http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/9621276/Italians-reusing-scraps-and-leftover-food.html


So anyone else finding that they are less wasteful with food with money so tight? Or have you always been that way?

I find I'm planning my meals for a week and buying more fresh stuff and less packeted oven meals etc.
Before, we used to buy junk food in more often as we didn't have stuff in all the time.

I never had much waste, ever. Though I am getting cannier with it all. I am looking into how I can make my own bread and cakes, as they are ridiculous in the shops. £2 for 4 scones. I could probably make it for a fraction of that even with energy costs.

I am raiding the local supermarket bargain bins and freezing what I can as a way of cutting costs.

Struggling to weather the economic crisis? The Italians have got nothing on us.

Number of UK poor receiving emergency food aid doubles

When you consider how low the unemployment benefit is you would expect even more needing food aid.

Food in this country is relatively cheap. As a percentage of average income, I think it's amongst the cheapest in he world. This is partly down to the competition between supermarkets, and partly that British phenomenon of "scouring the world's dustbins" for the rubbish we eat. Who was it that said that..?

My mother always re-used scraps as I was growing up and I do it as well. I only throw stuff away, once it starts to go off.

We've always used as much of the ingredients as possible. Leftover sauces from jars get put into containers and frozen. Bread that's starting to go stale gets eaten as toast. Given that my mother brought us up on a weekly budget of £20 for groceries, we've learnt to utilise all food and waste little. However, I've always been cautious of dairy and never consumed it past the BB date. Think I had a nasty experience when I was younger which has always put me off.

I plan what I eat so I don't have leftovers. I'm in te fortunate position at the moment of living by myself and eating what I want. So now it's winter I'm doing slow cooked meats on the Monday, making enough to last all week. Some people find that boring, but it's cheap and delicious.

Likewise, although I tend to do my meat dish on a Saturday when I have more time and it slowly morphs through the week into something completely different. There's no such thing as "left overs" - only "ingredients".

A typical transition might start as lasagne, with the left over meat sauce turning into chilli con carne which then turns into something more like a winter hot-pot or a biriani. Some of the chilli will get frozen down for a quick meal another day. By Friday I'm often eating vegetarian dishes; yesterday was a lentil and rice creation of no name using left over vegetables. There's also meat loaf in the freezer which I made from the same mince I used to do the chilli I had last week.


If something is approaching it's BB date then it either gets frozen down in individual portions, or cooked up into something - or both. Milk for cheese sauce, custard, baking or simply hot chocolate for example.

I wouldn't eat something like liver that was 2 days past, but I do try not to forget about things. This year I did lose some fruit that rotted on the side that was hiding, which annoyed me no end. The other side was still unripe!

Dairy I ignore the sell by completely, I just go on smell. We chuck virtually no food out.

^^ This.

I find the date on milk is very accurate. I want to use it before I can smell it!

But something like smelly cheese? Smelly cheese is smelly, and yes the dates are often conservative. However, pasteurised mild cheeses like Cheshire do go off quite quickly once opened.

I've usually eaten the cheese before it goes off.

I seem to have a magic fridge at work. The milk usually lasts about three weeks past its sell by date. I suspect it's because it's quite cold and I only take the milk out once a day to make a cup of coffee.

I've only just binned half a bottle of gravy browning that expired in 2005. And I still think it was usable.