Did you know $694 million of leftover food is thrown away and sent to landfill each year in NSW?
Make a change today and a commitment to waste less food, save money and save our environment.
What can you do?
- Plan your meals weekly
- Write out a shopping list of ingredients - take into account items currently in your fridge, freezer and pantry
- Stick to your shopping list
- Reuse left over food and ingredients
- Freeze small portions and have them for lunch
- Feed food scraps to your chooks and other pets
- Place food scraps in your compost or worm farm
- Attend one of Council's National Recycling Week events.
Get Your Cook's Hat On
As part of National Recycling Week 2011, residents were invited to send in their best recipes using leftover food and ingredients. Thank you to everyone who submitted their recipes. Check out what some of our locals do with leftover food, and why not try their recipes at home?
Second Time Round Cookbook
Lorenzo, from Lorenzo’s Diner on Keira Street in Wollongong, has thrown his support behind the Love Food Hate Waste campaign. He wants people use their kitchen as he does - control what you spend on ingredients, and what is thrown out.
Here are some of his tips:
- Prepare a schedule, planning a menu for each day of the week and list all the ingredients necessary for each meal and the number of people you’re cooking for
- Allow for a little extra – Italian style – but do not overbuy
- Buy regularly rather than weekly
- Use FIFO – First In, First Out, when using ingredients
- Choose seasonal produce as it will be fresher and last longer
- Understand the best ways for storing food…
Keep meats in steel containers, tightly sealed with cling wrap
Cut vegetables should not be cling wrapped, but covered with kitchen paper
Cheeses and cold cuts should be covered in cling wrap
Leftovers such as cooked meats, soups and pasta dishes should be cooled before refrigerating and covered in cling wrap
Store foods in the correct order in the fridge – raw at the bottom, cooked at the top
Have a list of recipes that use up leftovers and use them when necessary
Lorenzo says a frittata is a great recipe when it comes to using up leftovers. Here's his recipe. All you need to do is pick your own flavour combination. He recommends
- Scallops, pancetta and sage
- Sun-dried tomatoes, pitted olives and picked artichokes
- Steamed potatoes, mushrooms and ham
- Prawns, peas and sweet potato
- Crab meat, chilli and spinach
Lorenzo's Frittata
Ingredients
9 x 70 gram eggs at room temperature
100 mls single cream
1 tblspn grated parmesan
1 tblspn parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
50 grams unsalted butter
200 grams of ‘leftovers'. See above for my suggestions.
Method – A basic technique using a 9-inch pan
- Break your eggs into a stainless steel bowl. Add cheese, cream and parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Then, using a fork, gently break all the yolks and mix lightly.
- Heat the butter in your Teflon-coated frying pan (the pan should have high sides) and allow to melt. When the butter starts foaming, pour the egg mixture into the pan and continue cooking at a high temperature until bubbles appear all around the sides of the frittata.
- Lower the heat, use a diffuser if available, and cover the pan with a lid. Continue cooking until the frittata has solidified. The process should take roughly 20 minutes.
- Be sure to lift the lid occasionally to check on the progress and that it’s not cooking too fast.
- When cooked, shake the pan lightly to make sure the frittata hasn’t stuck, then turn onto a large dinner plate, upsidedown.
- Allow to cool slightly and serve.
Note – When using vegetables, make sure they’re precooked and cooled before they are added to the eggs. If you’re using prawns or scallops should be lightly fried and cooled before being mixed into the eggs. Be sure to chop any of the added ingredients into small pieces
For more information on what you can do to be waste-wise visit the Love Food Hate Waste website.