How can we stop wasting food?

There's an excellent article in the Observer today by Alex Renton, highlighting how much food we still waste. He highlights salad vegetables as a particular culprit: Britain imports twice as much salad as it actually eats. The rest gets thrown away.

Supermarkets are to blame, we're to blame but it's not easy. The media is full of mixed messages. Eat more fruit and veg scream the health campaigners, get two for the price of one say the supermarkets. We want to be healthy and to save money so we do then we find we can't use it up in time (and the health police are on our backs if we go over the use-by date)

I waste a great deal less food than I used to but I still throw food away. The odd blackened banana I meant to make into a smoothie or a batch of muffins. Some forgotten cheese that has found its way to the back of the fridge. Some leftover vegetables or gravy I couldn't bring myself to throw away at the time and which 3 days on are beginning to look a bit dubious. Salad - oh yes, salad and herbs that have deteriorated to a soggy mush and are unrescuable. Nothing to be proud of at all.

While we can afford to replace the food we so wantonly waste there's no real incentive to be more careful but as anyone who is on a really tight budget will know throwing away food is simply throwing away money. A freezer certainly helps but more than anything I think it's a question of organisation and time management. Keeping the fridge and cupboards tidy so you actually know what you have. Setting aside a few minutes every day to plan what to do with anything that's in its last throes - and turning it into something tasty. Neither tidiness or time management are my strongest suit but I'm going to redouble my efforts.

What about you? Do you find you waste much these days? Have you managed to cut back on the amount you throw away? What are the things you tend to chuck most often - is it salad? Do post your thoughts and your tips.

PS on a lighter note the beginning of the article reveals that Michel Roux uses thickly cut potato peelings to make chips for his staff. Good tip - I definitely like the sound of that . . .

What a terrible waste!

I spent the last couple of days in Dublin, judging the World Cheese Awards (see right). You can read more about it on my cheese blog, The Cheeselover, but there was one thing I wanted to share with you here.

At the end of the judging all the cheeses - some 2000 of them, worth thousands of pounds were apparently destroyed, for 'health and safety' reasons. They were apparently going to be rendered into 'cheese powder' whatever that is.

I'm sure the organisers are abiding by the letter of the law. Some of the cheeses were laid out overnight and certainly it would have been foolish not to dispose of the more perishable ones. But not to do anything with the aged cheeses which would have been perfectly edible is complete madness. As a cheeselover it makes me indignant. As an ordinary member of the public thinking about the use to which all that good food could be put I feel just plain angry.

I'm sure this is not the only example of profligate waste. Shops and restaurants have to throw away perfectly good food all the time. Isn't it about time we introduced some common sense into the regulations and treated our fellow citizens as grown ups capable of making their own choices about whether food is fit to eat or not?

How much do sell-by dates matter?

I've done a lot of chucking out in the last 24 hours. Three pieces of cheese from mother-in-law's fridge, one from my own.

A couple of them were well over the hill (oldies are hopeless about sell-by dates) but mine, a piece of Comté that officially expired on the 28th of January didn't look too bad. I remember when I was a child my mum would have simply cut away the mould and cheerfully served up the rest but if I advised you to do that the health police would be down on me like a ton of bricks. So out it went.

What I should of course have done before going away was grate it and freeze it then I could have added it to a sauce or a topping. Hey ho . . .

I did however find an unopened box of Caprice des Dieux, a creamy brie-style cheese to which my youngest son is very partial but somehow escaped his attentions over Christmas. That expired on the 21st of January, almost two weeks ago, but looks - and smells - absolutely fine so I shall risk it. You wonder what they add to it to give it this kind of shelf-life. If I survive I'll report on the outcome.

To compensate for all this waste I raided the fridge and storecupboard for our lunch - spaghetti amatriciana-style made with some leftover pancetta (in date, I hasten to add), a small jar of tomato and chilli pasta sauce, extra garlic and a dash of red wine vinegar (useful for adding zip to shop bought sauces). Some parsley would have been nice but we haven't been shopping yet. That pleasure is to come.