Monday Moaning

This is becoming more and more prevalent.

Food wastage.

Too much food is being manufactured, supermarkets and the like are over stocking and people are buying more than they need.

As a result, we have this!

Quarter of UK’s food thrown away ‘untouched’, waste figures show

Around 1m tonnes of food binned unopened at cost of £90 per household in UK, says Waste Resource Action Programme

Unopened food from a domestic household thrown away in a dustbin. Half of the ‘untouched’ food wasted is fresh vegetables and salad Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

As much as one-quarter of the food that is thrown away by households in the UK is still “untouched” in its wrapping, analysis of waste figures shows.

This habit of regularly throwing away unused food, usually because it has been allowed to go past its eat-by date, is costing £2.4bn a year nationally or £90 per household. Such unopened food amounts to 1m tonnes of the 4m tonnes of wasted food each year, according to a new report from the Waste Resource Action Programme, a government-sponsored initiative.

Adding the value of food and drink that is partly eaten before being thrown away, or cooked and then binned uneaten, the total cost of wasted food rises to about £200 a year for the average person.

Of the unopened foods that end up chucked, about half is salad and vegetables. The waste is happening at a time when poorer and vulnerable people are reporting that they are cutting down on healthy fresh fruit and vegetables because they cost too much.

Wrap recommends simple actions including checking the fridge and cupboard before going shopping to avoid duplicating items, meal-planning and making a shopping list.

Food waste also adds indirectly to the cost of waste collections and landfill, Wrap notes, and to greenhouse gas emissions. The organisation is suggesting that each of us could choose just one bad habit to change.

Source: TheGuardian

Opinion:

Manufacturers who produce too much, supermarkets who stock too much, restaurants who cook too much  and people who buy too much, then throw away unopened/untouched  food ned to be fined.

We have to stop this wastage.

Any wastage needs to be curtailed, and the only thing that seems to work is hit their profits or pockets.

Manufacturers wasting produce – $100,00 fine, doubling for each subsequent fine.

Supermarkets and restaurants – $10,000 doubling the same.

Households – $1,000 and the same doubling.

Hit the profits or pockets and waste will soon reduce. People and companies will start buying or producing only what they need.

Change the World Wednesday – 26th Mar

Not cheap

Disaster!

I threw out some food and some wine.

What’s worse, it was my cooking and the wine wasn’t cheap.

Yesterday, I decided to use the last of the sole (halibut) fillets in my freezer. I have never heard of, but couldn’t see why not use fish in a lasagna. Problem was, I had no lasagna; shopping day today. But I did have some macaroni, so a base of white parsley sauce, peppered sole fillets and more white sauce macaroni on top.

I opened the wine, it looked more like iced-tea, and was definitely musky.

Musk = glandular secretions from animals such as the musk deer, not that I am in the habit of sniffing around musk deer butts. I am using my powers of imagination here.

It wasn’t pleasant on the palate at all.

The ‘lasagna’ I ate one plate for lunch, I wouldn’t make it again. The problem was that I made enough for three meals, and had only eaten one.

It had to go. The guilt trip lasted the rest of the afternoon.

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On with CTWW. I didn’t realise, this Saturday is that lights out thingy.

Yes, Earth Hour 60+.

I consider this to be symbolic rather than effective.

Earth Hour – March 29, 2014 at 8:30 pm (local time)

I have never been convinced that even if the whole world participated, the use of alternative light forms, candles, torches, etc does not offset the switching off of lights.

But it doesn’t hurt to have symbols to raise awareness.

This week, in honor of Earth Hour and to raise awareness, please take photos of what you, personally, are trying to protect. Perhaps it’s a beautiful spot in nature that you particularly love. Maybe you are protecting the clean water which comes out of your faucet. It could be a photo of a river, a favorite tree, an animal, or the sky. The idea is to share, visually, your reasons for living green. You can post the photo on your blog or, if you wish, send them to me (HERE) and I’ll include them in next week’s post (put “CTWW” in the subject line so that I’ll be sure to see the email).

 

OR …

If you’d rather not do the photos, please observe Earth Hour by turning off your lights for one hour beginning at 8:30 pm (your local time) on Saturday, March 29, 2014.

My photo is of the local praça (park) in front of my house. It’s not particularly obvious, but under the bushes there is a lot of rubbish.

