Waste not, want not

Like many of you out there I watched Hugh FW on the telly, banging the drum on our wasteful ways. Unfortunately I feel that the only people who will take the message on board already dance to that tune.
I have a few single friends in the village, and from Lincs, who all spent far more than me and waste an obscene amount every week.

I have taken a photo of my food waste this week, there was not any last week.

Here it is, the bones from a chicken, it has made roast dinner for 3, there is a chicken pie for 3 tonight and a whole cooked breast is now in the freezer, that will be 2 future meals.

This is Ben's share, all the little flakes of meat, the skin and the soft gristle, he loves a dollop mixed in to his food. I freeze this in little heaps then put in to a plastic box.

Over a litre of concentrated stock, once chilled it will be frozen, and will become soup.

All my cooked "left overs"  either become part of the next days dinner or are frozen for future use. I sometimes get a small bag of black bag rubbish over 2  weeks but it goes in the rubbish bin when I walk Ben. As much as is possible gets recycled, our local council supplies free bags and we just separate paper, card, textiles and plastic. Glass and metal go into a bin as does food waste, my food waste bin is my indoor compost caddy.

Clothing in decent condition goes to the homeless as do blankets etc. Furniture and household items go to a Home Start scheme and anything not good enough gets recycled.

This is my scrap bag from Brecon, I know that I have too many scraps already but these are full WOF strips and there is not a selvedge edge anywhere. No waste there, I have something in mind for this but not until the new year.

Ben is excited at the smells from the kitchen, he knows from experience that he will get extra in his dish tonight. He is walking around and every time he passes me he stops and looks at me with big eyes.

I made some gram flour pastry the other day, just half fat to flour and a little water. It was very soft, no gluten, so I rolled it out on baking parchment, used some pumpkin and chickpea curry as a filling and baked as usual. I warmed a piece up for lunch and it was delicious, it is a knife and fork job though, the pastry is far too crumbly for finger food. I will be using gram flour for the pot pie tonight, I will use a little baking powder and some soured milk for lightness and perhaps a little cheese. I will let you know tomorrow how it was.

That's all for now, the kettle is calling me.

              TTFN                                                        Pam