Love Food Hate Waste is a campaign I’d heard of before but didn’t know too much about. Over the weekend they attended the Newbury farmers’ market so I got a chance to find out more about it. It is a national campaign to try and get us all to be less wasteful. Every year in the UK we throw away £10 billion worth of food. That’s mad.
Their message is very simple; waste as little food as possible. They’ve got lots of recipes, tips and useful gadgets available to help but if the message is taken on board, you can’t go far wrong. A cookery demonstration was being given by Ilja from the Pudding Pie cookery school making all sorts of things you might throw away into lovely delicious meals.
My favourite thing was Thai chicken with sour cream dressing and curly kale potato cakes. It was such a lovely marriage of flavours and used up left over mash, chicken and salad. I also gobbled up a few pieces of a lovely apple and polenta cake. The potato cakes she made were so good!
None of the ideas make a meal that will be just acceptable, they are meals you’d be more than happy to eat all the time. To be honest, Boxing day is a day of leftovers and it has to be one of my favourite days for stuffing my face. For me, I have found if you have eggs or potatoes, you can mix pretty much anything in and make a pretty good meal. Take last year when I had more broad beans than I knew what to do with, I cracked a few eggs and got myself a lovely omelette. For left over mashed potato, make some bubble and squeak – you could mix anything in.
With leftovers I think a bit of creativity can turn an average meal into a really interesting one.
All That I’m Eating
Bravo! We try hard to use up the leftovers in the house. If I think I won’t be able to use vegetables right away, I freeze them for soups. I have no idea what bubble and squeak is, but it sounds fun!
You are so right!
I realized how much food we waste in the food industry as well when I started picking up donations from bakeries for our 5K fundraiser run. I could not believe the amount of pastries and bagels that would have gone to the trash otherwise!
There has gotta to be a better way for both individuals and the industry to use the leftovers!
I definitely try to use up leftovers as much as I can. Nothing I hate more than wasting food =)
if you go to the official love food hate waste website you can download one of their logos to add to your blog.
I couldn’t agree more with you: there’s nothing worse than wasting food. You’re right that’s what makes us all the more creative: it’s exciting working out what to make with what’s left and often you end up with some amazing surprises.
I love the idea of making potato cakes… I’m never one to leave a morsel of mash though, even when I’m fit to burst! I’ll just need to make twice as much mash next time and start getting creative 🙂 I totally agree about the industries wasting food. When I was 17, I worked in McDonalds and we had to throw anything out that had been sitting for more than 10 mins. Straight into a bin, still warm and edible. What a waste!!!
I get major anxiety about wasting food so I’m right there with you with making the most of what gets leftover!
Good to know we’re all on the same page! Thanks for your comments.
Today is documentation weather, isn’t it?