What a waste...

A few nights ago, we watched a TV programme talking about food waste.  It set me thinking so I thought I would share my ruminations with y’all.

As a shopper, I like to think I’m fairly savvy – I go for the ‘bogofs’ and such the like, but only when they are items that we actually use.  I try to keep a store-cupboard of essential items in tins and jars – just in case of power cuts, fuel shortages, acts of God and so on but I rotate the contents and keep an eye on the dates.  And here is where it all goes a bit personal.  I’m NOT a slave to the printed dates on our foods.

There are three types of date on our food.  First up is the ‘Sell By’ or ‘Display Until’ date.  This one is purely for the seller, it has nothing to do with whether or not the contents of the package are going to poison you after that date, so in short, as shoppers, the only time that this date becomes of interest to us is when it results in a price decrease!  Nice one!

Image from thisismoney.co.uk

The second sort of date found on our foods is the ‘Best Before’ date.  These are the shopper’s friend again, because they often result in reduced prices on or close to the date on the packaging.  Usually these will be fine to eat for a good while after the date – it’s an advisory date.  Tins and jars of food will have this on them and can safely be used for some years after the date as long as the tin is not damaged or in the case of jars, the seal is still intact.  Even items such as biscuits and other dry goods can safely be used for months after the date as long as the packaging is in good order.

The last sort of date is the ‘Use By’ date.  This one is pretty much there to keep you safe and well – it’s on things like milk, meat and fish that will ‘go off’ quite quickly and cause you some nasty tummy problems if you eat them when they are off.  Generally, this one needs to be stuck to, although one day past the date I would happily use most foods, and even a couple if it looks and smells fine.

So where does this leave the state of my bins you ask?  Ok, for a family of six, we put one bin liner out for collection one week and two the next.  However, we also have a wheelie bin full of recycling – mostly packaging, it has to be said.  Veg peelings are given to the rabbits and guinea pig, except for the potatoes, which I am going to try turning into wine – watch this space.  We don’t waste food on plates – when it’s on your plate – you darned well eat it!  I do pay attention to particular dislikes such as one of our boys really doesn’t like gravy and it’s no hardship to leave it off his plate so we don’t get waste.  We don’t buy anything that we are not going to eat before it goes off, and if we have a glut of fresh foods, we freeze them.  I’m lucky enough to have two freezers which are pretty much full all of the time but again, the contents are rotated to prevent wastage.

When I shop, I have a broad plan in mind of the meals that we will eat for the week.  It is flexible enough to include those all important ‘bogofs’ but not so fluid that I will reach out for anything available.  In my humble opinion, there-in lies the secret to having les food waste.  It’s also a good way to make sure that in a large household, you can try to please all of the people some of the time, which is no mean feat as you probably know.

What strategies do you have for reducing food waste?  Share with me please, I’m always willing to learn.

One of those weeks...

Blogging seems to be hard this week.  There are so many things going on around me and in the wider sense, around the country, that my mind is pretty frazzled.

This is one of the consequences of having Fibromyalgia and ‘information overload’ – the brain just turns tail and hides somewhere out of reach till it all dies down a bit!  I wish I knew where it hides, then I could go hide with it cos at the moment, the rest of me is still trying to deal with four kids on summer break, interviews for the two men in the house, middle daughter in a flap, teen daughter’s hair dye issues, coughs – the sort that bark all through the house all night, Lego and oh soooo much more!

I have four gallons of wine waiting to be bottled and another seven waiting to be racked, none of which I have the energy for, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably not that important.

On Monday, I baked – all day.  We filled eight tins with various muffins, cookies and flapjacks and when I say tins – I mean the tins that your Roses come in for Christmas.

Tuesday, spent trying to recover from Monday, did too much, felt like poo.  Middle son had a call to say that he had an interview on Thursday, so it was all hands on decks to find his certificates and show him how to press his suit.

Wednesday was to be a study day – the morning in the library and then the afternoon with Middle Daughter before hitting the home run to be back in time to host my weekly Healing Circle online.

Thursday – recovering from Wednesday.  Had a migraine and felt sick all day, read nothing, wrote nothing, did nothing – period!

And today, well today I am trying to get to grips with some software but my head is still all muzzy from the week and the weather.  Perhaps I’ll go lie down for a while... but I have to make a shopping list for the weekly shop. 

