Life: Food Waste Challenge Week 2

Week 2 started with a complete freezer inventory which has revealed that I have lots of random pieces of fish (salmon, trout, sea bass), plus a stash of recently home-frozen veg: beetroot, green beans, spinach.

My meal plan for the week must incorporate some mozzarella which is dated 10 Feb and I also have quite a lot of potatoes. Potatoes don’t feature all that heavily in our meals but this week, this will have to change that. I have read somewhere that keeping an apple in with them helps prolong their life so that’s worth a try.

Sunday

Lunch

As the day started with a large cooked breakfast at the Acorn Inn, I just had the end slice of a loaf of bread toasted for a snack at lunchtime.

Dinner

In order to prevent waste, we cut our joint of pork for roast into two and froze one of them. Apple sauce was made with some home frozen Bramley apples (gently reheated with a little water). I’m really interested in the compleat movement - the idea that everything should be eaten - and so I tried roast potatoes with their skins on which are actually really tasty. The carrots that I cooked were small chantenay ones which may also be eaten in their entirety.

Annoyingly there was still some leftover pork. It really does go to show how we cook too much, or are just bad at judging what is enough.

Actual food waste: small amount of leftover chicken from Thursday that had gone dry in the fridge.

Monday

Lunch

Leftover pork and apple sauce make a surprisingly good sandwich.

Dinner

A trusty old favourite of Tomato and Mozzarella Pasta Bake used up all the dated mozzarella.

Additional

Continuing with the reduced plastic theme from last week, I rustled up some unconventional Chocolate Crispie Cakes with a half a box of abandoned crunchy nut clusters with some melted milk chocolate. It seems you can make these with pretty much any cereal. Yum!

Actual food waste: apple core, a little of the pasta bake (usually I would have had it cold for lunch tomorrow but I have a meeting with lunch provided), garlic peel

Tuesday

Dinner

Smoked haddock, leek and barley risotto is a new recipe for me to try and it uses three ingredients that have been languishing around : vermouth (why did I ever think I would drink this stuff?), some pearl barley which has been in a kilner jar for a very long time and some of the spinach that I froze last week.

Actual food waste: fish skin, outer leaves of leek

Wednesday

Breakfast

Slices of toasted baguette that are a bit stale. Bizarrely, this is one of my favourite breakfasts, slathered with butter and jam but must be drunk with strong coffee. I feel very French eating this.

Dinner

A warming steak and ale pie filling was left to slow cook all day and served with a side of puff pastry, some home frozen green beans and peas.

Additional

Some grated cheddar cheese sprinkled onto the unused puff pastry and baked alongside the pie crusts has provided me with a box of cheese straws.

Actual food waste: onion skin, apple core

Thursday

Dinner

Coq au vin traybake using whole chantenay carrots and served with broccoli including stalks. Bless my husband, he prepared 4 chicken breasts for 3 of us, so one has gone into the freezer (before cooking) stopping leftovers before they are created. Some of the potatoes, which now have eyes, have been sliced into wedges (skin on) for this traybake.

Actual food waste: half a bag of salad which has 2 days on it but has definitely gone over, onion skin, garlic peel, the remaining baguette (new resolve is not to buy a ruddy baguette!)

Friday

Aah, Valentines Day! I bought both my lunch and dinner today and nothing was wasted.

Actual food waste: zero

Saturday

Still in the fridge are two half tins of baked beans, half a tin of chopped tomatoes. Nothing else looks terribly appealing. What is the balance between having too much and wasting it and having too little variety?

Breakfast

Poached egg on (home frozen) spinach with some very over ripe griddled cherry tomatoes.

Lunch

The chopped tomatoes were made into a pasta sauce for my son, and my husband ate the beans - win!

Dinner

Another new recipe Easy Cheesy Toad in the Hole which used up a leek. I didn’t use the whole pack of sausages though but I have already planned to cook them alongside a Roast Chicken tomorrow.

Actual food waste: egg shells, outer leaf of leek

Summary

Still going strong and I feel like this week has been a lot more inventive.

Love Mrs Jones x