Thirty plants a week - avoiding food waste for small appetites

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I like to think I get a really good variety of plant fodder in each week as I cook with a wide range of spices and herbs and veg etc

I think on another thread some months ago I calculated a meal I had cooked which had around 40 'points' just in that one meal

However I think what happens on average is that the same thing is eaten for many days on end until its used up (as I will not throw food away!) and then on to the next thing. The freezer is completely full of various batch cooking and then bags of frozen veg so theres no room really for more, its one in, one out at the moment

Ive had WLS which means I eat very small portions, for example Im going to roast up a cauliflower today and that will last me over a week in the fridge, added to other things even if I eat some every day.

So today Ive downloaded a plant counting app and Ive totted up 9.5 entries

But I suspect that tomorrow may well be the same 9.5 entries and so on and so on

I dont want to create a load of food waste, what do other people do when cooking small amounts?

Is anyone else doing this?

Good luck with it all. I do feel guilty about food waste at times but there is only so much you can do if you are catering for one. I often eat the same thing 3 or 4 nights in a row but try and ring the changes during the day.

Im so stubborn I hate the waste!!

Im going to update and see how I get on.

I make all my own food so breakfast lunch and dinner is a combination of things as I try not to have the same thing more than once in a day but like you are having things the same for dinner for a couple of days or more. Its quite a common thing in our WLS support group.

Sorry, I meant to say day not week! So I eat 30 different plants a day and because I eat much the same things every day, with a bit of variation on veg, then I guess I also hit 30 a week.

Yes I think the variation is the key here, thinking about it, I reckon, ball park figure is that I probably would get to around 15-20 on an average day if I include herbs, spices, tea, coffee and chocolate

But thats likely to be the same the following day and so forth!

Does the 30 a week thing say you need more if you hit it all on one day? It's about your body getting a wide range of nutrients etc. isn't it, so if it's 30 every day I can't see that it matters if it's the same 30.

Re the waste, do you make soup? Or smoothies or juice? I’m like you about food waste but veg is the one thing that never gets thrown away because it can always go in one of those.

I wondered this, I suppose its about ensuring your gut has the variety but enough of it.

So for example a nice little dish I cook up is chickpeas and spinach, its Spanish. With loads of garlic, onion, cinnamon, cumin and coriander seeds. Sometimes I add tomatoes.

So in one dish 7/8 items. But I would only have around a couple of spoons of that in one meal, with some fish or meat. Otherwise it gets boring. So although its loaded with those items and Im very liberal with spices I use a lot per dish, its not actually very much that gets eaten in one go.

The problem with anything like celeriac and squashes is I cant physically manipulate them due to a disability

Can your DH chop the veg instead?

Ive had WLS I said this in my OP
But not everyone knows what every acronym stands for! I work in healthcare and had to google what WLS meant! I thought it was some sort of disease or medical condition.

Yes I have a lot of soup. Tonight will finally see the end of the xmas carrots.

Ha, bet you’ll be glad to see the back of them.

Actually he should chop it shouldnt he!!

Well I thought it was a common thing my apologies but I was specifically asking about this from the perspective of small appetites not normal people and I did say that I can only manage around 4tbsp of food for one meal, so regardless of why, thats all I can do at any one time.

No! I thought they were unkillable. (And very nice.) Good raw too.

Well exactly and this is what prompted me to start the thread because I thought, right Im rid of them this week but then realised that most of the veg I still have is all green (apart from sweetcorn) (and frozen). Plus the red cabbage. I then bought cauli and brussel sprouts today for the fridge and thought 'shall I get some more carrots' for the variety and then round we go again thinking about how to use it all up before it goes off!

Are you prepping the fish and meat into your portion sizes? So cutting salmon fillets into three pieces, freezing, then putting into a bag, chicken breast into strips and bagging into tbsp sized clumps? Even tinned chickpeas can be rinsed and frozen on a tray and then bagged up to use a spoonful here and there, rather than be restricted to the one casserole you made.

