Food project haul

[devonianBiatch]

So today I visited my local food waste project. They charge £5 a year and it work on a points system. 4 green stickers ( fruit and veg) is 1 point or £1. Two Yellow is one point or £1 and one red sticker is £1 or 1 point. So 3 points is £3 but you can make any combination. Sometimes they have extras which are charged on top. Today they did 10 family sized portions of fruit/veg for £2. Today I got

Two boxes of mix up porridge (19 servings)
One oatly oat milk.
A huge bag of apples
Bag on spuds
3 leeks
3 big onions
Pointy cabbage
Spring onions
Bean sprouts
Baby corn
Carrots
Mushrooms
Big fat fist sized chunk of ginger
2 ripe Hands of bananas
Two ciabatta
A sourdough loaf
A half size French stick
Turkey Mince
Four vitamin milk shakes
Miso stir fry sauce
Chocolate orange spread
Black peppercorns
Large pot of Koko yoghurt
8 blnut based protein bars

And it all came to £10.50. A huge chunk of it is Waitrose.

So I'm doing leek and potato soup with sourdough bread. Stir fry using peppers from my fridge. Turkey Bolognese using my own pasta and tinned tomatoes. Toast with chocolate spread. Banana bread. Bananas and yogurt smoothies. Cheesy toasted ciabatta. apple pie and apple Crumble. Extra left over veg will be frozen.

I'm really happy with this lot and even better it's ALL been saved from landfill.

I have recently joined something similar- a community food group / pantry where you pay £5 a week for several items.

It's really helpful I agree. Glad it is helping you

I run a project like this and I’m delighted to hear you are finding it useful. Over and above what it offers people in terms of stretching their budgets and feeding families well, the way it takes excess food “waste” out of its route to the bin is great. And, yes, stock from Waitrose/Coop/m&s/Booths (and we’re in the south!) is common, along with other major retailers.

What I have noticed is how fresh and good quality it all seems. I thought it might be like the reduced section in the supermarkets, with wilting salads etc but it all looks so fresh.

Had some blue cheese soup from Booths last week (in the SW) also some nice farmhouse butter from Sainsbury's and they seem to have lots of the plant milk type things. Along with Pieminster pies..

Sounds brilliant! We don't seem to have any grocery food waste schemes, but we do have a cafe run on food waste which is excellent and very cheap.

Is yours weekly OP?

Ours is ,on different days in different parts of town.

To answer a few questions, ours offers two shops a week. Occasionally if they have lots of fruit and veg they allow a third shop on a Friday as they are closed on weekends.

It also has a cafe. The menu changes daily and it's brilliant. Every child eats free so even if it's a single mum, she can go there with 4 kids and eat for £3-4. I love it but you do have to be open to this sort of menu changes etc. No good for fussy eaters etc.

I love the bargains but even more I love that it's ALL saved from land fill.

Ours is planning on opening a cafe too. It's a great idea

Sounds great OP I have no idea if there is one near me, I’m going to Google.

There is one near me,and it says free on its Facebook page:but I must admit, whilst I agree with saving food waste,and obviously saving some money would be good, but (please don't flame me) I feel guilty at thought of using it, as I know there are many more people worse off than us who have less options than us. Am I being reverse-judgy or some such thing,and should just get over myself? I feel I may be confusing this with more food Bank -y type endeavours. Are community fridges really for all,even if could manage to afford buying in shops?

Ours has an income threshold to use it. I understand they can do this and set their own one.