Dear Husband will be hot footing it home from work tonight to do the regular supermarket run.  Two trolleys, one man, one woman and a list!  We will fight them in the aisles, we will fight them at the checkouts, we will do battle with carrier bags and boxes.  When we reach the hallowed peace of home again, we will do battle with cupboards, fridge and freezers.  We’ll get it all put away just in time to flake out in front of the TV for an hour with luck, before one or both of us fall asleep.

And so we come to the weekend...  is there any wonder this is my first blog post this week?

On My Hobby-Horse

Do you have a hobby?  I mean a real hobby – something that you do for fun in your leisure or spare time.  I don’t mean something that you do outside of your day job to earn more money, although if you do earn something with your hobby, that is a little different.

I’ve always had a hobby.  Since I was very tiny, maybe four or five years old, I have done something creative just for fun.  It hasn’t been the same hobby all through my life.  I have had so many different hobbies that I doubt I can remember them all.  Besides being a hobbyist, I am also a collector.  I’ve had many collections over my lifetime too.  Some of them I still have, some I don’t.  Like many youngsters in the 60’s and 70’s, I had a stamp collection.  I spent countless hours categorising my stamps by country, colour and price and then sticking them into albums with small gummed paper hinges.  I had a Stanley Gibbons starter kit which boasted a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers among other accoutrements that served to make the hobby more exciting – yes, I did say exciting.

My collections have ranged over the years from collecting household bits and pieces to make a ‘bottom drawer’ – something that girls used to do many moons ago to prepare for leaving the family home.  It was usually a collection of table and bed linens, crockery and so on.  The first thing I bought for my bottom drawer was a dinner service, tea set, cutlery set and saucepan set.  It was all in one huge box from my mother’s catalogue and cost me fifty pence a week for about six months.  I was fourteen when I bought it and I am still using most of the content of that set to this day, over thirty years later.  We have lost a few plates over the years and the small glass bowls have diminished in number till we only have the one left.

Another collection that began in my youth and which has grown through my life is my collection of cookery books.  I am more discerning these days, in my choice of addition to the collection.  I prefer pre-war books nowadays, especially ones in which the previous owner has made handwritten notes.  The one book that till evades me is a Mrs Beeton, the full size one.  My mother-in-law gave me her smaller version but one day, I would love to have a first edition Mrs Beeton... one day.  Books have always been somewhat of an Achilles heel of mine.  Not just cookery books, I love crafting books, poetry books, biographies, novels, in fact any books at all!  I know that I have passed on my love for books to my children, even the boys who will enjoy a good read although maybe not quite so much as the girls; except for the youngest of the boys, who like his mum, can’t put a book down once started until its well and truly finished.  He can digest two or three young reader paperbacks in a day if given the chance.

And so I’m back to hobbies again.  My current hobby is wine-making.  It’s something that my father used to do and when I was first married I had a bit of a try, but never really found a passion for it.  The demijohns quickly became orphaned when our children came along, and forgotten.  For my birthday last year, I asked for a starter set and a wine kit.  Duly purchased, a brew of Elderberry wine was produced within the month and since that time, the winery has burgeoned in my utility room and at this moment I have over ten gallons of wine in the process of brewing and a huge rack fitted into the utility room for the finished product.  I love the chemistry and the creativity.  I enjoy procuring (for which, read scrounging) fruit for as little money as I can and turning it into something special.  I don’t actually drink very much alcohol – it doesn’t mix very well with my medications or the symptoms of FMS.  I do sneak the occasional small glass, but one small one is plenty for me these days.  Most of the wine that I make is gifted away, and that’s the way I like it.  To see someone enjoying the fruits (quite literally) of my labours, is a great bonus for me.

Other hobbies have fallen by the wayside recently because I am no longer able to hold a needle to sew – I loved Cross Stitching and embroidery.  For the same reason I no longer knit or crochet.  This is a source of both sadness and frustration for me, but until the pain and discomfort that such things cause can be remedied, I have turned back to another passion from my youth – writing.  I still enjoy some papercrafting on occasion, making all of the special cards for family and friends.  I am a hoarder of items that are connected with whatever hobby I am pursuing at the time.  I have several large crates of papercrafting equipment and materials.  This is a source of some consternation to my other half, though none more so than my collection of ‘lumps of rock’ as he calls them – my crystal and mineral collection.

In future postings I may talk more about my hobbies, but feel free to tell me about yours in the comments section!