Rubbish under the bushes that surround the praça

Plastic water and soda bottles, beer cans, disposable cups, and those nasty things shopping bags. I am constantly picking up what I can, and trying to raise awareness of the locals on the issue.

Our green spaces need protecting, whether they are urban or rural it matters not.

I try my best to live a greenish lifestyle, I’m not always successful (as above with my ‘disaster’) and suffer a measure of angst when I do something that goes against the grain. It raises my hackles when I see people not even trying.

As for the lights out… I probably will  because at that time I will be watching the news, I can do that in the dark.

Monday Moaning

Food wastage, one of the shocking failures of the system.

The way we shop must change. The way supermarkets present food must change. The way businesses calculate the customer needs must change.

The whole system needs an urgent overhaul.

I am against too many laws, we have far too many in some areas, but not enough in others.

Tesco says almost 30,000 tonnes of food ‘wasted’

Tesco estimated that, across the UK food industry, 40% of apples were wasted, as were just under half of bakery items

Supermarket giant Tesco has revealed it generated almost 30,000 tonnes of food waste in the first six months of 2013.

Using its own data and industry-wide figures, it also estimated that, across the UK food industry, 68% of salad to be sold in bags was wasted – 35% of it thrown out by customers.

And it estimated 40% of apples and 47% of bakery items were wasted in the UK.

The retailer is introducing measures to reduce wastage including developing promotions for smaller bags of salad.

The latest figures published by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) in 2011 suggested about 15 million tonnes of food goes to waste each year in the UK.

Read more

Opinion:

Quite frankly, the idea of salad in a bag is the epitome of laziness. It shouldn’t be allowed. Buy a lettuce or a cabbage!

I have seen trays of salad veges in my local supermarket. R$5.00 for a family size salad; turn around and there’s a whole  cabbage for R$0.80, and there’s no polystyrene tray or clingwrap.

It takes about the same time to unwrap the salad tray as it does to cut the cabbage.

Then there’s the quality of the cabbage, most of what I have seen are the parts salvaged from rotting produce; tear off the sad yellow leaves and cut the rest up for salad.

If 40% of the apples are wasted, then they’re buying too many apples.

It’s high time that supermarkets were fined, and heavily, for wasting food. Not just supermarkets but all food retail outlets.

To add to the pot, companies make and market big portions to make people buy more than they need. The customer then has to eat it all (obesity) or chuck what’s left out (wastage).

It’s time that these practices were stopped.

Update!

From The Guardian

Why does anyone buy pre-washed, bagged salad?

Well, obviously, because it looks so fresh and lovely and it’s so clean and convenient, it must be good for you, never mind that it costs a fortune. And because ignorance is bliss. Now, a professor from Imperial College London has gone and ruined it by warning that food-poisoning cases are likely to increase as people buy more salad this way. Pre-washed doesn’t mean safe to eat, he said. It can just mean “looks clean but actually is contaminated with salmonella or E coli”.

Change the World Wednesday – 17th Jul

Zero waste this week….

So why did I have three bags of rubbish to put out tonight instead of my usual one or sometimes two?

Another of life’s paradoxes.

It was all packaging, so I didn’t actually waste anything. No food went out (I didn’t burn any toast this week), nothing reusable went out.

How many of you would have tossed this orange?

I made juice from three of them that had snuck up on me in my fruit stand, it was delicious. Just cut the mouldy bits off, perhaps a little more generously because the soft pulp extends further into the fruit than the affected outside signs

So much food is thrown away because of blemishes or a little mould, when they could be used.

I didn’t even throw the broken wine glass out, it has been put to the side. I didn’t break it, I discovered that the base was broken in two when I unpacked it. Unfortunately it was past the date when I could have taken it back to the store. So eventually, I will glue the base and use it for…. something; I haven’t decided yet.

It’s too small for a fish bowl. Besides some clown would put wine in it, then I’d have weekly trips to AA with a fish.

Probably end up as a candle holder.

Some rocks, compost and moss, perhaps. A mini terrarium with a fern…

Update:

My turning to the new fangled lights is timely. Brazil is banning the sale and manufacture of incandescent light bulbs from next year.

Small suggested, in a comment, that my Bread’n’Butter Pudding sounded great. (Last week)

Mine aren’t as burnt… but you get the idea.

Recipe:

Old bread crusts or rolls saved in the freezer.

