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Tuesday 3 November 2015

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




19 comments:

  1. I just watched Hugh, I can't believe how wasteful people are, not in my household, I use every scrap of chicken just like you.

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    1. Those of us of a certain age remember when chicken was a luxury meat, we raised poultry for the table and nothing was allowed to be wasted.

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  2. I too watched Hugh, a lot of waste I think comes from greed must have it even if its not going to be used, there is also laziness a lot of people just cant be bothered, like you every bit of chicken is used it goes a long way in rissotos and paellas :-)

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    1. It would be so much better if the supermarkets had half price offers in place of BOGOF,s I have heard checkout staff almost arguing with customers who only have 1 item when they could take a second for free.

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  3. We are the converted, why can't they see how much money they waste, throwing away good food, clothes and other things, I get so angry.

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    1. There is none as deaf as those who do not wish to hear, and boy are there a lot of selective deaf people out there. More money than sense.

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  4. The only thing i waste is lettuce and cumber as i buy fresh of these every week but only use !/4 of a cucumber and half a lettuce and there is no edible meal i can make from the waste , Everything else i use up or freeze . I have just baked a Banana cake as i have been off hooks and didnt eat them , This is going in the freezer for another day xxx

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    1. Last year I had a glut of cucumbers and I couldn't bare to waste them (and I only managed to give a few away), so I pureed them up and froze them in batches and added the puree to soups, spag bog, pasta sauces etc and none of my family realised lol

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    2. I put cucumber and lettuce into stir fry, right at the last minute, and they go into soup.

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  5. Well Pam, as you said, we are all made of different fibre. There will be the likes of us who do their utmost to use, re-use, re-cycle and re-purpose. And then there are those that can`t be bothered, don`t care and don`t mind how much waste they create. Some folks might be inclined to get better educated once confronted with that waste, but we surely can`t win that battle of the waste with all of them.
    Every little effort can help, though. Best way to educate others is to share the skills we have acquired ourselves and tell others what and how we do things. You never know, but just maybe there could be a chance to convert some folk to a better attitude. Keep plotting on and blogging about it all. I shall do the same from my end.

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    1. Even when I was working full time I was the same, every thing made from scratch and no waste. I signed up to Hugh,s war on waste, it would be good if there was much more media cover.

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  6. Love the sound of your gram flour pastry with pumpkin and chickpea curry!

    I felt so sorry for the farmers who were throwing away tonnes of parsnips after all their hard work

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    1. It was amazing, the gram flour has so much flavour, I can not see myself making pastry any other way now. I am going to try it in a sweet pastry with a little cinnamon for apple pie on Sunday. I can not help thinking that perhaps the seed spacing was a little off on the parsnips, I always have 1 row at 4" spacing and 1 at 6" and the machinery is available to do that on a commercial basis.

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  7. I didn't watch the program but I too hate waste too. I can't understand why people would want to throw money away either.

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    1. A great deal of it ignorance, use by, sell by, best before and display until dates are stamped on packaging and can be confusing. Just like price per gram, 100 grams, fluid oz and millilitre, maybe labelling needs addressing.

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  8. I have a bag of gram flour and apart from onion bahjis I hadn't considered using it for GF pastries etc. I'll give it a go for sure. I'm glad I read your blog Pam x

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    1. It makes glorious pastry, a sweet version is in sight for the weekend.I use it in impossible quiche as well.

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  9. I found the programme rather distressing - particularly the farmers who could not sell their parsnips! I am guilty of wasting veggies that I forget are in the fridge - I KNOW I should use them in soup but never quite get round to it - but other than that I like to think I don't waste much. Clothes get given to Emmaus. Mr FD though is less bothered, and is more of a "needs" the latest gadget kind of guy.

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    1. I have wasted a few things here and there, I make it a rule to check through my fridge the day before a shopping trip and factor everything into the next few days meal plan of freeze.

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