Throwing away hoarded food.

I am making macaroni cheese today. I hate to show off but gave been cleaning kitchen cupboards this week and found a packet of macaroni in the back of the cupboard needing to be used. I shall add any bits of leftover veg and top with tomatoes and plenty of cheese.

It's amazing how many older men seem incapable of cooking anything. How have they reached 70 or 80 without some ability. My ex keeps an empty fridge as he eats out and now the family have to get him ready meals.

Hetty I think you are being a little unfair,

I think the reason many people are not freezing food is because they only have fridge freezers and the relatively small freezer part is full and therefore they cannot freeze everything and have no alternative to ditching food, although some could be cooked when it is a day or two after sell by date and then kept for a few days longer as cooked food in the fridge, but I suspect some people's fridges are choc-a-bloc as well.

I have a big chest freezer - and a small spare one, currently not in use, so I can always find freezer space, where others cannot.

I melted some marmite in water the other day and stuck my very dry end of bread loaf in it ?

Pikachu, they don't freeze it because - they are idiots!

I was bound to happen. Most had no idea what they were buying and how they would use it. They were simply hoovering up anything on the shelves.

I bought a heap of vegetables shortly before we went into lockdown in New Zealand with the intention of preparing batches of one meal for immediate consumption and at least two for the freezer. I also made two huge batches of soup because I had a large supply of home-made stock. So the freezer is now crammed with beef stew, shepherds pie, cauliflower cheese, leek, carrot and potato soup, onion soup, several bags labelled chicken thing and spicy chicken thing, chilli con carne, Chinese chicken and some other stuff that comes as a pleasant surprise when I rummage in the drawers. There is also a drawer of raw meat and a drawer of raw fish.

I passed a plastic box of the leek, carrot and potato soup on to my ex – a regular visitor before the lockdown – and plan to deliver some more bits and pieces to him now that our car has been repaired; we collected it the day before the lockdown. (They can be left outside on the steps or in the covered bit outside his house.) He can cook but only basics. Not that there is anything wrong with basics, but they can get boring and I, as a professional cookbook author, have a somewhat larger repertoire. I still have some veggies in the salad drawer of the fridge and shall probably use them up tomorrow.

Meanwhile, he is ordering deliveries, which are not yet a problem here, but he is choosing to do some of his shopping personally at the supermarket. Our daughter has told him off, then contacted me so that I could tell him off because that is just silly, except in the case of things like milk and, maybe bread. As a family, we are watching out for each other and certainly not wasting food.

When my son shared a house with seven others at university he was the only one who could cook at all. Some of the others had never even switched on a kettle let alone a cooker. They hadn’t a clue about doing their laundry either.

A colleague used to boast that her family didn’t even know where the kitchen was and would comment that I was lucky that OH and the children would have a meal ready when I was on a late shift as if my lot were born knowing how to take care of themselves.

On the Greg Wallace programme the people who are on the show haven’t a clue about feeding their family yet often have a large fridge crammed with food that they presumably buy and then throw out on a weekly basis whilst spending a fortune on takeaways. I wonder if they will change their habits after this shocking wake up call.

Artdecogran, yes absolutely make you right! One of my daughters is the same about sell by and best before dates! Soooo frustrating.

My biggest gripe is these stupid people stripped the shelves and prevented others from buying this produce. Will they feel guilty? Somehow I doubt it. Selfishness, greed and awareness rarely inhabit the same brain.

Perhaps folk will learn from the experience.

There were only chicken bones and lemon rind in our food bin for collection last week, not that there's ever very much in it, but it was a little less than usual. Like you M0nica veg peelings etc go in the composter.

I really don't get people who over buy fresh foods and then don't use it. Surely if you are going to buy more than you usually would but possibly even have fewer people eating it than you normally would do you batch cook to use it up??
What a wasteful and selfish lot.

I would like to ram all the wasted fresh food down their greedy throats.

I hope their credit card bills cause them immense pain.

I think it’s also the ‘brainwashing’ of don’t use past the sell by/use by date. I’ve used vegetables 3 months past the date, sure they were a little wrinkled but absolutely fine when cooked. Despite my best teaching one of my DS thinks a poison switch happens at midnight on the use by date.

This was bound to happen.
Overbuying and no idea what to do to utilise it.
I hate to malign young people but they haven’t been taught by parents and no experience how to deal with leftovers and making do with what they have in.
I do not blame them at all, it is progress and higher living standards.
I was born in 1937 and have lived through and experienced it all.
They haven’t. Perhaps some will learn now.

Bloody morons.

I agree with Ellan,it’s just pure greed.

Notanan, I saw an article and photos in the Daily Mail.

The bin men I know say it’s worse than after Christmas.

Why don’t they freeze any extra vegetables?

notanan. There are reports and photos from local papers taken by local councillors. Why do you not believe them?

I bought more fresh vegetables than usual in my last Tesco order (weeks ago!) knowing that I had space in the freezer for lots of soup, which would be easy to heat up if I wasn't well. I have lentil carrot cabbage and onion, beans bacon and vegetables, sweet potato carrot and onion , beetroot and (tinned) tomato, carrot and coriander. I still have onions and baking potatoes in the vegetable rack but I am starting on frozen or tinned veg with meals.

That was planning, not panic over-buying. Why don't people think ahead a bit at what they will DO with the stuff they fill their trolleys with?

Pure unadulterated greed !! No other words for it. Avarice.

How anyone could be stupid enough to overbuy fresh produce just beggars belief. Surely they knew it would all go off before they could use it all up? Unfortunately there's no cure for stupid

I have bought extra food but only store cupboard stuff eg tins , flour , cooking oil and frozen veg.
My freezer has two and a half drawers and there are two of us in the house
I have done so to cut the number of trips I need to make to the shops. It will all be eaten as I am cooking smaller portions to avoid waste or leftovers.

I shudder to think how much is going to be sent to landfill and can the rats be far away!