Pyrex dish, butter bread (NO margarine, it’s yucky) and line dish. Throw in some sultanas. Slop on some dollops of any jam (jelly for our US cousins). Make scrambled egg mix with less milk than eggs and with some brown sugar and a dash of vanilla essence, pour over bread until soaked and covered. Sprinkle with some cinnamon or nutmeg. Bake at a low heat until solid. Serve, eat, enjoy. It’s about as simple as a dessert can be. This recipe originated in England during WW II when there was food rationing and nothing, but nothing  could be wasted.

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Okay, on with this week’s CTWW.

This week review your activities and come up with at least one more way to live green. Similar to our energy challenge, this will be easy for “newbies” who have plenty of options to choose from and tough for seasoned “greenies” who will have to dig deep. Let’s see how green we can be!!

Oh, pooh!

Recycle, upcycle, repurpose… They’re all on the cards around here.

Lixo at lunch

Here’s an example. My cat Lixo (means rubbish in Portuguese) is a green cat.

I love my Lixo, but I don’t pamper him. He’s a cat after all. Here he is at lunch -terrible photo.

You’ll notice that there isn’t a special cat bowl, nothing that has been especially bought  for him.

He’s a happy cat.

Now let’s take a closer look at Kitty Korner.

Kitty Korner is a cut down milk box carton, lined with two polystyrene slabs cut to fit. His dish is a polystyrene tray, and his milk dish is an old margarine container. Lixo is quite happy with his Kitty Korner and asks for nothing more. He’s only interested in the food.

Now while I try to avoid buying stuff in polystyrene, sometimes it’s unavoidable, because of supermarket or hygiene rules. But when I am lumbered with the stuff, it gets reused, upcycled, repurposed. Oh, and when it gets dirty, I wash it and use it again and again, until it breaks, then it goes out in the trash. For example, that marg container, I have been using for three years, it rotates with a cream cheese container of about the same age.

So, my suggestion for something green and new. Is don’t buy your pets purpose specific things, where possible, reuse, recycle, upcycle or repurpose.

Perhaps with a dog, you may have to use something a tad more sturdy than polystyrene as most dogs would just chew it to pieces all over the backyard. Perhaps an old enamel dish…

How green is your pet?

Change the World Wednesday – 10th Jul

I have a little more than 10 minutes, can I do it? Can I make a CTWW post.

The cacophony of dogs continues unabated each morning.

But on with the post…

Click on the banner for the full post

CTWW is a redo on food wastage.

This week, in addition to avoiding food waste, please share your ideas for how we can all eliminate it in our lives. The idea here is to share tips, strategies, recipes, etc. … anything that will help us “Use it Up” rather than send it to a landfill.

 

AND, TO KICK IT UP A NOTCH …

Head over to the Zero Waste Week site, register and check out all the great information.

 

WANT MORE? OKAY …

Spread the word and encourage your friends and family to join the movement! Let’s ban food waste forever!!

Hmmm, a triple barreled one.

…and that was the good side

I have failed already. This morning I burnt two slices of toast beyond redemption, in fact they were beyond recognition.

On to the compost heap, good quality charcoal.

Really, I already try to eliminate wasting food, of course there are mishaps in the kitchen, the result of blogging while cooking… usually. But I throw little food out; even the T-bone from today’s lunchtime steak (it’s a ‘beef’ week) fed the dog next door; after being thrown at the intruding cat from the other next door that comes in and eats Lixo’s cat food – multipurposing. 🙂

On Sunday I used all my bread crusts, saved in the freezer, and made a wonderful bread’n’butter pudding.

Anything that gets chucked from my kitchen goes on the compost heap, so it’s not exactly wastage. The only things I discard are stuff that would become mouldy like cooked stuff, and very little of that goes out, because I am a terror for left-overs.

Anyway, that’s my ten minutes worth, time to toddle off to work.

Make you Fink on Friday

Cooking from the Compost!

So for years I have been a scavenger, scrounger penny pincher when it comes to food. So what it has a blemish. If I don’t have to pay full price, it’s cool with me! For years, i worked at an organic market, in the produce department, that holds high standards for the quality of their produce which means a lot gets thrown away! What a wasteful place America is. At least where I work they compost it. Meaning there are bins where they take the bagged rejects out to for people to use as compost. A perk for working in the department is first dibs on the rejects! Awesome!! Free organics?!? Um, YES!

