Chucking out food

I was born just after the war and we lived with my Gran. Mum and Gran used their eyes and noses to judge food and taught me to do the same.

With a pair of guinea pigs, a dog and an ever-hungry younger family member to feed when I am childminding him, I very seldom have to make that judgement.

The Council collect our food waste weekly, but I usually put our food waste (egg shells chicken bones after they've been boiled for stock, tea bags) out once a fortnight.

Friday nights I remove all vegetables from the fridge, steam them, finish up the bag of grated cheese on top and use the last yoghurt - job done! Fridge empty and cleaned ready for Saturday's shopping trip.

Iffy lettuce can be used up in stir fries - add it right at the end, it disappears to almost nothing - and makes you feel very virtuous for not wasting it.

Sell by and use by dates are the biggest cause of food waste. I use my born given skills of sight and smell to determine whether somethings are ok to eat. If something is looking ‘on the turn’ it gets eaten that day. Never had upset stomach or food poisoning

We try not to waste food but do have to occasionally put stuff out in the council food compost bin. As a two person household it can be tricky to avoid waste - especially in the warmer months. Better to compost than put in black sacks in my opinion.

from my soapbox!

i’m appalled and dismayed at the amount of food waste nowadays, and despite campaigns to try and educate people, it seems to be increasing.
i ignore sell by/best by/use by dates, trusting to common sense and smell and in all my 80 years have never had an adverse reaction from eating anything that others would have thrown out long before. i would add though that I am extremely careful when it comes to fresh meat and fish.
there was little pre packed food in my young days, and when it became available, there were no dates on anything, it was left to the judgment of the consumer.
i was brought up to 'waste not, want not' and wasting food was considered almost as a sin.

it pains me to throw food away and i try to never to do it. teabags are the only thing i regularly dispose of and by that, i mean the just bags after opening them and putting the leaves in the compost, eggshells are dried and crushed for use to deter slugs rather than use the toxic pellets.
mould can be cut off cheese and scraped off jam and they are quite safely used, even veg, for example carrots that are going black are perfectly edible if the black is washed or peeled off and broccoli that is going yellow or any veg past its best can be used in soup, and anything in tins lasts for years.
any leftovers in this house that really are too far gone to use are fed to our cats or guinea pigs or put in the garden for birds or foxes

no doubt this will horrify many of you but for my breakfast today i had yoghurt from a large opened tub that had got to the back of the fridge, it was dated february 14 and had started to go mouldy. i scraped it off, tasted it, and as it was perfectly edible, i ate it!

end of rant!

I was brought up in the 50s, by grandparents who'd struggled through two lots of wartimes and the years in between, so it REALLY goes against the grain to throw out usable food . Each day, any left-overs take priority for being used up in one way, or another.

Yesterday, I went through the bottom drawer of the fridge and made 'Fridge Bottom Soup' in the pressure cooker - onion, a leek, two bendy carrots, three bendy parsnips, a chunk of celery, a very lonely courgette, bunch of very wilted spring onions, PLUS two Ham Stock Cubes, one Veg Stock Cube, some dried mixed herbs, handful of red lentils and a 'squidge' of tomato puree. It's now sitting in takeaway containers (rescued from my daughter's house, I might add) and in the fridge. IF it's not used in the next 2 days, it'll go in the freezer .

I can QUITE understand the OP's concern about three avocados that have actually gone mouldy - would have been totally beyond use by that stage. Not something that I would have bought in the first place though - I can't abide the darn things .

OH has recently cut down on the amount of bread that he's been eating, so that's been going stale - I'm Coeliac and he isn't, so it's difficult to keep track of. Around here there are lots of seagulls, pigeons and squirrels that are always raiding the bird-feeders that my neighbours provide for the smaller birds. My left-over bread gets thrown onto the garage roof - at least it keeps the larger birds and squirrels occupied, so that the sparrows, tits, robins etc can enjoy their seed and peanuts in peace .

Virtually no food gets thrown out here. Any left overs go into next meal in another form. Even crusts get blitzed into bread crumbs!

I make ‘fridge bottom soup’ too, olliebeak, only in this house it’s called ‘dustbin’ - (my mother’s term).
I also use all past-their-best veg, inc. sprouts that look manky, but fine once you peel the outside leaves off, not to mention that last, lonely, dried up rasher of bacon or slice of ham - snip up with scissors and fry gently with the onions. Plus of course any leftover mash, etc., - not that there’s often any of that in this house.

Here’s a tip I learned fairly recently, for anyone who doesn’t know - if you’re not going to use leftover parsley before it goes yellow, rinse under the tap, shake off excess water, wrap tightly in foil, and freeze. You can later chop or slice off enough for a sauce or a soup.

