Come on, be honest: what ends up languishing at the back of your fridge at the end of the week? 'Fess up about your most neglected foodstuffs to Unilever Project Sunlight - and be in with a chance to win £250 NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

Most of us make an effort to plan our shop and minimise food waste, but even with the best will in the world, all too often we end up with items left over - and the people from the Unilever Project Sunlight would like to know which are your repeat waste offenders. Is there a fruit that always gathers mould at the bottom of the bowl? Or what about the last spoonful of pasta sauce that you swore you'd use up? Are you afflicted by unconsumed anchovies? Stressed out by surplus celery?

Please share what - despite your best efforts - you find yourself regularly binning on kitchen clean out day. And just to even things up a bit, why not let us know which foods you'd rate as your enduring heroes: the ones that could sit happily on your shelves and emerge perfectly edible even in the event of a nuclear apocalypse ...

Add your comment to the thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a a £250 voucher for the store of their choice.

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thanks and good luck
MNHQ

We aren't too bad as we plan our shopping carefully each week.

However, when my DS comes shopping he will usually request some kind of fruit that he swears he will eat which is always a massive fib and I always fall for it. At the moment there is a small satsuma at the bottom of the fruit bowl that I think won't last until his taste changes.

On the other hand, I think that if the house were to be bulldozed tomorrow, the lemon in my fridge would survive. One day I will use it, but it just seems so happy where it is

The leftover veg from the Sunday roast (a few parsnips, carrots and the odd sprout). Always discovered and discarded by about Friday the following week.

Those beetroot in the vacuum packs - I can't use them all at once so two always go mouldy. It's such a waste but I can't think of what else to do with them. I make a sort of couscous salad with some of them, then try to have a couple more in cheese salad sandwiches.

Half eaten pots of coleslaw, the last couple of inches of cucumber that always goes squishy before you can eat it and the occasional wizened carrot. The main thing I seem to throw out is new potatoes, there always seem to be five or six left in a bag that sit in the bottom of the veg drawer for months before they finally give up the ghost. My good heroes are bacon and ham, they have really long dates and just never get wasted as even if you only have a little bit left to use up you can always throw it in whatever you're making. Bacon improves everything.

Cartons of passata. I buy for home made pizzas, but then can't use the rest. DH doesnt like tomato based pasta sauces. Plus it's hard to see the inside of the carton to tell if it's going mouldy or not yet, so I'll probably chuck it rather than chance it.

Cucumber and spring onions & half used packs of herbs. Always turn to sludge - yuck

Cheese. Dh is in charge of cheese buying. He will buy it on bogof but we don't eat it fast enough and it goes furry. Or he will buy himself some blue cheese because he fancies it, have one portion and the rest goes off. (I am allergic to blue cheese so don't reallynwant it oozing all over the fridge)!

We always end up with Melon left I find they are just a bit too big and so despite my best efforts to get people to eat it I end up throwing the last quarter out. I also regularly find soggy cucumber in the salad tray which is the worst when it mushes in your hands. Finally there is always the odd half a tub of yoghurt that disappears into the back of the fridge only to return when its moldy.
I find butternut squash is the most amazing of all my fresh ingredients and one survives for weeks me gradually cooking more and more of it until its gone.

Cucumber. Don't really like the awful stuff & don't know why I buy it. Lost count of the number of times the remaining portion has ended up losing all its molecular integrity and turning into a puddle of green goo at the bottom of the salad drawer. Bleurgghhh....

Enduring hero is chorizo with a shelf-life roughly the same as quartz. Always have a piece of it in the fridge and it livens up a lot of otherwise boring dishes

Red pepper hummous is my weakness but between buying it and actually using it, something goes wrong with my head and I go off it. Every month I throw out a virtually unused pot of the stuff and I never learn.

Its friends in the bin are:

1. A lemon, lime and tomato half that go watery because they get pushed to the back of the fridge where it is coldest.
2. That last bacon rasher that is left to turn into a rubber band because somebody didn't seal the packet up properly.
3. Olives. Always olives.
4. Cartons of soup- casualties of a health kick. I end up feeling cheated if I eat soup for a meal. Sad but true. I eat home made soup BUT lack the time to make it. And the carrots, squash and pumpkin I bought to make soup with? In the bin too because I couldn't be bothered. Or the blackbird gets them. He likes root veg.
5. Various tiny bottles of medication that have been in there for years. Chloramphenical eye drops so old they'd probably rot your eyeball if you used them.

spring onions/sour cream and a few out of date yoghurts and cheese slices. Not too much waste really try to keep it down

Leftover tinned sweetcorn, remains of pots of plain yogurt and shrivelled up carrots.

I used to be terrible for this, but I am a reformed character! I have fall back recipes to use up most things so I hardly ever throw anything away. Occasionally I have n egg or two well past the use by date, but otherwise nothing [smug emoticon]

Hummus, spinach (there's just too much in a bag), spring onions and specialty cheeses like brie.

Creme fraiche. It has so many uses, but I fail time and time again to investigate them.

Half Bags of salad always get thrown out in our house

Any leftovers from a roast dinner, none of us really like them so we try to cook carefully to maker sure there are none.

Not in the fridge, but it's in the fruit bowl, a butternut squash that came in our veggie box several months ago, none of us like it but it seems too good to throw away. Thinking about trying to hollow and carve it for Hallowe'en.

Half-bags of salad, half-tubs of hummus. Just can't get through it all before they go mushy/start fermenting.

Bananas! I always have plans to make banana muffins but never get round to it.

It's always leeks. I buy them with the intention to make chicken and leek pie then never get round to it.
The creme fraiche never gets finished either.
And we never use a whole tub of cottage cheese or pâté either - it goes off too quickly!

Greek yogurt. Always buy it to try to fancy up a sauce and then end up serving the meal in a more straightforward way and lo and behold the Greek yogurt sits there until it goes out of date.

Should really eat it with honey as it yummy. But I always hold out for better sauces!

half open tin of sweetcorn- the big tins are much better value, but we never use the whole tin. So it's false economy really- i should just get a small tin!

A bottle of worcestershire sauce we bought for a recipe and never used again.
about a quarter of an iceberg lettuce, going a bit brown, because I've forgotten it was there and bought a new one.

There isn't usually much left, as finances dictate I shop as i need, rather than a big shop - but it is invariably these things left.

And then every so often. a really manky smushy bit of cucumber that got missed will surface

And yes- a dozen sticky medicine bottles, that have probably welded to the shelf, and are years out of date (my excuse is, at 4ft 8, I can't reach the top shelf or really see what horrors are lurking at the back. I could use a stool, if I cared slattern).

New potatoes. Today I threw away the remainder of a bag which had been in there since the beginning of September.