I’ve been cooking out of the trash for years and I thought I would start sharing some meals with you. Here is a grilled veggie pizza I made the other night.

Reblogged from: Grace Alley Treasures, you want to see the pizza, then roll on over there.

I have posted on this before.

We don’t need to have perfect veges and produce.

The supermarket lines them all up with nary a blemish

Your fruit and vege don’t need to be perfect. If you shop for perfection then you are one of the ones responsible for food wastage and shortage.

Your apple doesn’t need to be perfect.

It can have a spot or blemish…

Cut out the blemish, it tastes just fine.

You too can eat well from fruit and vege destined for the compost heap.

 

 

We Must Act… NOW!

The wastage of food on this planet has reached epic proportions. It’s time to stop!

Alarming figures are appearing, that we waste 50% of our food from the farm to the table and beyond, that half of the turkeys we produce for Christmas and Thanksgiving Day end up in the bin not eaten.

If this figures don’t shock you, nothing will?

We desperately need to return to the old ways where our larders looked liked this.

The reliance on corporative food products has to be stemmed.

Pre-war advertising – Click the image for an excellent post

Very soon we will need this to survive.

Don’t scoff at the idea.

“It takes roughly 20 gallons of water to make a pint of beer, as much as 132 gallons of water to make a 2-liter bottle of soda, a typical hamburger takes 630 gallons of water to produce.” – Wall Street Journal

We have all heard about ‘carbon footprints’ but what we haven’t heard much about is the ‘water footprint’.

The water footprint is the hidden amount of water used to produce food, and nearly all other products. It’s the amount we don’t see.

1lb of beef cost $7.99 and 2,500 gallons of water

Take another example; “To date, probably the most reliable and widely-accepted water estimate to produce a pound of beef is the figure of 2,500 gallons/pound. Newsweek once put it another way: “the water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a destroyer.” – vegsource

Our supplies of water are dwindling, fast.

Gone are the days when we just used river water, now we are stealing from the aquifers, the underground water that supplies the rivers and lakes.

We are not only stealing that water, we are polluting that water with practices like fracking. The aquifers take thousands of years to regenerate.

Once the aquifers are gone, so are we!

Make you Fink on Friday

This is absurd

I fail to see it…

At a time when the prices of food are rising beyond the means of ordinary folk Spain holds the Tomatina festival in Buñol where 120,000kgs of tomatoes are wasted by 40,000 people.

While here in Brazil the shortage of tomatoes has risen more than six times their normal price.

This is apparently fun.

This is also apparently fun

Not only this…

In Italy, the Ivrea Orange Festival is a similar absurdity.

“In the small northern Italian town of Ivrea, the Battle of the Oranges Festival is held every year during a three-day carnival leading up to Lent. Nearly 3,000 people gather in the piazzas of this village of just under 25,000 people. Orange-throwing is said to represent the battle against an oppressive emperor in the 12th century.” – World’s Weirdest Festivals
Even the Americans do it.

“The Empire Asparagus Festival in Empire, Mich., is dedicated entirely to this perennial vegetable. Michigan is one of the top asparagus producers in the U.S.” – World’s Weirdest Festivals

I fail to see the funny side of this when we have a world full of hungry people.

Maybe, I am just a boring old fart.

Monday Moaning

Preamble: I know this one will upset the veges and vegans, but that’s not the purpose. The reason behind this post is the incredible waste of food in a world that is crying food shortages.

British veal poised for an ‘ethical’ comeback

TV chef Jimmy Doherty at his farm in Suffolk.  Photograph: Nick Sinclair/Alamy

TV farmer Jimmy Doherty promotes revival of rose veal to prevent ‘useless’ male dairy calves being shot at birth

As far as reputation goes, it’s up there with foie gras and shark’s fin. But a decade after furious protests on the streets of Britain brought a ban on both the controversial live export of calves and on the rearing-in-crates system – veal is back.

British rose veal has already won the ethical stamp of approval from the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) but it remains a niche market in the UK, just 0.1% of the meat we consume each year.

Now TV farmer Jimmy Doherty, as part of a new series starting on Channel 4 this week, has persuaded Tesco to start stocking the veal in the hope that it will catch on with British meat-eaters.