I like the idea of mouldy soup. We have "sad" soup for lunch towards the end of the week so that all the sad and wizened veg are used up. Always tasty. It was lamb yesterday so looking forward to Delia's rissoles for tea with left over gravy. I enjoy sitting down on a Sunday and planning for the week. At the back of the food diary, I have lists of ideas for meals. This has been more useful in Lockdown when we are trying to limit shopping to once a week. David Attenborough was asked recently about a single piece of advice he would give and his answer was "Don't waste anything". From reading this post, sounds like gransnetters are right behind him.

I don't throw much food out, if I do its usually lettuce. I search the veg draw for any odd bits of veg hanging around and put them in the soup maker. Potatoes, either cooked and in the fridge or ones that are raw and have started to sprout are also put in the soup maker to thicken the soup. with stuff in the fridge I check it by smelling it, if it smells offensive then its out otherwise I use it.

I don't throw much out at all but I do shop several times a week so I have fresh food to eat most of the time anyway. I do have 6 monthly clear out of larder & I must admit I find the odd thing at the back that has not been used in time- I am not paranoid about eat by dates so it has to be VERY old.
My main problem- especially at the moment when he is at home all day is DH will buy stuff when he is out shopping
(& he LOVES shopping!). He buys really odd things that he 'fancies' but rarely eats so I usually finish up eating them to save chucking them away. Unless they are nuts which I loathe.

I very rarely throw food out. Waste not want not is my household motto

All I throw away at the end of the week is half a cucumber and the outer leaves of a lettuce.
I don't worry about the best before dates but use by dates, if it's meat then I'll only go a couple of days over.
When I lived at home I remember cutting the green mould off the block of cheese. I wouldn't do it now though, it would get binned.

I throw very little out, my rubbish is mostly packaging! Trying to reduce this too. If avocados are over ripe I used them in chocolate brownies, they give a lovely smooth fudge like texture. I have a compost bin and a wormery for peelings and any veg that do go a bit off (not very often). My freezers are full and I rotate items. If I have any packets or tins that I know won’t be used I take them to the food bank rather than let them go out of date and then be thrown away. I grow my own veg and pick as I want it.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this as the thread is very long but you can peel and stone advocados and put them in the freezer and then can add them to smoothies or similar

Nannina Sell by and use by dates are the biggest cause of food waste

Unfortunately I think I heard somewhere that the waste is far greater earlier in the supply chain. Domestic waste, viewed over the country as a whole, is huge, but even if we all reduced our waste by a large proportion, it wouldn't make much difference to the total if you include the food industry's contribution.

A child of rationing here and it pains me to throw anything out, especially bread, for some reason, I think it brings bad luck, maybe it’s something I heard growing up.
Freezing bread is excellent and it can be toasted straight out of the freezer. Bits of bread go to the birds, so that’s ok.
I keep a small dish by the kettle for teabags and use them for more than one mug by ‘mashing’ them for the next cup.
One of my best presents was a Nutri Bullet from my daughter as I pop in bits and pieces from the fridge for a nice smoothie.
My latest gripe is frustration with sealed blister packs of foods. I had to cut one open yesterday for minted lamb chops and they are positively dangerous, awkward and such lethal sharp edges.

I chucked a nectarine out a few years back and it has grown into a lovely tree in the garden . If our potatoes sprout I plant them and same with garlic. They all grow very well and it gives me a good feeling to harvest the produce knowing at least it didn’t go to the tip. We have many potatoes growing amongst the flowers! I liked the tip about putting spare avos in the fridge , I didn’t know you could store them that way and will definitely try it next time.

Thanks for the tip JaneJudge. Useful.
Ditto Shropshirelass

Shop bought hummus is use within 2/3 days. Is this important? It's difficult to use it all.

nanna8 I grew some orange and lemon 'trees' from pips years ago but, of course, in this country they didn't grow large and had to be kept in pots because of bringing them in in cold weather.
I can't remember what happened to them, probably gave them away when we moved.

I put the pips in a polythene bag with damp soil and they sprouted.

You could grow an avocado tree ...

I'm going back 30 years now (as I still remember vividly). When the four children were small (and money was tight) we held a birthday party for my youngest daughter.

As usual we had the table stacked with all the traditional party food, sausage rolls, tiny sandwiches, cupcakes, cheese/pineapple sticks, crisps etc.

After eating, we went into the garden for pass the parcel. My neighbour said 'I'll tidy up for you' and went back indoors.

Later, I went in to find the table cleared, plates in the sink - and all the food in the bin! I managed not to say anything but my husband was hopping mad and we never asked her in again.

nadateturbe I am currently eating a pot of hummous I opened bnearly a fortnight ago. I often do it.

Hummous does freeze, so decant a small quanity in to a plastic container and put it in the fridge and freeze the rest until you need it.

Gosh Monica. I thought I was getting braver eating it after four days.
Good tip about freezing. Thank you.
Hetty even I wouldn't do that. How wasteful!