Zero waste week day three – breakfast and meal planning
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Some things are just so good they need repeating. I’m talking waffles…..Little Miss Green munched her way through eight waffles for breakfast during our last zero waste week. Her appetite is a little more reserved now, but she still enjoyed a great rubbish free breakfast today. She had waffles with some frozen berries (well, defrosted you understand) and yogurt. The berries didn’t look as pretty as they did last time, but they tasted just as good 😉
My waffle maker is one of the few kitchen gadgets I have that has been worth every penny. It’s something that when this one gives up the ghost, I shall definitely be replacing it; landfill waste or not. The other kitchen gadgets that are absolute essentials in my book are a slow cooker and a dehydrator. I’ll talk more about those in later posts.
I made the fish pie yesterday from leftovers (You Tube vid on that coming up in a day or two) and there is still some left, so that will be lunch sorted for today. Then I think I might experiment a little for dinner. I have a sort of savoury rice mix in mind with some rice, eggs and cheese. We’ll see what I can throw together!
LMG has Brownies tonight so dinner can be a bit hit and miss. Either she is ravenous before she goes and has to eat quickly (which I don’t like doing) or she doesn’t want anything until she gets in, by which time she is tired and grouchy. Whatever way it turns out, it needs to be something that is quick, convenient and satisfying.
We go to the farm shop on a Wednesday. I know there will be no unpleasant surprises there. Nothing is pre wrapped and there are only brown paper bags for purchasing things in. I’m finding zero waste week great, as I’m realising how much I can save on money when I plan meals in advance and use things up. It’s a win-win.
What kitchen gadgets make your life easier?
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Day two of creating zero food waste After our landfill disaster last week, I'm still creating zero waste meals
My kitchen gadgets which I couldn’t do without are
Slow Cooker ( I have my mums one from the 1970s)
Food Mixer ( again mums from 1970s)
Bread machine
Icecream maker
Whizz stick (for blending soups and sauces etc)
Food processor ( for chopping/dicing large quantites for freezing)
Mrs G – Could you divulge the name of your local farm shop ?
Oooo Mrs G! Can I come for breakfast? I can be there in half an hour 🙂
My kitchen must haves are my slow cooker (bought from a friend about 10 years ago and still going strong)
Food processor (pressie from my Nan in 1986!)
Hand “whizz stick” (what is the proper name??)
Yoghurt Maker (new best friend 😉 )
Other things have come and gone when I realise that they are just too much phaff to clean and maintain, but I think I still have a juicer lurking at the back of the cupboard and I’m sort of missing my breadmaker this week, but I got fed up of bread with a great big hole through the middle. I like the idea of letting the machine do the work and then transfering to a ‘normal’ loaf tin though. I think I also have an electric carving knife that hasn’t seen the light of day this century!
I’m not very gadgety – there isn’t room for them in the kitchen. Probably my favourite gadget-aid is toastabags. As a child we used to have toasted sandwiches prepared in a huge double-handled hinged round thing that you propped on a gas ring after lopping off all the crusty corners. It was colloquially known as ‘doofers’ because that’s what my Nana always called it 🙂 They were great, but with my own married life came the sandwich toasting machine – cue nasty little triangle things with tooth-troubling hard edges taking up half the surface area. Plus the machine was a pain to clean. Then came Toastabags – which seem to always give pretty miraculous results, and even stand up quietly afterwards with soapy water in to soak.
I did get a hand blender for Christmas though – so who knows that may become my new favourite…
@maisie: Thanks Maisie; I always love hearing about people’s ‘can’t do without’ gadgets. How does an ice cream maker work? Does that mean you don’t have to keep taking the mix from the freezer and mixing up? That would be nice!
@mike: Hello Mike, welcome to the site. The Farm shop is in Drybrook; Crooked End Farm. It’s a small, organic farm shop. Do you know it?
@Poppy: I remember my Dad using an electric carving knife – he used it every weekend! Funny how these things suit one person and not another. I used my juicer ONCE then Freecycled it; it took longer to clean the thing and by which time I needed a MEAL let alone a juice to make up for all the effort I had expended. It was a cheapy though; perhaps the expensive ones are better.
@Kris: Ah, the toastabags; they really work then. Do the edges seal together like they do with a sandwich toaster? I think LMG would love toasted sandwiches. I remember having them before Brownies when I was little; I guess they were a quick, satisfying tea!
One goof today 🙁
I was making a vegetable gratin type thing to use up all the veg, reached up into the cupboard, grabbed a pack of cheese sauce, ripped it open and then suddenly realised what I’d done! When thinking about it earlier I’d planned to make a sauce from scratch, but auto pilot took over 🙁
Food processor. I have one with interchangable bowls small and large and couldn’t do without it. Oh and it has a smoothie jug too.
Aww – damn those impulses Poppy. You will have to cunningly fashion it into a hat or something to avoid the bin! 😉
My hitherto unconfessed oops moment this week was popping a piece of chewing gum into my mouth as I left the house on Tuesday – and responsibly throwing it into a bin at the other end of the bus journey. Some time later it clicked that I’d just binned something without a thought.
Mrs G – no, they don’t seal the edges which probably limits some of the fillings you might choose, but they cope well enough with oozy things like cheese and being bag shaped catch all of it with no mess in the toaster. I’m not sure if they work with a normal slot toaster though – mine is a wide width muffin/bun/whatever sort of one.
@Mrs Green: Mine is only a basic model, you freeze the bowl for 24 hrs, make up the mix, freeze that for 15 mins then pour into bowl and churn for 15 -30 mins. soft scoop icecream to go into freezer in a tub.
As it is made with cream and milk it is very like the higher end versions, the boys reckon the vanilla tates like “Mackies”
Re – Toastabags – they had some in Poundland last week, but they are a light brown colour and lighter in weight than the original ones. Sadly they are in a plastic bag, may have been polythene, but as I already have some, I didn’t look to closely.
They also had teflon sheets that you can cut to size to fit whatever you need them for. These were just in a cardboard wrap. I would recommend these as a reusable alternative to foil as you can just wash or wipe them over and put them away until next time 🙂
@Poppy and @Kris: : old habits die hard, don’t they ladies? I still find myself reaching for things or I find old packets and things in the cupboards that I haven’t bought since starting zero waste, but they are still there. Oh well; we live and learn. And I’ve just realised that Mr G has been chewing gum this week; I haven’t thought to ask what he is doing with it………
Thanks for the tips on the toastabags. I’ve just realised we don’t have a toaster either, so perhaps I’ll give them a miss 😀
@maisie: Mmmm, I might consider an ice cream maker. I never made that much last year, but I might be making more this time ’round.
Never mind an ice-cream maker, top of my wishlist is some of those lolly sticks/covers that you can fill up with smoothie mix and freeze – sounds perfect for the summer that I ordered this year 😀
They are fab, Kris – I use those all the time for LMG and put a wide variety of things into them from Rice Milk (comes out like a milk maid) to fruit juice that is coming up to its use by date to smoothies.
Looking forward to your summer too 🙂
Just been re-reading this bit and am now on tenterhooks – what *did* Mr G do with his gum 😉
I don’t have it very often so have decided it won’t kill me to swallow the occasional piece!
Gosh, I never asked him Kris. I would expect he put it on the fire. Which means it’s now dug into the garden somewhere :/