Doherty and other campaigners claim that persuading British consumers to start eating rose veal – so called because the meat is pink instead of the traditional milk-fed white veal – will go some way to address the “hidden scandal” of our love of milk that sees an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 male dairy calves shot within hours of birth.

Dairy cows are kept constantly pregnant to feed our milk and cheese habit but while female calves can go on to replace their mothers in the dairy system, there is no market for the male calves of dairy breeds which aren’t considered good for beef.

“Rose veal can offer an alternative,” said Doherty. “Crates and all that stuff have given veal a bad name but things are very different now. And it’s not about eating day-old baby cows – if you think that we slaughter chickens when they are 42 days old, lamb at five to six months, and pigs at five months – then at six to eight months, rose veal is the oldest of the lot. No one talks about that side of things.

“Dairy calves are being shot at 24 to 48 hours old and if we drink milk we all have to share in this instead of leaving the burden of it to the farmers. Eating rose veal is utilising those calves and solving a problem,” said Doherty, who is raising veal calves on his own farm.

“The veal being produced in Europe and imported into the UK isn’t meeting anything like our welfare standards. The calves have restricted milk diets to keep the meat white. Our rose veal is slightly pink and has a lovely, lovely flavour and it’s full of protein. I’d love to see more people eating it. It’s not the cheapest so for a lot of people it would have to be a once-a-week special. Tesco has been selling imported German veal so I’m really pleased they are looking at stocking British rose veal.

“It’s time to grow up and face our responsibilities: this is just younger beef.”

Source: The Guardian Read more

Opinion:

Rose Veal Steaks, just smaller

100,000 – 150,000 animals destroyed because they have no purpose; and that’s only in the United Kingdom. When you add the rest of the world into the equation that is a tremendous loss/waste of food.

Admittedly in the past the raising of this product was abhorrent, enough to create a political furore.

However, times have changed, and so have the methods; at least in the UK, although some European countries do not adhere to the same standards. They need to be brought into line.

Make you Fink on Friday

Leftovers

The idea of leftovers is not new. It goes back to at least 1791. Now does that surprise you?

So much is wasted

One of the things that we worry about is what to do with leftovers, not only from an economic point of view but also to help combat the incredible wastage of food  around the world. I read recently that the average American family tosses away 14% of it’s food, which accounts for $75bn each year in the US alone.

The original recipe for leftovers was the Cottage Pie.

Made from whatever leftover meat, be it roast, boiled or grilled, chopped or ground then cooked into a gravy with or without vegetables and covered with potato.

It is only since WWII that Cottage Pie became a dish made with meat especially bought for the occasion.

Cottage Pie

The Cottage Pie, whose earliest reference can be traced to 1791 around the time that the potato was being used as an edible vegetable for the poor. ‘Cottage’ referring to a modest country house.

The shepherd’s pie was not around, but appeared around 1877 and referred to a cottage pie made with mutton.

The idea of the cottage pie was a way of using any leftover meat topped with potato.

Today, the cottage pie and shepherd’s pie are almost synonymous.

Variations on the theme are:

• The cumberland pie is a version with a layer of bread crumbs on top.^[15]
• A similar British dish made with fish is a fish pie.
• A vegetarian version can be made using soya or other meat substitutes (like tofu or Quorn), or legumes such as lentils or chick peas.
• In Argentina, Bolivia and Chile a similar dish is called “pastel de papa” (potato pie).
• In the Dominican Republic this is called pastelón de papa (potato casserole), it has a layer of potatoes, one or two of meat, and another of potatoes, topped with a layer of cheese.
• In France, a similar dish is called hachis Parmentier.
• In Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon a similar dish is referred to as “Siniyet Batata” (literally meaning a plate of potatoes), or “Kibbet Batata”.
• In Quebec, a similar dish is called pâté chinois (literally, “Chinese pie”).
• In Russia, a similar dish is called “Картофельная запеканка” (Kartofel’naya zapekanka, or “potato baked pudding”).
• In Brazil a similar dish is called “bolo de batata” (literally meaning a potato cake)
• In Portugal a similar dish is called “Empadão”, with two layers of mashed potatoes and a layer of minced beef in between

Source: Wikipedia

So the cottage pie is not uniquely British, nor American, it’s pretty much a universal dish and can be found anywhere.

There you have the perfect way to reduce both your budget and the national food wastage.