Admit it - anyone thrown away food they bought recently?

[alloutoffucks]

Lots of people including me are saying how hard it is getting in some places to buy fresh vegetables and meat. So admit it. Has anyone recently bought too much and ended up throwing it away?

Yes they have a plastic seal. Best throw that one. I suppose if you really wanted to, you could incorporate it into something that needs cooking. But I’m not sure I’d take the risk. Are you sure you didn’t absentmindedly remove the sleeve without realising it?

Oh did it have a plastic lid? Then it won’t have had a seal I don’t think...

Somewhat recently yes, though not from the last couple of shops. It's salad veg that most often ends up getting bought but not eaten, but the salad-lover (not me) still wants more bought.

No, not likely I’m always careful. Now even more so.

I made banana bread to use up very ripe bananas which where neglected while we were working and we've had it for breakfast all week.

We also had some not very nice sugar-free muesli which dh mistakenly bought a couple of weeks ago and it is being transformed into muesli flapjacks and is greatly enhanced with copious amounts of butter, sugar and golden syrup and porridge oats - dd is scoffing them and would not normally eat porridge or muesli! I've made 3 batches now!!

We have little to no food waste normally, just a few unusable scraps like banana skins to go to composting, and we're being even more careful not to waste anything now. Despite having a vulnerable family member at home, we are not panic buying or stockpiling. It's harder to get hold of the essentials because of those 'shelfish' ratbags who are - we're rural - including no available bread for 4 days.

At the back of the fridge found a third full tub of 0% greek yogurt which was a few days over it’s sell by and had gone a bit crusty, that went in the bin. I’m currently roasting off some slightly old sweet potatoes to make into soup so they won’t go to waste, and we have also (accidentally, not hoarding I promise) overbought cherry tomatoes and have three bags in the fridge, but DD eats them like sweets and with her now off school I don’t think I’ll have any trouble using them up.

@fedupandpoor

Lidl houmous doesn't have a plastic film, it's just the cardboard sleeve (I buy it frequently!).

Lidl hummus never has a plastic seal so don’t worry!

No

I think ive a bag of salad on its way out and some straw berries have turned very fast

Ive found a recipe for salad bag pesto which i might have a go at

I am surprised by people saying they would normally bin this or that when it’s perfectly edible. We are way too spoilt!

@safariboot I use lettuces like little gem, romaine lettuce or similar to make braised peas which is a really lovely dish - we usually have ours with shredded leftover chicken warmed through in the stock, over rice.

I use this recipe as a rough guide but I do improvise quite a lot.

www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/braised-peas-with-spring-onions-and-lettuce/

For anything like rocket, watercress, baby leaf salads, etc, we use it exactly like greens in minestrone and it’s absolutely fine if it’s well past its best - as long as the leaves are not actually slimey they can be cooked down without any worry at all.

If I’ve got a lot of salad veg to use up, I make a salad with literally everything thrown in, regardless of whether or not it officially goes together. Dress it with a strong and zingy vinaigrette and job done - Because it’s all fresh and crunchy it always tastes really good no matter how seemingly bizarre the mix of veg. I usually add egg & ham/egg & olives/egg & tuna on the side too. Mmmm I’m hungry now...

I freeze cherry tomatoes whole if I’ve ended up with too many, to use for really quick and easy pasta dressing/sauce.

If strawberries are just a bit mushy and not actually mouldy they’re perfectly fine to cook down with a little bit of sugar to make a quick and easy sauce. Let it simmer for a while and use it over pudding/ice cream or in yoghurt, or on pancakes/waffles/French toast.

I’m obviously becoming a little too invested in this thread...

Off to make banana loaf!

Ninkanink I'll keep that in mind regarding the leaves. I do curries from time to time and I guess I can put just about anything in there.

@Ninkanink great ideas, thanks

Yes - I forgot (curries are more my DH’s dept), we’ve done that too - something akin to a sag aloo or aloo gobi is really good for using up anything that even vaguely resembles spinach.

Me. There was a dip I bought at Waitrose as a treat and I didn’t check the expiry date, so it went bad on 2nd day. :-( I now went through everything in the fridge and wrote expiration dates on a big sheet of paper that we’ve stuck on the fridge. Helps meal planning too as we eat by expiration date now :-)

No. But I ignore expiry dates (esp. for cheese, eggs and yogurt) and go by my sense of smell. I am a big fan of soup, omelettes and fried rice, three dishes that makes old veg and meat taste delicious.

If DH was ever skeptical of my 'freeze those 4 tablespoons of mash' mentality, he's quickly realised how useful it is. We bought very essential bits like bread, milk, eggs this week because the shops have been utterly ridiculous and I couldn't tolerate it. So we have a had a week of bizarre but enjoyable dinners (sausages with noodles and broccoli anyone?!) and after doing a full freezer inventory I've worked out that if we replace 1 meal a day with an ice pole, we can eat for approximately the next 6 months.

I'm kidding of course, but this crisis has highlighted just how many ice poles and frozen water in various receptacles I have lurking in the deepest depths of the shed freezer.

Nope, because I'm shopping as normal.

Even if we lockdown you're still allowed out to buy food so I haven't found it necessary to buy extra.

Same. We don't waste food normally, and we're not wasting food now.

peel, chop and freeze over ripe bananas and save them for puddings or banana pancakes or bread or even just mashed up on toast!

eggs fresh will keep up to 5 weeks. freezing eggs: crack them and ideally separate yolks from whites before freezing. They keep up to a year in the freezer.

even veg that has gone a over (i.e greens going yellow can be stir fried our souped or curried!)

No, made dd eat a over ripe banana this morning as it needed eating 🤣

Hardly chucked anything away, anything that’s close to going out of date will go in the freezer for next week. I have some sausages and meatballs that go out of date tomorrow so will pop them in the freezer if we don’t eat them tonight. Left over veg can be made into soup.