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

I have pig blood that I bought from an Asian store that I said im going to cook day after I bought it. Been there for a month (or more) now.

Cucumber.
The second half of the cabbage.
Baileys.

We love to eat fresh bread, but never manage to eat a whole loaf before it is too dry and the kids won't eat it toasted, so we often throw out half a loaf, which is such a waste. I vaguely remember that there is a way to combat this such as a damp tea towel over it in the oven, or something, but am not sure enough to risk it as I may just set fire to the tea towel!

We don't really waste much - perhaps the odd end of a cucumber or bit of bagged salad that didn't get used.

If we do have bits in there I try and make a meal that includes them to get rid of them! ;)

Nothing languishes at the back of my fridge as it is cleaned out every Friday, well. to be honest there is a sour dough starter in a kilner jar that is at least 2 years old, I keep saying I am going to resurrect it. I think it really needs burial at sea and a memorial service at St Pauls!

I'm doing pretty well at the moment at using things up and quickly chop and freeze veggies that I know I'm not going to use up in time. But unwaxed lemons which languish in the fridge door until I spot them are a problem. I've given up and now just buy the sliced ones in lemon juice in a jar which keep well in the fridge.

Jarred pickles live on the top shelf of my fridge, growing their own ecosystem. I think they're around about Stone Age level, now. I don't care - I can't reach up there without a step anyway.

I used to buy celery and inevitably it would end up in a big mushy puddle at the bottom of the veg drawer. Then I discovered I could slice it up, chuck it in a bag and freeze it, and it would separate really easily to throw into pots with carrots and onions to make stuff. Brilliant! No more wasted celery. So right now celery is my food hero. (But don't tell anyone. I'll never admit it. I have an alibi and no-one saw me do it)

I only buy the tiny tins of tuna, but because only DD1 (3) eats it, I always end up chucking out half a tin, because she won't eat it more than once a week.

I freeze excess bananas to use in smoothies, so we never have any banana waste these days.

Prepared salad bags. We are really good at using everything up but I buy as much as I can on the sell buy date I rarely get through the bagged salad before it wilts.

A few people have mentioned lemons. I slice and freeze them when I buy them. They can be used in cold drinks from frozen and can be defrosted in the microwave if lemon juice is required.

Well, After a quick poke around in the back of the fridge I found an odd bit of cheese, various old bottles of salad dressing left over from a health kick, an odd tomato and half a tub of coleslaw!!!

Think my fridge was long overdue an overhaul!!!!!!

Tubs of cream- I will use a bit in a soup or curry only to leave the rest to sit quietly curdling for all eternity.
Parmesan cheese- lasts forever, just grate a bit from the block and wrap it back up.

We throw hardly anything away. Partly by being quite organised (or having a boring selection of same old same old weekday usual suspects) and partly because DP Would happily eat bean sprout and trifle sponge korma if the alternative was to put any food in the bin.

In my fridge right now languishes a pack of vacuum pack chestnuts from last Christmas (it is from M&S and has a grammatical error on the front of the box) and half a jar of toasted red pepped in brine. Niche exotic products that I think I will use 'all the time', and never will.

Where's that thread about the DH who ate the bird's fat balls that he found in the fridge because he thought they were some posh organic snack from Tebay Services farm shop?

He found them 'a bit greasy'

That's food heroism.

Or not.....

I can use up veg in a stew or soup, but what I find hard to use up are extra bits of cream. I use just the amount specified in a recipe, what can I do if I have 20 or 30ml too much? Also languishing at the back are the condiments that only my partner likes, that get wedged behind other things.

The green pepper. Peppers comes in packs of 3's. None of us really like the green one.

In this house it's half a tin of tomatoes, most weeks, as I made a chilli and it needs 1 1/2 tins of tomatoes
Also currently I have half a tin of sliced carrots I used to bulk out a casserole, and 3 courgettes I keep meaning to dice and put in the freezer.. Might even put it on my to do list!!

Half a portion of beef and ale casserole that I kept meaning to freeze for dd but never happened.... Need to bin that

Some of pps regularly binners are stuff that gets used instantly here, yoghurt as dd eats it for pudding, tomato purée is kept in the cupboard and I use it for months?!, pesto and curry paste are all regular heros!

I clean out fridge, at least fortnightly, the night before bin day.
any left over meals that we thought we would eat for lunch the next day, but didn't and didn't get bagged and frozen.
bags of salad and on the turn cucumbers etc. tiny bits left of coleslaw tubs etc.
I Like to think I don't waste that much, but if I saw our years worth laid put, I'm sure I would be horrified.

Sour cream, crème fraiche, lettuce and cucumber are the usual suspects in my fridge that never get fully used up before they spoil.

We don't have to much food waste especially now when I order our groceries online :)
Only food which goes off in our house is bread, no matter is it shop bought or home cooked there is always something left which goes stale or mouldy.If i bake or buy smaller loaf than we run out of bread in most inappropriate moment.
I don't like freezing bread.

The biggest culprit in our home is avocados - they are literally hard as ice at 11:00 and then it feels like suddenly at 11:01 they are all mushy and damaged, caving in on the sides. What's up with that...!? I've just stopped buying them.

almost every week its Smoked Mackerel and natural yougurt

Can I have the recipe for bean sprout and trifle sponge korma, please?

Sausages
Pate
Slimy cucumber (but I only buy half now)
Tuna

I’m usually pretty good at not wasting food (we often have some interesting meals the day before the big shop!) but there’s often a forgotton half a lemon wrapped in greaseproof paper left over from an occasional G & T, random wrinkly cherry tomatoes that have escaped from the plastic tray, half a pot of soured cream and, shamefully, part of a pack of stupidly over-priced bagged salad! Lately strawberries and cucumber have been strangely partially frozen in the fridge so I’ve had to throw some of those away too – very annoying!

Jars of stuff that you only need a bit of like pesto and pasata. Really annoying when you start cooking something knowing you have a jar in the fridge only to find when you get to that bit of the recipe that it's gone off!