Those that throw very little food out what are your top tips?

[Chestnutx3]

I hate throwing food out but it happens. Feel slightly better when it goes on the compost but I can't afford to waste money.

I once did an experiment and our family lived on M&S meals for a week, and prepared salads/veg and I spent less and had very little wastage. I don't want to eat processed foods and we rarely do.

I use my freezer to freeze leftovers but I'm now trying to empty out the freezer of all those leftovers that aren't really a meal and never get used.

The other way I can see of doing it is eating a really limited diet of sausages, mince and pasta bakes etc... which I would hate.

Top tips please.

You can make bread into crumbs and then freeze. Cheese can be frozen too, or you can make it into cheese sauce and then freeze... (see, I love my freezer!)

I don't do a rigid meal plan but I do write down a few meals when I'm doing the online shop and make sure I don't buy a ton of fresh stuff that's just not going to get eaten.

Have 3 teenage sons.

Bread - keep in the freezer, toast from frozen. If you're planning a sandwich for lunch yourself, take a few slices out in the morning. Or, if using unsliced bread, freeze half the loaf as soon as you get it home.

Cheese - grate onto pasta dishes, omelettes, pizza, etc. don't throw oddments away - freeze in a container then use to make cheese sauce at a later date.

If I had a veg box that would probably form the basis of my meal plan to avoid wasting that. Does the supplier provide recipe suggestions?

Bacon and cheese - make into pasta bake sauce (big fav in our house!)
Veg - soup or roast and make into pasta sauce (or get a smaller box?)
Bread - keep at least half the loaf in the freezer and only get out what you need

I also probably keep stuff for longer in the fridge than you do

we menu plan for 5 meals a week and save all leftovers. of those I make a leftover-end-of-of-the-week bake by layering everyhing in a pyrex dish, crack a couple of eggs into leftover sauce or milk and bake in the oven.
one meal is either pasta or takeaway...

I really hope you all regularly purge your freezers. I find that I think I am being frugal by putting in the fridge and there it remains for ever more as a frozen bin.

I throw nothing away. I stock up on the protein and carbohydrate parts of meals in a monthly shop so pick up chicken portions, whole chicken, frying steak, braising steak, fish etc, rice, pasta, tortilla wraps, speciality breads and so on. I freeze these or in store cupboard for pasta and rice. I then do more regular shops for my fresh ingredients and what needs used up soonest helps determine what we have for dinner. We have some salad ingredients needing used up tomorrow so I've brought the cooked chicken legs from the whole chicken out of the freezer. I know we will not use the whole red pepper which is in the fridge in the salad so will plan fajitas for the night following. I never buy more fresh ingredients until I have a use for those I already have and incorporate items which are beginning to look limp into the next meal for example I made fruity coleslaw with an apple which was looking brown on one side and a wrinkly tangerine. It was commended as delicious!

Freezing some fresh ingredients works well too. A couple of weeks ago I had half a cauliflower to use up. I incorporated this into some homemade tomato sauce and used it last week as filling for a filo pastry strudel. It does take imagination but I am so against throwing food away that I find a use for everything. leftovers can be frozen or used as pie, omelette, jacket potato, toastie, savoury crepe, taco or tortilla wrap filling.

This works well for us and I personally never stick to a meal plan if I make it up more than 24hours in advance as I never fancy what I thought I might fancy for Thursday nights dinner when I wrote the meal plan the previous Saturday.

To avoid the headache of meal planning I just have a list of things I like to cook which I add to when I feel like it, seasonally or whatever.

Every weekend I nag ask dp to choose the next week's meals off the big list, with the proviso of at least one non-meat day and at least one fish one.

Then I shop for the week and do the dinners in the order I feel like or as time allows.

Menu planning is the only way really. Don't buy more than you intend to cook. Don't cook more than you intend to eat. Freeze most meat on purchase and only defrost enough for one meal. Ignore sell-by dates on long-life foods like cheese. I think veg boxes are too random for planning purposes and create waste.

A once-a-week 'Fridge Soup' where you use up all the bits and pieces of old vegetables in a mixed broth is another good tip. Some fridges are never emptied.

If you're throwing away bread then just keep it in
The freezer and take out slices as you need it.

I have a bag of 'cured pig bits' in the freezer. Any pieces of ham/bacon/pancetta that don't get eaten get chopped up and added to the bag. Also if I see stuff like that reduced I will buy to freeze. I freeze it 'flat' so it isn't all in a lump. Then it's easy to take out a few bits when I want them, eg for pasta carbonara, to top a soup, chicken and ham pie, macaroni cheese, etc. just cook straight from freezer.

