War on Waste
Leftovers
Using up jams and preserves
Pantry Spring Cleaning
·
And so it is time to spring clean the
pantry and by doing so reduce waste, save money and salve your conscience.
·
It is time to do a stocktake of the
cupboards, the fridge and the freezer and see what is lurking in their dark depths.
·
It is time to plan menus to use up
those items near their use by date. But
don’t panic, food items don’t die the minute their use-by-date expires but they
usually taste fresher if you use them earlier rather than late.
·
Recycle anything that is flavourless
or bit suspect by giving it to the chooks, worms or compost.
According to Good Taste
magazine each year, we throw away three
million tonnes of food much of it still in its original packaging and unopened
and worth $5.2 billion. I find that hard
to believe but I have certainly been guilty of throwing food away.
It is a great shame not only because it costs you money but
because it is such a waste of the considerable resources that go into producing
the food, transporting, packaging, marketing and selling it and because so many
people in the world do not get enough to eat each day.
To reduce waste work out a system for
storing your groceries so you know what you have got and can find things easily. Often food has to be thrown out because it
has been sitting at the back of the cupboard quite forgotten and quietly deteriorating
until it is no longer edible.
Canned or tinned food lasts forever
if undamaged so you just need to check out what you have and organise it. It is
good to have a few extra cans on hand, (especially legumes, fish and meat) for
emergency rations if friends drop by unexpectedly or the power goes off for two
months. That way you won’t have to eat
the cat or dog.
Food sealed in jars or bottles last a
long time and just needs checking. It is still a good idea to rotate your jars
by putting the most recently purchased behind the ones already in the pantry.
Long-life tetra packs of stock, fruit
juice, milk etc. have a finite shelf life so make sure you use these earlier
rather than later.
Food stored in plastic bags or cardboard
boxes does not have such a long shelf life.
Even if the food is still edible it can taste stale because not all the air
has been excluded from the food on packaging. Vacuum packed foil pouches avoid
this problem and the food in them stays fresh – especially good for crisps.
YUM!
Food is vulnerable to attack by the
dreaded pantry moth not to mention creepy crawlies like cockroaches or even
worse mice or rats. You would be
surprised by what comes out of the woodwork at night while you are a sleep.
Your pantry is an irresistible attraction to pests so keep it clean and protect
your food.
Put your dry food into sealed jars or
plastic containers or even better into vacuum sealed bags and write the date of
purchase onto the package and when you need to use the food by. Grains and seeds will keep for ages if they
are vacuum packed.
Check out your herbs and spices as
air is not usually excluded from their containers and they do lose their
flavour rather quickly. Have a cook-up
to use up those on the turn – Christmas cakes need lots of spices and if you
make them in spring they will be perfectly mature by Christmas.
Put perishable items such as potatoes
and onions that you don’t want to keep in the fridge in cloth bags in a cool
dark part of the pantry and keep an eye on them. Nuts and coffee can be stored
in the freezer.
Ferret around in your freezer to
rescue anything that needs using soon.
Make sure everything is labelled with when it was frozen and when it
needs to be used by. Be systematic in
how you store and use frozen food.
Vacuuming packaging greatly extends the viability of frozen food, it can
last up to two years properly packaged.
Check out your fridge before you go
shopping and think of creative ways to use whatever needs using in future
meals. In fact don’t go shopping just use what you have!
LINKS
There is an interesting article on managing your pantry at http://www.taste.com.au/mag-media/4/0/428.pdf
WAR
ON WASTE
WASTE
WISE SHOPPING
- Do a stocktake before you decide what to cook in the coming week or fortnight
- Consider what preserved food and long lasting food you could use up
- Incorporate food that needs using into your menus
- Plan your meals and make a shopping list
- But use recipes as guides rather than prescriptions.
