Permaculture in Action

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Waste not want not

I have always been fairly conscious of not wasting food, but after seeing a movie trailer over on frogdancers blog, I am more determined than ever not to waste food. Not that we really waste food because anything not consumed by us goes to either the dogs, chooks, ducks, guinea pigs, geese, worm farm or compost.In our household it is excess from the garden that has the most potential to be wasted especially if it is in some way unsaleable.But there's also the last of the bread that's a little too stale to even toast......

 So off come the crusts.....




and into the processor they go. Often I freeze them until I need them. I used to be quite lazy about this until I read what goes into an average pack of breadcrumbs.

And of course there are also leftovers for lunch. Once a week I'll be sharing the ways in which we are trying to be more mindful of not wasting anything. What special tricks have you got for reducing wastage?

8 comments:

  1. This is great! I often am convicted to minimize the amount of food that is wasted. We don't compost because of some homeowner's association rules (blah!) but try to use up all leftovers in some way.

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  2. Once we are tired of leftovers I add vegetables[rice, grains ] to a container I keep in the freezer, once the container is full I bring it out and make soup, it works great!

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  3. We put all our scraps to good use - feeding the chooks, feeding the worms and feeding our compost. I love fresh breadcrumbs. Great way to use up stale homemade bread too. Thanks.

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  4. The "not wasting food" resolution is one of the hardest ones to keep; I make it every year. I break it every year. I keep trying.
    I know recipes always call for some wonderful bioche or sourdough, but stale bread makes delicious bread pudding. (It's right up there with bread crumbs!!!)

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  5. "Waste not, want not" is my favourite saying. My Nana used to say it all the time and I have always been very conscious of waste. I think your idea of posting about it is great!

    I used to freeze stale bread crumbs too. Not only is it a good use of old bread but it is so easy when you go to cook.

    I laugh now though - I can't remember the last time I had stale bread! My family just eat whatever I make or buy. If I have more, they eat more!!!

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  6. We get a lot of bread from the bread shop, so I use the long bread sticks for a day and then crumb them up. Sometimes I can go a few weeks before i need breadcrumbs, but it's always sneakily satisfying to go to the freezer and get a bag of FREE breadcrumbs and use the.
    I make breadcrumb patties/fritters when we have a glut of eggs. The boys love them.

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  7. I toss my old bread ends or slices into the freezer then make bread pudding when I get enough or need a dessert suddenly. This topic is one my mind a lot lately since I watched at Food network program called The Big Waste.

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  8. I also toss my bread heals and stale slices (doesn't happen much around here) into a big bag in the freezer. I use them for bread puddings, breakfast strata, bread crumbs, bread soup.

    I do everything I can to make the best use of all our food stuffs. I was raised frugal and intend for my sons to know how to live frugally as well. They like it anyway because we eat nice hot leftovers for lunches instead of the boring sandwich day after day. A big pot of soup each week also helps use up odds and ends and adds lots of variety to our diets.

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