I also freeze individual slices of cooked meat that can go straight into a sandwich, so I don't have to worry about impromptu picnics and packed lunches.

Frozen grated Parmesan also works well. There is hardly anything you can't freeze! Just make sure it's in usable quantities and label it and use it before it dies of freezer burn

or bake your own. my bread only goes stale (saved by the toaster) but never mouldy.

Don't chuck the bread! whack it in your magimix or whatever, blitz them, bag em freeze em and sprinkle on top of your next macaroni cheese or whatever...

Sorry. Need coffee. Words not forthcoming this morning :)

I think it would be helpful to know what sort of things you're throwing away as to whether you can make something from them or whether you just shouldn't be buying it in the first place IYSWIM.

squishycinnamonswirls One of my friends had a little giggle at me today as she popped in while I was stripping a chicken carcass that had been boiling for stock - doesn't everyone do this? A chicken will do roast, bits for pasta/rice/salad, stock for soup...who throws away the carcass with all those lovely bits of meat on? That old saying - the sweetest meat is next to the bone - is right!

I also buy those pork-hocks, about £3each, cook them for stock and slice as ham. Any 'bits' leftover go in soup or into pasta.

In fact i rarely buy a piece of meat for each serving - too expensive to buy chops etc. Most of the meals i cook only have bits of meat in.

I don't throw much away either.

Overripe bananas can be frozen. They'll be squishy when defrosted but fine to use in cakes or smoothies.

If you're making a dish that calls for finely chopped onions you can mix in other finely chopped veg with the onions eg celery, peppers, carrots.

We need to do a freezer purge. Thank goodness we've got a dog... he's in for some treats over the next few weeks!

Cook a smaller portion and do a pudding.

Everyone has room for pudding.

Freeze freeze freeze! Practically everything freezes. We have very little waste. I batch cook on a Sunday and then use the freezer so this week I made a large enough curry that I could freeze half. In a couple of weeks that will be back on the menu. Aubergjnes reduced so bought a few and made four moussakas, again three for the freezer. You soon build up a really good stock of home made freezer meals which means that you are far less likely to waste anything since you won't need to buy as much fresh stuff. I also only shop three weeks out of the four. On the fourth I use the freezer meals and anything else in the fridge that needs using.
What is it you're throwing away or did I miss that?

Agree veg boxes make meal planning difficult. I wasted too much when I had one so I cancelled it. I think that to use a veg box effectively you need to be an experienced cook/good at improvising/have lots of time so you can go shopping several times a week.

If meal planning is a chore then do a monthly plan and then just tweak it - this will be easier.

I recommend getting 2 supermarket deliveries each week and not one. With Ocado you can buy a 1 year delivery pass so it's easy to have 2 deliveries a week that way without spending £££ on delivery. You don't need to stock up with 2 deliveries and everything is always fresh.

YY to veggie boxes causing a lot of wastage. It's a nice idea, but unless you know seventeen ways to cook purple sprouting broccoli, it can leave you flumoxed!!

I disagree with veg boxes creating waste. I get a list a week ahead that tells me what will be in mine and I plan around it. I love menu planning - gives me an excuse to sit down with the recipe books and drool! Sit down one evening with a glass of wine and enjoy it!

Agree with others about keeping bread in the freezer and only taking slices out as you need them. You could also freeze the odd rashers of bacon and use them at a later date. I breadcrumb stale bread and freeze fruit if it looks like it's on the turn, stewing first if needed.

I do fill my small kitchen compost bin each week, but it's all vegetable scrapings and fruit debris. All my friends are aghast that I only fill one each week (the council collect it), as they all seem to fill it almost daily and end up with four or five bags a week.

Chestnutx3 - we may have similar setup: 4 of us, mostly only me around at lunch. We hardly throw away anything.

• We have veg box.
• We dont't meal plan - I like space for cravings innovation.
• We freeze bread/cakes/cookies and raw meat/fish but not much else. I don't like eating defrosted meals. And we have a rather small freezer. As DH says, our freezer is the supermarket.
• I do a big shop about once a week but pick up stuff from the local co-op now and then.
• I generally buy general purpose ingredient and do ready-steady-cook style meals. And I do cook almost everyday. Occasionally I buy specific things for a recipe and that's where the waste comes in ...

In short I'm not sure how we manage to not waste so this is not helping ... But there is more than one way to skin a cat. (Not sure that's an appropriate analogy here either ...)

We buy little, then often top up mid week.