- Rather than buying expensive out-of-season food in order to follow a recipe, substitute what you actually have on hand or what is cheap and available in the supermarket or market
- Eat before you brave the temptations of the supermarket
- Tend to buy less rather than more – if you will be amazed by how you can stretch a meal out with what you have in the cupboard or fridge or freezer
- If you can, just buy enough food for the day, that way your fresh food won’t deteriorate while it waits its turn to be used
- Buy fresh and seasonal products where you can
- Try to reduce the amount of packing you take home buy putting food such as vegetables directly into your shopping bag, buying bulk, shopping at local markets for fresh food and taking your own containers, buying meat from a butcher rather than on polystyrene trays in the supermarket
LOOK
AFTER WHAT YOU BUY SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO THROW IT OUT
- Keep perishable food cold on the way home by using insulated bags, freezer blocks or an Esky or icebox
- Unwrap and store food as soon as you get it home
- Store fruit and vegetables in special vegetable bags in the fridge – wrap in a little paper towel and it will absorb the moisture keeping the fruit or vegetables moist but not wet
- Put all dried foods in vacuum packs
- Put open dry food such as biscuits, grains, pulses, in vacuum jars
- Write the date on newly purchased cans, jars and packets so you know what food needs to be used first although properly canned food can last a lifetime
- Put nuts in the freezer
- Put coffee in the freezer
- Freeze meat in vacuum bags
- Write the date on the label of sauce bottles, jam jars, etc when you open them (use a waterproof pen)
RECYCLE
WHAT YOU CAN’T EAT
- As long as it has been stored correctly use it in future meals
- Give it to the compost worms
- Add it to the compost
- Feed it to the chooks
- Dig it into the ground
- If it is suitable feed it to your pets
- Recycle packaging
LINKS
Tips
to Reduce Food Waste
There are some very good tips by Matt Preston on the Taste.com.au
website as well as a method for making butter out of left over cream or sour
cream.
http://www.taste.com.au/news+features/opinion/articles/3813/tips+to+reduce+food+wastehttp://www.taste.com.au/kitchen/recipes/butter+by+matt+preston,19240
WHAT TO DO WITH LEFTOVER FOOD
Using left over savoury mince or bolognaise
·
If you have a small amount of bolognaise
mince sauce or savoury mince left over from a meal you can use it to make a
very tasty dish using filo pastry. You
will need to reduce your sauce over low heat so there is no liquid left in the
pan otherwise the dish will be too moist and the pastry will not be flaky. Let it cool.
·
Chose a dish to suit the amount of mince
sauce or savoury mince you have left over.
Cut your defrosted filo pastry to fit your dish, you need about 12
pieces of filo pastry. Cover with a damp
teatowel stop the filo pastry drying out and crumbling. Melt some butter in a saucepan. Beat one or two eggs with a little milk and
grated some cheese.
·
Quickly brush a piece of filo pastry with
melted butter and place in the dish. Crumble
a little of the mince mixture onto the pastry, brush another layer of pastry
with butter and place on top of mince. Coat
with the egg mixture, then add another layer of buttered filo pastry, sprinkle
with some grated cheese. Top with buttered filo pastry. Repeat this process until all the ingredients
are used up. Cook in a moderate over for
around 20 minutes, until a skewer inserted into dish comes out clear and the
pastry is golden.
Small bits and pieces
Small amounts of left over stock, tomato paste, pesto, lemon
juice, herbs etc can frozen in ice cube trays then turned out and stored in
vacuum pack bags in the freezer
Celery
- Use it to make a soup with whatever else you have lurking in the fridge and cupboard
- Cream of celery soup is delicious
- Braised celery hearts are great
- ice it and use it with diced onions and carrots as a base for casseroles, soups and stocksUse tops in soups
- Use instead of crackers for dips
Use them as a basis of pies encased in pastry or topped with mashed potato
- Add water and a few fresh ingredients and turn them into a tasty soup
- Add good quality curry paste or a tin of curry, maybe a small tin of coconut cream or milk
- Use as a stuffing for pancakes, jaffles, samosas, filo parcels andin fritters
Bread
Place slices in muffin tins and bake until golden and use as a case for serving food
- Turn into fresh and toasted breadcrumbs
- Tear and use on top of gratin dishes such as cauliflower cheese
- Toast or brown in seasoned olive oil and add to salad
- Soak in a little olive oil and vinegar and stock or milk and use to thicken soups – bread is a classic component of gazpacho
- Make summer pudding or bread and butter pudding, add dried fruit mascerated in some alcohol and a spoonful of marmalade to make your pudding truly memorable
- Make bread sauce
- Make panko crumbs
- Freeze in pairs of slices for sandwiches and toast later
- Make jaffles for dinner
Fried rice
Rice ball
USING
UP JAMS AND PRESERVES
It is very
satisfying to make preserves out of autumn’s harvest and to enjoy the garden’s
bounty throughout the long winter.
