How much food do you waste?

Jellybaby_1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119851302#Comment_119851302

Funnily enough, as you have banana and yogurt, you are well on the way to preparing my breakfast which consists of mashed banana, yogurt, ground flaxseed, chopped nuts and honey. It's delicious! Or I might have porridge with mashed banana and honey. Very delicious!

Gloomtastic!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119851379#Comment_119851379

Thanks for that. The 40% wasted in CDCs would surely affect margins significantly for either the retailer or producer and they would do something about it.

CPTM

We're trying to keep our food bills below 100 euro per week. Family of three and a new baby. Used to be 120 or more. But making this change has made me use food more efficiently and making do with something leftover rather than going out to the shops for something fresh.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058169938/how-much-food-do-you-waste

Do you reuse your tin foil? You might be better with freezer bags which you can reuse many times, and you get to see the contents.

phormium

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119851302#Comment_119851302

Bananas I would make into banana bread or even handier in muffin form.

Could probably even find a recipe for them that uses buttermilk and substitute the yogurt for that, thinned down a bit with a drop of milk.

I often have some of that large Lidl carton of natural yogurt left as I buy it for visitors coming and it doesn't all get used and I wouldn't eat it so I use it up instead of buttermilk in bread/scones/cakes even. That porridge bread recipe that was all the rage for a while uses yogurt. My best brown bread is half and half porridge/brown flour and yogurt/buttermilk for the liquid.

XLR 8

The price of shrinkage on fresh prepared food is built into the retail price in store. Never underestimate the ability of these companies to cover themselves at every opportunity. I will give you an example. A 2L bottle of a any leading soft drinks manufacturer product, cost approx 53c to produce, the price charged to the retailer is approx €1.22 the price we pay is approx €2.50 there will be very little shrinkage on a item such as that. Retailers are entitled to make a profit. The problem is fresh food, it cannot follow the same path through the system without suffering. A fresh product leaving a manufacturing facility with say an 11 day shelf life can arrive in store with as little as 5 days remaining. This is where the waste begins. Shoppers keen to stock up on products for the following week are now buying food that will scarcely last a week. Inevitably they buy it and then if not used it generates waste. Data from loyalty cards was to be used to eliminate waste but for whatever reason it has failed miserably.

Space Dog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119851302#Comment_119851302

Lidl do individual small tubs of organic natural yoghurt, they come in 150 grams. It's their own Milbona brand.

Stephen_Maturin

It’s a personal point of pride for me how little food waste I create - I get a weird sense of satisfaction out of using every last bit and piece of anything.

I manage this through planning meals, judicious use of my freezer, awareness of what I actually have in my fridge and enjoyment in getting creative with whatever is there to use in the day or two before you do a shop. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m on ready steady cook and have to come up with a tasty meal out of a random assortment of ingredients.

My housemate on the other hand is a disgrace - seems to throw out half of every meal he cooks, never keeps any leftovers, remaining ingredients are never put in Tupperware etc just left till they rot and are discarded…worst of all he’ll occasionally buy a full chicken, eat about 55% of it and then throw the rest in the bin carcass and all. I’m not all hippy dippy but that is an insult to the animal that gave its life for you to have that meat, it pisses me off, have a bit of respect and appreciation for what we have.

phormium

Reminds me of a post I read somewhere where a person roasted a chicken every week, ate the breasts and threw away the rest! Got flamed as you can imagine!

trashcan

I think I’m pretty good with waste and leftovers. I’ve seen a few people mention bread. No excuse at all for throwing out bread. Make stale bread into breadcrumbs, they keep in the freezer forever. Can be used to coat meat and fish, which is a great way to cook chicken and pork especially. Made pork schnitzels yesterday with breadcrumbs from the freezer. I had the pork frozen raw from a pork loin that I cooked half of and froze the other half. Defrosted it, batted it out thinly, cover in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, cooks in about 5 minutes on the pan.

phormium

I agree about the bread, I make breadcrumbs like yourself but I have two bags in freezer, one is bread blitzed with scraps of cheese so that is the bag of crumb for fish pie or similar :)

woodchuck

I'll admit I throw out the end of bread (usually just the heels). Breadcrumbs are a good idea, but I don't own anything to blitz the bread with - is there any easy way to make breadcrumbs without buying a gadget?

phormium

You need a gadget really, small one would do but if you have no other use for it then it probably cancels out the cost of saving a few heels of bread! I have 3 such gadgets of varying size and one is used almost daily so I'm trying to imagine a household that has no use for even one lol. Do you have any sort of blender, nutribullet type thing even? Old style liquidiser?

the beer revolu

If you toast the bread a bit, you can make breadcrumbs with a coarse grater. Not ideal but I have done it.

woodchuck

Thanks for the tips guys!

No, I don't have any sort of blender at all 🙈 Every now and again I think about getting a handheld blender for soups and sauces, but I assume it still wouldn't be suitable for breadcrumbs. It's not even the money really, it's storage space for me when it comes to kitchen gadgets.

phormium

Handheld yoke I would use least of all and didn't even count it, only good for soup really.

Jellybaby_1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119884586#Comment_119884586

Ah now what did our parents do in the past? They did what my mother, and I did long before blenders, food processors and the like were around. A box grater of course, and make sure the bread is a bit on the stale side!! Then you could give them a toasting on a dry pan and then freeze them. Do you have any kind of a grater? You do have to mind your fingers but I used it when I was around 12 years old for my mother at Christmas so it shouldn't be beyond any careful adult! Good luck, sure you'll be grand!! 🙂

phormium

My grandmother actually used to cut up bread in small dice for her stuffing, didn't use breadcrumbs for it which I would usually do, it was nice stuffing too, might do some of that for Christmas!

I'd throw it away before I'd grate it lol, hate grating stuff, use a lot of lemon rind and I like to do about 20 at a time when they are on special offer as I hate it so much it's better to get it all done in one go. I freeze the rind then and can just use as needed.

Graces7

Resourceful folk after my own heart...

When I had chickens ... and a dog...

the beer revolu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119887823#Comment_119887823

We do similar but we use a veg peeler to take the zest off - much quicker and easier that grating. The frozen strips of zest are very easy to chop finely. We freeze the juice, too.

Gloomtastic!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119890090#Comment_119890090

Your freezer must smell nice. 😋

phormium

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119890651#Comment_119890651

I peel the lemons like that and slice for things like cumberland sauce for example but for cakes/lemon curd/buttercream you need it grated really and that's a lot of what I use it for. I'm not a huge fan of having to peel them either! 😁

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119887079#Comment_119887079

A few pages back on the general chat thread, I was singing the praise of my Bosch ErgoMixx which is a stick blender with a tiny food processor jar (chopper, various blade types etc). It does not use much storage space at all - my older one is up in a holiday house where it replaced a previous stick blender and a mixer that was probably used once a decade, in less space combined.

https://www.bosch-home.ie/productlist/food-preparation/hand-blenders/ergomixx/MSM6S90BGB

I think that's it. 99 quid normally

the beer revolu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119890943#Comment_119890943

Try freezing a strip of zest taken with a peeler. Being frozen makes it really easy to chop it super fine. Try it - you may never have to grate again!

Tree

Use the vegetable peeler to zest and grind with some of the sugar gets you a fine enough result

Graces7

As a War Baby who grew up with strict rationing, we wasted nothing and that habit has stayed with me. it does mean thinking ahead more as I am on my own.... but then there is the compost heap.. When at primary school, the school dinner leftovers etc went to a local pig farmer.

With a freezer there is no need for any waste?

woodchuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119891240#Comment_119891240

Takes for the recommendation ☺️