Where others may think, when idling, about their next holiday, the state of the world, how to capture more rainwater, whether a rewilded garden would be less work or whether they’ll ever fit into Those Jeans again, I mostly think about food waste. I mean, I think about all those things too, but I think about Food Waste even more. My somewhat obsessive thought patterns around the subject range from prep waste to leftovers to unbought produce in the market and come to alight, like an overfed butterfly, on packaging. The grotesque mountains of packaging from supermarkets and even more on Grab’n’Go (do you hate that phrase as much as me?) mobile food which seems to have taken over our world. But let’s not dwell for too long, it’s both horrendous and at the same time not at all interesting.
Food waste in our house shows itself in various ways – unlabelled or perhaps worse, mislabelled containers filled with food stuffs that only I can identify. Yesterday, Ed defrosted what he thought was bolognese for supper and he ended up eating spaghetti with black dhal. I keep a beady eye on our own compost bin as well as the community one that accepts cooked food. The only relief I get from my obsession is when the fridge is empty. No-food = no waste. But there are unfortunate ramifications to the empty fridge strategy, particularly when the house is full and it’s time for lunch.
There is a weird anomaly around raw food waste and cooked food which is that more you cook from scratch, the more you create, but I have stopped counting peelings and other offcuts that can go onto the compost as they do least become food again. This is a great relief to me. Ed once suggested that we could reduce our food waste by weighing it. I agreed that would be an excellent thing to do if you didn’t actually have a life to live. I’m not even going to dwell on the impact that would have on my mental state. Weight of waste = weight of guilt.
If you live in a rural space and have a compost heap and a veg patch or allotment, you get to take a couple of big steps ahead. If you can find a local allotments or anyone else who might want your trimmings, you’ll feel better, believe me. If you have a garden and enough room for a wormery or a hot compost bin and are willing to process it and face the maggots, you will be so smug.
But it’s packaging which makes me most testy. It came to the fore a few years ago, when we went for a year to live in Bath (it was a school thing). It was heaven. So much less work. You get to walk around, buy food only for the day itself. No planning! No driving! It was straight out of the 1950s but with yoga. And instead of bins every 3 weeks, out, they were collected 3 times a week, just whisking away your shame, spit spot, and sending you out to gaily buy more take-away coffee.
So where do I actually stand on food waste? I mean to be a a very good girl. Buy and cook as many wholefoods as possible, try to use them all up, be immaculate about sorting the detritus. Be smart with leftovers. Label correctly. But more than that, I’ve come to believe that what it mostly comes down to is humility. Remembering how little is required to make a meal and having several of these a week. My wonderful chef friend, Nicole Pisani, who I started Chefs in Schools with, came over one evening and made dinner from half a cabbage, a shrivelled knob of ginger, quarter of a chilli and some pasta. It was delicious. Squeeze the fridge, stores and freezer for everything you’ve got before you restock.
In order to do this, perhaps it takes stepping back a few decades in order to leap forwards, right over Big Food’s trickery and just Do The Work. Buy the whole chicken. Make the stock. Turn the carrot tops into pesto. Fry up the cauliflower leaves.
It’s on my mind, that balance between the work of the kitchen and the reward, the nourishment, the waste. It’s always on my mind.