The other thing is looking at what you actually freeze things in - a pot isn't necessary - you could use the silicon cube trays, freeze and decant into a bag, that kind of thing. Rectangular, rather than round, items are easier to store without leaving as much dead space, etc.

Cabbage keeps for ages in the fridge, as you know - rather than cutting a chunk, you can remove x number of leaves for a meal, meaning the rest stays fresher than if you've made a massive batch of one thing that doesn't change/gets boring after a month. Or get into fermented/pickled veg which will keep for ages. Same goes for cauliflower.

And smaller cooking utensils can be very handy - something in a standard size pan might burn, whereas in a mini pan, it'll be fine, or possibly a single portion sized slow cooker. You're then only limited by the size of indivisible things such as a single egg,

Sorry if this isn't exactly what you were looking for, but sometimes it's the logistics and changing them, rather than following the conventional cook big and freeze tons.

What apps would people recommend for tracking this?

Plus for me would be: large catalogue of plants, rolling monitoring (ie. tells you what your rolling 7 day is not a fixed week Mon-Sun), ability to add items yourself / adjust your goal

The thirty plants a week thing came from Zoe so their app might be a good place to start. I’ve not used it so don’t know which facilities you get free and which are on the paid programme.

An A3 or A4 table on the fridge door where you tick things off would also do the job perfectly well.

Right this is exactly it

Chickpea management is what i need. I have learned about flash freezing on this board and didnt think to apply it to beans and pulses so this is going to be my next little project, this is what stops me opening a tin of chickpeas or beans of some description as it takes a while to get through them or like I said, I make a whole big bean chilli and then takes ages to get through

I presume I can do the same then with kidney/butter/black eye beans?

I wont cut the salmon in pieces before cooking because firstly it quite difficult to cook a very very small bit of salmon without overcooking it, they're nearly always very small at one end and not at the other and also I measure out the weight of cooked meats/fish to calculate protein so it would be harder to manage that if I chopped it first
Chicken I use thighs not breast but I cook them jup around 600g, in the slow cooker so that theres loads of juice come out of them and use that for stock for soups so it wouldnt benefit me to chop them up first, I shred them into portions once cooked
I do use square and rectangle pots to store my bits in and I do have small pans and a mini slow cooker

I love picked and fermented foods but they dont love me, terrible acid unfortunately.

So I have finished today on 9.75 points, not very good overall

Im using plant points app.

I wouldn't get hung up on the 'thirty plants a week' thing, or any variant of it. I think it is just a gimmicky way of creating a buzz around the fact that healthy eating requires a wide variety of plant-based ingredients.

It's a bit like the modern pre-occupation with getting a certain number of steps in each day. Insofar as that is of value, it is only because it gives us a clear, simple and highly measurable goal, which can be nice and motivating for some people.

There are plenty of very healthy food cultures that are centred on a moderately small set of ingredients and recipes. It wasn't until the late 20th century that we had such a vast range of ingredients available at the supermarket.

Just focus on eating plenty of fresh fruit and veg etc in a commonsense intuitive way. Forget numbers.

Yes you can freeze beans

What a revelation

I often make a bean dip or dressing, I mix up whatever white beans I have with oil, tahini, herbs spices, garlic whatever but I always end up making too much so now I can just pick a handful and mush it up in my blender. Brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9ShgxGejl7I

Yes I dont disagree, as I said upthread, Im approaching this through curiosity, being lighthearted about it to see what comes of it. Its a test, I like a challenge and to find out stuff, so lets see what comes of my little plan.

Ah yes, that makes sense. It sounds a bit like gamification, enlisting fun and playfulness as motivators.

I tried counting these for me January last year and didn’t find it too difficult to get to 30 because it’s not like 5 a day where each needs to be a proper portion size, so for example you get quite a few in a bowl of muesli, jam on toast (even wheat counts as one!), herbs and spices etc.

If you eat so little, have you had professional help on getting the balance right, vegetables may be too filling compared to nutrients in these proportions. I do know a salmon fillet is tiny do can’t grasp not eating a whole one

How about a mix of herbal teas? They keep well, and will add herbs you'd probably never use otherwise- liquorice root, dandelion, chamomile, etc etc.