough I make croutons, bread pudding or French toast bake,
Limp veg in the freezer till soup or stew time.

It’s hard work. This “let’s throw things out” mindset is such a modern phenomenon. People wouldn’t have done that for tens of thousands of years.

Every single vegetable (even the peels) can be reused. You can dry them in the oven, put them in a food processor, add plenty of salt, and there you go: homemade vegetable stock cubes. Another option is to freeze all your peelings and scraps until you have enough to boil into a broth. Potato or carrot peels can be tossed with a little oil and baked into crunchy peel chips.

Bread: collect leftovers, and once you have a good amount, dry them out and make breadcrumbs. Or cut into cubes for croutons for soups and salads.

Rice: Leftover rice can be turned into fried rice, rice pudding, or rice patties with vegetables. You can also blend it into rice milk or dry and grind it into rice flour for baking.

Fruit: overripe bananas: banana bread, smoothies. Apple peels can be boiled into tea or jelly. Citrus peels can be candied, turned into marmalade, or dried and used as a natural cleaner.

You can also buy compost bins: depending on whether you have a garden or space. Some models can even make compost in just a few hours. They’re amazing, but pricey (around £500).

I’ve freeze ends of bread and when I have enough I make bread and butter pudding or bread crumbs

TBH Ive got a bit of a Thing about not wasting food. The other day I stuck half a really sad, limp lettuce in water - it perked right up. 🙂

Any floppy e.g. carrot or celery, chopped up, will go in e.g. a minestrone or a batch of mince - I always add finely chopped veg anyway. In colder weather, a multi-veg soup.

The only real ‘waste’ here is the odd mouldy slice of bread. Otherwise it’s almost always just veg peelings, eggshells, a chicken carcass after boiling it up for stock. Any scraps of meat fat (I loathe fat) will go out for the birds (gone within a minute) any other scraps of meat or fish skin go in a bag in the freezer until the night before the bin men come, so as not to attract flies.

One thing that had helped me is not buying bagged salad. Head of lettuce last much longer, far less waste. Less variety but it's worth it.

I’ve started a perpetual salad box, it’s in a trough thing that’s small enough to to go in the windowsill when the frost comes but lives in the garden currently. Put salad leaf seeds in the first third then a week later the middle third then a week later the final third. Seeds take 3 weeks to become edible leaves and once they grow I eat them and then sow more seeds and move on to the next section. Constant source of salad leaves and 3 weeks from nothing to lunch.

If you meal plan, stick to a shopping list and eat what you’ve planned to eat it doesn’t leave much room for food waste.

You have to have the mindset of “what needs eating?” Rather than “what do I fancy?”

Most left over veg can be chucked into a curry or a soup or can be blitzed up with tinned tomatoes and herbs to make pasta sauce.

Fruit can be chucked into cereal, porridge, smoothies etc.

Try a panzanella salad with your stale bread op, it’s amazing. Or bread crumbs, croutons, bread and butter pudding…

Cant help you with the sad salad leaves, but chop and freeze the veggies to throw in a soup or stock next time you are making one. You can use the veggie peels the same way. Or use the peeler or a mandolin to slice really thinly and toss them in oil and roast or air fry into crisps (potato peeling make great crisps too).

Well that is a bummer.

I thought the BSE thing was about feeding animals particular animal foodstuffs, rather than vegetable waste?

Yes, I think BSE was thought to be linked to meat, but in the wake of this, all feed for meat-producing animals is heavily regulated. You can't feed kitchen waste to pigs any more. https://www.smallholderfeed.co.uk/pig-feeding-guide/