In this episode, we talk about all the ways you can reduce food wastage in your own home. According to AusHarvest, the government estimates that food wastage in Australia costs the economy a whopping $20 billion annually! With over five million tonnes of food that ending up in landfill, from households and the commercial sector. These figures become a little close to the heart when it‰’s also revealed that 35% of the average household bin is full of food wastage. For this reason, it‰’s time to play your part in reducing this wastage, and in turn, saving yourself a lot of money.

1. Re-use all of your food

Re-purpose is the theme of this tip. This means turning your food or meals into something else. For example, transform leftover casserole or a curry into a pie. This way you have yourself a completely different meal without any wastage. It‰’s so easy to grab more than you can eat at the fresh produce aisle at your local grocer, and in turn, you then need to throw out rotten foods. We are all totally guilty of this! So, with that here are some of our best re-purpose tips:

Rotate your food around, move older items of fresh produce to the front of your fridge, with newer items at the back, separate newer and older items on shelves which serves as an encouraging tip to use up what‰’s in front of you.

2. Meal planning

We have our Meals Made Easy meal program, but if you don‰’t follow that, meal plan yourself! Sit yourself down and write a shopping list, what you‰’re going to cook and exactly what you need to buy. This not only saves you money but stops you from impulse buying, which is so easy to do. This is one way to always stay within your budget and stress less about grocery shopping.

3. Freeze anything you can

Freeze any and all fresh produce that you can. Freeze loaves of bread and leftovers, and anything else that’s about to go off in your fridge:

  • Tracey freezes yoghurt and later uses it for cakes, slices, casseroles or curries.
  • Buy two or three big bulbs of garlic, peel them all and place in the freezer in bags.
  • You can also chop up onions, blitz in the Thermomix and freeze for later use.
  • Cream is really easy to freeze and it can be re-used in future recipes or can be made into butter.
  • Herbs easily freeze too!
  • Veggie scraps and peels are good to freeze and make veggie stock out of, or again food for your pooch or chickens!
  • Freeze zest from lemons and limes – spread them out on a baking tray with baking paper, allowing it to freeze, then bundle the zest up and place into ziplock bags. If you have your own lemon tree, rather than letting them fall to the ground and rot, pick them up, juice into little ice cubes or zip lock bags.
  • Peel any bananas that are going brown and freeze them (they make the best banana ice cream in the Thermomix, and you can add ingredients like cacao or raspberries. Or use them for a tasty banana loaf or muffins.)
  • Bulk buy stone fruit in summer, remove the pips, stew them, and then freeze the fruit stew. You can also take the pip out and freeze any fruit in halves.
  • Freeze leftover icing mixture.
  • If you‰’ve opened a tin of condensed milk and don‰’t use it all, it will last months in the freezer.
  • Crack eggs open into ice cube trays and freeze them. If you‰’re making a pavlova, rather than throwing the yolks away, you can freeze those too (great for making ice cream).
  • If you‰’re anything like us, you may not eat the end crusts from a loaf of bread, cut them off and freeze those and blitz into bread crumbs, placing back into the freezer.

4. Monitor what you throw away

This one might shock you! Purchase a small whiteboard or something similar and place it next to the fridge. Any time anyone in your family throws off-food n the bin, get them to write it down. This will help you to evaluate what you could have frozen or re-purposed, and helps you to visualize just how much money is being thrown away!

5. Create use it up meal

At the end of the week, come up with a creative meal idea that allows you to use all of the remaining fresh produce in your fridge.

  • Chop up all of your left-over veggies and make fried rice, then freeze the un-eaten fried rice for another day.
  • You can also use veggies for stir-frys and vegetarian lasagne (see resources below for our great recipe ideas) or minestrone soup.
  • Grate carrots, zucchini, capsicum and use those fillings in a healthy omelette.
  • Pizza or pizza pockets are both great meals to incorporate any leftover foods (this is great for disguising veggies for fussy eaters).

6. Airtight containers

The better storage you have, the less food wastage you‰’ll have. If you‰’re noticing that items are going stale, you might see that it‰’s the container that it‰’s stored in. The same goes for opening up a packet of biscuits or chips, and throwing them back into the pantry without properly covering them! Again, this is one way to be pouring your money down the drain, especially if you have young children that don‰’t think too far ahead. Keep a couple of spare airtight containers for these occasions.

7. Preserve or pickle

In berry season, makeup stockpiles of jam, as it lasts so long when stored correctly. You could easily get a whole year‰’s worth of jam out of your stockpile. You can preserve lemons by placing them in a glass jar full of vinegar and black peppercorns.

If you have leftover lemons that have already had the juice squeezed out and used, rather than throwing them out, place them in a bottle of white vinegar. Put aside in your pantry and after 4-6 weeks, you‰’ll have your own lemon-infused vinegar to use as a household cleaner! You can do this with any citrus fruits including grapefruit, oranges, and limes.

Tomatoes are super cheap in season, you can even buy seconds at your fruit shop, where you‰’ll be able to grab a huge bag for under around $5. To preserve them, measure out 400g, blitz in a food processor and store them in the freezer. There you have your tinned tomatoes! Or you could easily make tomato sauce, chutney or relish.

8. Compost

There are so many great websites out there to teach you how to build a great compost. You can save egg shells, blitz up in your food processor and sprinkle through your garden. Snails hate sliding over broken eggs shells, so that‰’ll help protect your plants!

Banana skins are amazing blitzed with water and poured around citrus trees. Jump online and research how best you can run your own compost system (see resources to get started). You can even buy compost systems that can sit in your sink cupboard from Bunnings, which break down food scraps into liquid compost, that you can pour on your garden as fertiliser.

9. Don‰’t overserve

This tip is for all those times that you serve up a massive plate of food, that you can‰’t possibly eat. Be serving-wise to what your family will consume that night unless of course, you‰’re cooking in bulk for leftovers. The same goes for packing your kid‰’s lunchboxes. If your children are constantly coming home with food left in their lunchboxes, that you know they actually like, perhaps you‰’re giving them way too much.

10. Do a clean-out

It‰’s time to jump into your fridge and pantry and pull out any old items, including those that are well past their best before date expiry date (use by date). Remember, these are two different phrases used in the food world, and it‰’s OK to have a bit of leeway on something that is best before.

If you can, donate any items that might have only just passed their best before date to homeless shelters, so that they can repurpose them. Perhaps there are items that have been sitting in the back of your pantry for months, without being used that can also be donated.

If you can‰’t come to terms with throwing out food you spent money on, but it needs to be used up soon, again do a huge cook-up and take to a charity, elderly neighbour or friends or family going through a rough time. You will get so much joy out of this!

With a bit of meal planning, you‰’ll notice that you will no longer have those items that sit in the cupboard until after their use by date. There are so many ways to save food, that you would otherwise just toss into the rubbish bin. By planning ahead, you‰’ll be saving yourself a lot of money, time and also doing your bit for the environment!

Resources