However, you can have too much of a good thing. There is a limit to how much jam and
marmalade you can eat on toast. Year
after year jams and marmalades seem to stockpile in the pantry, too good to
throw out, but overtaken by the next season’s batch. Here are some alternative uses for those
delicious reminders of summer.
Glazes
Marmalades,
in particular, make great glazes when baking ham or roasting turkey, duck or
pork. It is best not to brush the glaze
on until the later stages of cooking to prevent the glaze burning. Warming up the jam or marmalade makes it
easier to spread and you can add other ingredients. For example, you can add little garlic and
rosemary to marmalade and brush it on salmon steaks for the last few minutes of
cooking. Add some horseradish to a jam
made from berries and use it to glaze meat or chicken. You can add also add mustard, chillies, and
spices. Use wine or stock to deglaze a pan that has been used to cook meat,
duck or chicken and then add a tablespoon of jam and a little Worcestershire
sauce or balsamic vinegar to counterbalance the jam’s sweetness. Reduce the liquid to one third to make a
delicious sauce.
Cakes
Here is a
really easy recipe for a syrup cake.
Simply mix 1 cup of self-raising flour, 1 cup of fine oatmeal, 1 cup of
sugar, 1 egg and just under one cup of milk to make a cake batter. Pour into a greased, lined 22cm cake tin
dusted with flour. You can add flavourings such as a tablespoon of aniseeds,
caraway seeds, lemon zest or whatever you fancy. Cook at 180° C (160° C fan-forced oven) for
30-40 minutes. When the cake is cool
remove it from the pan and pour over a generous amount of warmed jam or
marmalade in the place of syrup. Serve
with a dollop of yoghurt, cream or ice cream.
When you
make an upside-down cake or tart you can use warmed jam and tinned fruit to
line the bottom of the pan. You can add
a cup of jam to a cake batter to add extra punch. An orange marmalade would go well with a
chocolate cake batter. You can put a
layer of jam in a brownie mix. Make sure the batter completely encases the
jam. When making bread and butter
pudding spread the bread with marmalade
or jam before adding the custard mixture.
Of course you can use jam to sandwich two cake halves together then top
with more jam, whipped cream and fresh fruit.
You can use a piping bag to fill muffins with jam. Just poke the nozzle into the bottom of the
muffin and squeeze.
Yoghurt, ice cream
Mix some of
your favourite jam through Greek yoghurt to make a lovely creamy dessert and an
alternative to bought flavoured-yoghurt.
Use warm jam as a topping for ice-cream.
Fold jam into home-made ice-cream to give flavoured ice-cream. You can even use jam to flavour milkshakes.
When making panna cotta put jam in the bottom of the cup before adding the milk
mixture.
Apricot jam
is great for glazing, warm it up and brush it over fruit topping a fruit tart
or flan. Most jams go beautifully with chocolate so top a sliced banana with
ice-cream, melted chocolate and a dollop of jam.
Dressings
Whisk a
little marmalade or berry jam into a vinagrette to add extra punch. For a sweet-and-sour dressing mix 1 part jam
to 2 parts balsamic vinegar with a touch of olive oil, salt and pepper. Make a dipping sauce by adding some marmalade
to soy sauce with a little minced ginger, garlic and shallots. A little jam also spices up barbeque sauces
and marinades.
Cheeses
Raspberry
jam goes well with melted camembert or brie.
Try a little strawberry jam with a dash of balsamic vinegar with a sharp
cheddar. Fig jam would work well too. Jam goes well with cream cheese. Ricotta and your favourite jam make a great
filling for pancakes.
Start your
day with jam by adding a teaspoon to sweeten your cereal or porridge instead of
adding sugar. Lastly, for the
adventurous amongst you, try adding a teaspoon of jam to your tea instead of
sugar – it’s a taste sensation.
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