Our top tips for reducing food waste

The topic of food waste has in recent years become an issue on a lot of people’s minds. We have begun to realise the sheer scale of what we throw away on a daily basis, with many new charities or businesses popping up in the hope of offering a solution to this problem. One charity that was born to help tackle food waste is FareShare, whom we are proud to partner with.

FareShare stop perishable food from going to waste by redistributing it to people experiencing food poverty in the UK. Food items with a sell by date that would normally be thrown (even if the product itself is safe and shows no signs of decay) will unfortunately go landfill.

At Field & Flower we butcher everything to order so nothing gets wasted, all our orders are fresh and safe to be frozen when they reach your home. Because of this we always try to avoid customers cancelling boxes last minute. In some instances, emergency cancelled orders are unavoidable, and this is when the order will be sent to FareShare to ensure the fresh meat fish and cheese isn’t destroyed or left to perish.

As a team we feel that food waste prevention doesn’t end here, there are lots of tips and tricks in the home to get us thinking about all the little bits we waste that in time mounts up.

We have created a list of ideas to help use up food that needs eating:

• Freezing lemon slices in a re-usable tupperware. Take the slices out ahead of use if you want to squeeze them into anything or simply pop a frozen slice into a glass of water for a refreshing drink.
• Freezing ginger slices. We are lovers of ginger and honey tea, frozen slices can be popped straight into boiling water with a spoonful of local honey.
• Storing fresh coriander in a jar in the fridge. When you buy a bunch of coriander, chop off the bottom ends of the herb and put it in a small jar half filled with water in the fridge, it will last like this for 2-3 weeks!
• Make pesto out of an abundance of garden herbs. It isn’t just basil that you use to make pesto, you can use sage, carrot tops or even wild garlic for a twist on the classic!
• Roasting or frying potato peelings. These are a delicious snack making use of something we wouldn’t normally think to eat!
• Using spotty bananas to make banana cakes, pancakes or even ice cream. If you don’t have the time right away to make anything with them, bananas can be mashed and frozen. If you have a recipe in mind, weigh out the bananas beforehand and they can later be defrosted and added straight into your recipe.
• Freezing cheese, butter & milk. To stop milk turning sour before it has been drunk, you can freeze it to later be defrosted! Or fresh milk that needs using is perfect for rice pudding, home made hot chocolate or ice cream if you are feeling creative in the kitchen! Cheese can also be frozen for later use, although this is hardly ever a problem for us as cheese is nibbled through quickly by most of our team!
• Make bone broth from Sunday roast left overs. Don’t throw away your chicken carcass as it can be boiled up with vegetables in order to make a nutritious bone broth, see our recipe for beef bone broth, we also sell the beef bones for those who can’t get enough of the stuff! The broth doesn’t just have to be drank neat, you can add it to soups, risottos or even freeze it for later!
• Blitz up stale bread to use as breadcrumbs. If you don’t already slice and freeze your bread like Gee our content coordinator does then blitzing stale bread and freezing it can be used for home making fish fingers, adding to sausage mix if you are making your own.
• Egg mad? Use the left-over whites and whip up a meringue, if you have left over yolks from any recipe then home-made lemon curd is delicious.

These are our top tips, we would love to hear of any other ideas that could help tackle food waste, it’s amazing how inventive we can all be when we put our minds to it.

We are proud to support FareShare and their mission in redistributing surplus food in the South West and beyond! If you would like to help FareShare, you can find information to volunteer with them on their website.