Earlier last week, Boris Johnson joined forces with several celebrity chefs to urge Londoners to use leftovers from meals for tasty recipes rather than letting this perfectly good food go to waste. An important message as in the UK alone 6.7 million tones of food is thrown away every year and wasting this food costs the average family around £420 per year. If we all stopped wasting food that could be eaten, the CO2 impact would also be the same as taking 1 out of every 5 cars off the road!
If you’re looking for inspiration on reusing leftovers, the Recycle for London website has all the celebrity chef recipes for cooked food which we often end up chucking out like bread, meat, fish, rice and potatoes. In our home, leftover risotto balls are a tasty regualr at meal times and I’m very intrigued to have a go at Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstalls Roast Potato Gnocchi next time we go a little overboard on the Sunday roasties.
To reduce the amount of leftovers at meal times a few simple steps such as planning meals, shopping in advance and keeping meal portions to the correct sizes will all help. We also have a few products on the website which can help keep food fresh for longer and out of the bin.
The Ethylene Gas Guardian (£3.99) absorbs the gas given off by fruit and veg which in turn helps to keep them fresh for longer. The Count On It food freshness labels (£1.99) are designed to tell you at a glance if food is still fresh and safe to eat helping you to get the most out of it whilst the Eco Cooler (£69) uses natural cooling properties to store fruit and veg at the optimum temperatures keeping them fresh for longer.
To pick up a few more tips on keeping food out of the bin check the Lovefoodhatewaste website and for some more tasty recipes like these simple banana bread ones (great for blackened bananas!) take a look at MyDish, a new website which some people might have spotted on last weeks Dragons Den.
