Unacceptable Food Waste
Tesco are reporting that large quantities of good food is thrown away. The story is covered here on the BBC.
The problem isn’t that we waste food, but that supermarkets gear us up to buy large quantities of everything in a weekly shop.
I live in the city and although, I do have a mid-sized Sainsburys in walking distance, I prefer to take a bus to the Angel, when I need food.
I generally food shop two or three days at a time, planning what I need.
I use a lot of multi-use food, like Rachel’s yoghurt, that goes on my muesli and also acts as the sauce for my pasta.
I also buy what I need, like a single onion, three bananas or a ready prepared pack of potatoes. Only last week, I found a sandwich-sized pack of salami in Waitrose.
We need more small packs, so we can buy what we need.
As for salads, which is one of the biggest sources of food waste, I rarely eat them at home, but regularly I will have a salad for my lunch in a convenient Carluccio’s. As an example, their mozzarella fusa, which is a meal in itself, is £6.75. It probably isn’t much more expensive than buying the ingredients in a supermarket and making one myself, if you count the amount of food that will be wasted.
in some ways my biggest food shopping problem, is that I have a small badly-designed kitchen, with a fridge sized for a bed-sit, It doesn’t have a freezer, which is downstairs in my garage. This state of affairs, is because Jerry felt an enormous cooker was what was needed and much more important. I had hoped by now, that the kitchen would have been properly rebuilt.
And of course, I still throw away two much food.
Handling My Peas
Some of the recipes I use need about half a cup of frozen peas for one person. So as my freezer is downstairs in the garage, I thought it better to store the peas already divided.
Handling My Peas
Whether it will work out, I don’t know, but the plastic cups stood nicely in a drawer in my freezer.
She Blew The Bloody Door Off!
Echoing the classic Michael Caine line from The Italian Job, Margaret Goodwin has shown our intrepid boys how to do it, as reported in the Telegraph.
But she was only using rhubarb chutney!
As I write various would-be terrorists are experimenting with their mothers’ chutney recipes. It has been reported that in some places, rhubarb is now in short supply!
Can Food Help Us Cope With Grief?
This article on the BBC web site, asks the question, posed in the title of this post.
Cooking and food has certainly helped me, in that when my late wife died, it was either learn to cook, eat out every night or starve.
So as I already had the basic skills from my mother’s training, I chose the first and now find that I can cook pretty well. Or at least those who have eaten one of my meals, haven’t complained! Or gone to A & E!
The article also has some links to some nice meals, I might try, like this cottage pie.
Does Anybody Make An Easy-Clean Potato Masher?
I make a lot of potato pies and the worst thing is cleaning the potato masher. The potato just seems to stick in the holes.
Does Anybody Make An Easy-Clean Potato Masher?
Friends say why don’t I use my dishwasher, but after ten years of tenants, it’s a bit decrepit like me. I could afford a new one, but I may remodel my kitchen and I don’t want the design to have to be compromised because of an existing dishwasher.
I also find washing up therapeutic for my gammy left hand.
Why Do I Have To Buy 2.5 Kg Of Potatoes?
I made two chicken, bacon and potato pies last night, but in Waitrose I had to buy 2.5 Kg of potatoes, as they didn’t have any smaller packs or loose ones that were suitable for mashing.
Why Do I Have To Buy 2.5 Kg Of Potatoes?
As I had to carry them back on a bus, I wasn’t pleased.
My two pies need a kilogram and as i don’t use many the remainder will probably have gone off before I need them.
Is this why we waste so much food?
I just buy what I need to make my meal or in the case of pies, my meal and one a couple of days later.
We need an efficient cooking philosophy that minimises waste, cooking time and washing up.
Some will say this is why ready meals are popular, as all you have to do is stick them in the microwave and wash the plate up at the end. But I have just thrown an unused Marks and Spencer ready meal into the bin, as I bought it in case, I didn’t get any food on my three late nights last week, and it is now well past its sell-by date.
Haddock On A Bed Of Asparagus
It seems that the shops have a surfeit of asparagus. As I had some haddock, I looked for a suitable recipe and found this one here on SparkPeople. It took me about half-an-hour to cook it.
For two people you need the following.
2 fillets of haddock
1 pack of asparagus
2 cups of frozen peas.
1 large onion (finely chopped)
2 tomatoes (chopped into quarters)
Salt, freshly-ground black pepper.
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp vegetable stock powder.
As it was 2 small fillets, just for me, I used a pack of English asparagus tips. None of your air-freighted stuff for me!
I started by heating the oil in a saucepan and then adding the onion.
Cooking The Onion
I cooked it, until the onion was reasonably cooked. I then added the tomatoes, seasoned it all with black pepper and let it cook on a gentle heat for a minute or so.
Adding The Tomatoes
I then added a cup of water, the vegetable stock powder and the frozen peas (from frozen).
I left the peas to cook for five minutes before adding the haddock fillets to the sauce.
Cooking The Haddock In The Sauce
After another five minutes the haddock was cooked.
As the haddock c0oked, a cooked the asparagus in the way that Heston Blumenthal used in this recipe.
Cooking The Asparagus
I just fried them in a little olive oil with some seasoning.
It was then just a matter of arranging the asparagus on a plate, putting the haddock on top and then adding the sauce and some of the peas.
Haddock On A Bed Of Asparagus
I also added some potatoes.
I think others might modify this to their taste, perhaps by adding lemon juice. But I liked it the way it came.
The First Asparagus Of Summer
I bought some fresh English asparagus yesterday in Waitrose.
I just fried it in a little olive oil, with some seasoning for five minutes. It was delicious.
It’s certainly one of those ‘posh’ foods worth eating!
Smoking Bans Lead To Fall In Asthma
This report on the BBC, says there is a link between the smoking ban and a drop in the number of children admitted to hospital with asthma. Here’s a relevant paragraph.
We increasingly think it’s because people are adopting smoke-free homes when these smoke-free laws are introduced and this is because they see the benefits of smoke-free laws in public places such as restaurants and they increasingly want to adopt them in their home.
I also think, that children are also badgering their parents not to smoke.
When we were developing the metered dose inhaler for drugs, like those for asthma, I came across some research that showed any naked flame in the house increased the oxides of nitrogen in the air, that might be causing asthma. This page from the US EPA outlines the problem and gives advice.
So I would never have a gas cooker or fire in my house. There was one when I bought this house, but I sold it.
Express Fish
I did my fish recipe last night.
I didn’t do any potatoes, but the food was on the table about ten minutes after putting the fish in the oven.
The biggest delay was waiting for the oven to warm up. Where is an AGA, when you need one? But I couldn’t get one up the stairs here and Jerry’s building might not take the weight.
The Anonymous Widower 