Love Food, Hate Waste - Part IV

From the BBC today:

"People are needlessly throwing away 3.6m tonnes of food each year in England and Wales, research suggests. The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) found that salad, fruit and bread were most commonly wasted and 60% of all dumped food was untouched. The study analysed the waste disposed of by 2,138 households."

So, yesterday I came up with ways of saving fruit from going to waste. But with this latest article from the BBC today, I thought I'd share some salad and bread ideas with you.

Firstly, it should go without saying that in warmer weather you want to keep as much food in the fridge as possible. If this entails a thorough cleaning out session first, then so be it.

Fruits, vegetables and breads should be kept in the fridge to keep them from molding up as quickly.

Ideas for Salad & Bread:


Salad

If you can 'grow your own' then you can just cut off what you need when you need it from the outside or even a windowsill.

When meal planning, if you have already or intend to buy lettuce then by all means write in 'side salad' to almost any evening meal you have. Or make sure to have salads for lunch, in sandwiches, and apparently you can even make a lettuce soup. Back in the days before salads were cool, farming folks cooked it.

Try not to buy the bag of salad and instead buy a head of lettuce. (Romaine is nutrionally better for you than iceberg). The main reason I suggest not buying bagged lettuce apart from the higher cost is that lettuce 'sweats' in the plastic bag. Because the lettuce is already 'cut up' there is more surface area of lettuce leaves to sweat inside that bag. The moment you open the bag you will probably smell a foul odour eminating from it. I don't know about you, but that smell does not make me want to eat a big bowl full of lettuce.

Fresh lettuce still in its 'head' does not smell. And if you are buying bagged lettuce for 'convenience' consider getting one of the kids involved in making salad leaves the old-fashioned way. It is cheaper and it lasts longer.

Trick to keeping salad last: After buying the head of lettuce or little gems or whatever, fill up half your sink (clean sink!) with cold water. Cut the base of the head off, chop up and add to compost bin. Tear off the leaves and submerge in the cold water for up to 5 minutes. If this is from your garden add a bit of salt to the water as it helps kill the 'critters' within the lettuce leaves. Chop up the lettuce and put in a 'salad spinner'. Spin, empty, spin, empty, spin again. After you've sufficiently removed the water from the lettuce and emptied the salad spinner, put a face cloth or similar in the bottom of the salad spinner and put the 'colinder bowl' from the spinner back inside with the lettuce still inside. Put the top of the salad spinner back on and put the whole thing in the fridge. Then just take out what you want, when you want it. The idea behind the face cloth is it will continue to absorb moisture from the lettuce. It should last a good week this way.


Bread

Firstly, if you live alone or the family eats very little, and if you 'buy bread' then consider always putting half of the loaf in the freezer. Take the frozen half loaf out the night before you are going to need it.

If you end up with a few slices or section of bread that is going stale, whizz it up in the food processor and freeze the 'bread crumbs'. Bread crumbs are terrific for making homemade stuffing, a topping for macaroni & cheese, you can use it as a filler with minced meat when making homemade burgers, or bolognese sauce, etc. I even have a recipe for bread crumb brownies if anyone is interested. Stale bread also makes great toast. And, let's not forget bread & butter pudding. You can also cut it up into squares, grill it in the oven for a few minutes and make croutons to go with the salad you plan on eating and not wasting. :D

You could also consider tearing it up, dunking it in water and leaving it outside for the birds.