Food waste Friday and weekly weigh in; year 1, week 1
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weigh in; year 1, week 1
As I mentioned at the last weigh in, I was going to be interested to see how Mr Green’s change of diet might change our weekly landfill waste. He has switched to a meat and two veg to a high raw diet. To help this, we have been growing our own salad in troughs and it’s been an amazing success. Thank you to all of you who kept saying ‘just grow some salad in troughs; it’s easy!’ You nagged me enough to do the deed and we’re delighted with the results.
Mr Green walks out into the garden with an empty plate and comes back with it filled with his lunch! You can’t get fresher than that.
Due to his radical change in culinary habits, our landfill waste has reduced a lot.
Food waste, however, is on the up after last weeks sum of zero food waste. After Sunday lunch each week, I put any leftover vegetables back into the cold oven and Mr Green eats them for that evening’s meal or for Monday lunch. On Thursday of this week, Little Miss Green had a chips craving. I put the oven on, reached in to take out the tray and was hit with a bit of a pong.
Yep, you’ve guessed it, Mr Green’s Monday lunch was sitting in there sporting a fury green jacket. Bearing in mind we’ve had a mini heatwave this week, it was not a pretty sight. I’m afraid I didn’t get close enough to stick the lens of my camera in there; we just held the pan at arms length and deposited the contents in the compost bin.
This episode in our week, which I would rather forget about, just goes to prove once again, we are all creatures of habit. This week I will prepare less vegetables or put extras in the ‘fridge for Little Miss Green to eat throughout the week.
So, to recap, food waste was one portion of leftover cooked broccoli, carrot and mange tout put into the compost bin. I’ll be popping over to Kristen’s Frugal Girl site to post up my results in a moment – make sure you do too if you’ve blogged about your food waste this week.
Landfill waste this week:
- 6 crisps bags
- 2 dried fruit bags
- 1 lentils bag
- 2 cheese wrappers
- 2 cereal bar wrappers
- plastic seal from honey jar
Altogether it weighed just 21 grams and fits neatly into a cheese wrapper!
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“Mr Green walks out into the garden with an empty plate and comes back with it filled with his lunch! You can’t get fresher than that.”
Love it! Everything in my garden will go mad in a day or so after all this rain, isn’t it brilliant!
Hi Mrs Green,
21g is a superbly low figure for the family’s week and just shows that it is perfectly practicable to reduce waste to a minimal amount. This is my experience as well where it takes ages to fill a margarine tub holding the quarter-year’s waste. I am struggling to find a plastic packet to hold the lot but one is sure to appear, given time.
Summer food does waste that bit quicker. My particular issue is with milk where the usual 2.5 day limit can be shortened below 2 days, at worst. A strategy to deal with this issue is to reduce milk use avoiding hot milk drinks, like cocoa/coffee. Milk use does tend to tail off in the hot weather where cool drinks, and ice-cream, take precedence. An old favourite is home-made lemonade which we had in our younger years.
Well done again, an impressivly small amount for landfill.
I’m with you on the things left in the oven, although luckily I caught mine before it had gone the way of yours.
I’d cooked the usual amount of yorkshire puddings on Wednesday night but not all were eaten, when I went ot put the oven on for bread baking Thursday morning I got the smell of hot fat from the tin heating up. These were given to the dogs at DH work.
@Sarah: I bet things have picked up, haven’t they Sarah? It was funny looking at the salad trough this morning – it was like nothing had been picked from it all week. It certainly has been cut and come again LOL!
@John Costigane: LMG has been asking me to make lemonade since reading about it in one of her books. I’ve never tried it, but I think I might. Milk isn’t a problem here as we use so little. Not sure what the answer is, except, as you say, reduce your consumption of it and switch to cold drinks.
@maisie dalziel: Thanks Maisie – I made less veggies today and the lunchtime leftovers have been mixed with tuna and pasta for lunch tomorrow 😉 Glad the dogs enjoyed the yorkshire puddings!
@Mrs Green: Ah, so much rain so fast and I may as well grow rice……
I have to say although sometimes I’ve left things in the oven ( on purpose ) overnight ( mainly to cool down ) at this time of year I think it’s too warm to do that safely. My worst ” oops I should have checked the oven before switching it on” occasion was not food, but one time I was in a desperate hurry to get stuff cleared away & tidy because of visitors, I was running out of time and ended up chucking the last few items I was due to wash up in the oven out of sight instead…. heh… and later on, yes you’ve guessed, I’d totally forgotten about them when I came to put the oven on that evening… oh dear whatever can that funny smell be.. EEK ! yes it’s the scent of lightly toasting dirty pans and dishes *blush*
As for milk – I drink it as is anyway so summer does little to alter my consumption – it doesn’t usually stay in the fridge long enough to go off ! solutions could be freezing milk or using dried. Home made lemonade is nice, though, as is home made barley water. I was also trying to think about that whole ” how to remember about stuff that’s in the fridge ” dilemma – maybe you could all take it in turns weekly to be Fridge Waste Monitor ? or quite literally stick a note on the fridge door that says ” What Can I Use Up Today ? ”
Also great news re : the salad 😀
@greenlady42: Oh my goodness; the story about the hidden pots and pans in the oven is so funny 😀
A note on the ‘fridge door would be good. You know what I would really like? A fridge with a glass door; like the ones used in pubs for wine. That would be excellent and prevent the out of sight, out of mind approach to food.
The salad is still bursting out of the troughs, mr G can’t keep up with it!
Well Mrs Green, I have to admit that I have recently become rather adicted to your blog! Not too long ago I gave myself a bit of a kick up the rear because my recycling/ waste saving habits had slipped badly so I came over to Zero Waste to get some inspiration. It seems I came to the right place because only yesterday I found myself photographing all the things from the depths of the fridge that were way past their use by date (and therefore destined for the bin) with the intention of making it a regular feature on my blog! What a lovely surprise to discover your Food Waste Friday!
@Mrs Green:
I once sold a cooker and forgot to remove my cake tins and trays etc, from the little compartment at the bottom 🙁
@Natalie: Hey Natalie; welcome to the site and I’m glad you are enjoying it! Well done on photographing the evidence from your ‘fridge and it’s great you’re going to join in with your own food waste blog posts. I’ll be over there cheering you on!
@Poppy: Uh oh 🙁 I sold a cd player with a cd in it once, but that’s not quite as bad as losing my bakeware LOL!