I always try to avoid food waste. We are lucky to live within reasonable distance of a fair number of good food shops, many of them being small local shops rather than supermarkets. So I buy little but frequently, often shopping for groceries on the way home from work. This means we cut down on the amount of food that is sitting around the kitchen.
I also usually buy local and/or organically grown produce, both of which seem to keep better.
My personal challenge to cutting down on food waste is broccoli stems. I try to choose broccoli with shorter stems and have recently started cutting it differently to use more of the stem. Even so some of that stem is fairy tough and inevitably ends up in the compost. Does anyone have a great recipe for making the hard bits of broccoli stem edible and even tasty?
Here are a few ideas for reducing food waste:
* Avoid Overpackaged food
* Recycle food and drink packaging where possible
* Plan your menus and buy only what you need when you need it
* Store your food properly
* Learn some recipes for using leftovers
* Compost any raw fruit and veg that go off
For Zero Waste Week
You can read Zero Waste's blogpost for Organic Fortnight in this post here.
broccoli stems - I think you are going to get heaps of suggestions from your lovely readers. I would plump for soup, with the addition of some cooked potato and some garlicky boursin cheese :)
ReplyDeleteI was also going to say soup Juliet - broccoli goes very well with blue Stilton in soup - gosh my mouth is watering as I type.
ReplyDeleteIf you puree those stems you can use them in a broccoli/cheese soup along with a few of the heads. Boil them first until the stems are a little tender and then put them in a food processor or blender.
ReplyDeleteI have a good recipe for cream of broccoli soup, but not with cheese. If I can find it, I will send it to you.
ReplyDeleteMost any of those tough pieces of veggies in with some chicken broth and some beans/barley/peas/rice and some tomatoes --- nice thick soup with plenty to eat later on!
ReplyDelete__Once... here, it was the corner store, and yes the shopping was a daily measure, as were the steps to the back yard garden. Far less went to waste. I think, too, far less went to waist.
ReplyDelete__Though just a child after WW2, I remember those days! Squash and potatoes, onions and corn! roasted at the outside fires.
__I'm hungry! _m
Looks like everyone already said "soup." My grandbaby looooooves broccoli & cheese soup, so that was an easy one!
ReplyDeletelove your idea of shopping for what you need that day. i must try that. so much food would be saved that way. hope all is well.
ReplyDeleteBrocolli is full of worms
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tips - good stuff!
ReplyDeleteActually, I like nibbling the hard bits of broccoli stems raw.
ReplyDeleteThere is a huge amount of food waste here at the moment, all the food and drink that came off the supermarket shelves in the earthquake has to be dumped :(
The soups are a great use for broccoli stems, but I also like to peel them and slice or juilienne and add to salads. I once attended a pot luck salad lunch where someone had done a really great broccoli, radish, and water chestnut salad. It's been years, but I think the whole thing was tossed in Ranch dressing or mayo. Crunchy and yummy.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea. However, soup does sound good. I really need to learn more about all of this. I do however, only buy what I will eat in one week. I hate to waste food.
ReplyDeleteafter some peeling, i wuold go for a soup, with or without cheese :)
ReplyDeleteor steam it with other harder veggies and mix it with rice to make a side to some fried meat (uhm, it makes me think you are a vegetarian; well, sorry - i think the sidedish with lots of green herbs would do just as well.)
Love this post Juliet. So often we humans waste food - this is a great reminder to pay attention to how we shop.
ReplyDelete