Well completed are my 30 days, this mission will have to go on. And now that I know how, it will.
I have learned that telling yourself to just finish your plate is not a solution. Didn’t like it when I was a kid and still don’t like it.
I found, it really is about planning our meals and checking daily what we have left in the fridge. Planning meals means to be aware which food you are buying, how much of it you will need for your meal and which other delicious dishes you can make with the bits you didn’t use.
Writing a shopping list helped a lot too. I didn’t buy veggies because I felt like it (i used to, without knowing what to cook with them) but bought what was on my “meal planer”.
A particularly good way for me to avoid chucking little bits and pieces of food into the bin (half of the tomato from dinner on Sunday, the salad leaves I didn’t use on Monday, etc) is to check the fridge of the mornings I am working and take all these bits with me to work to make creative sandwiches or salads for lunch. Had some interesting combinations but never a bad one.
My conclusion from this experience is:
A) loved these 30 days because they made me aware of how much we consume (or better say not consume) food
B) it is so easy to make a better food behaviour part of our life
C) I can get Big N and Little M involved without them even realising
D) it is a great way to reduce our runs to the garbage bin.
I am determined to keep the awareness for our food consumption up but still trying to get a wormfarm started 
.
~ Sustainable Mum ~
Posted in Challenge | Tagged avoiding, Food, reusing |
The second week of my challenge to reduce food waste has been better. Planning our meals in advance and going shopping with a proper shopping list helps to buy just what you really need. We cooked delicious food and nearly had nothing to through away. Nearly. I admit it, some of our food ended up in the wheelie bin.
Here is the overview.
The best: avocado face mask
A colleague suggested to use the rest of an avocado that is too old to eat but still in fairly good shape as a face mask. I googled it too and found lots of websites and blogs that talked about avocado as an excellent natural beauty product. My favorite: “…avocado is a good source of potassium, which is known as the youth mineral, so whether you are eating avocados or making a face mask, they can help your skin maintain its healthy and beautiful glow.” I didn’t need any more convincing to try it. And I loved it. I mashed the avocado with a fork until smooth, added some yoghurt (good for you skin too) and put it on my face, relaxed for about 15 minutes (no I didn’t, I put away Little M’s toys, but it’s good if you can) and washed it off with warm water. My skin was amazingly soft and clean. Avocado is definitley on my beauty list from now on.
The worst:
I couldn’t tackle the worst yet. It still sits in the fridget but I have to eat it today. It is pasta with veggie sauce from Little M. Doesn’t sound too bad. But I slightly overcooked the pasta in the first place (which Little M seemed to like) and it has been in the fridge now for two days. It is all soggy and … just not a dish I am looking forward to. Thank god it is just a bit of leftover, so maybe three spoon full. If I’d be a man I would say: “Be a man and suck it up.” I am not, but that is still what I will do. Yum ?
The failure:
Yes, this week I actually threw away food. I made fish pie for Little M and me one dinner. We had enough for the next day lunch, but I really didn’t want to head it up fish a third time. So the last portion I had to through away. Feel really bad about it, and it showed me that my food planning apparently didn’t go as well as I though it was. Oh, and I had to chuck away fresh parsley and dill too. They went off so quickly couldn’t even think of cooking something to use them for. Any tips how to keep fresh herbs fresh for longer than two or three days?
That was my second week. It was good, with these small fish and herb incidences. Haven’t planned too much for the thrid week and didn’t go shoppign with a shopping list either. Isn’t it unbelievable that I learned something last week and can’t even keep going with it for another week? Well, will put that on my todo list for next weekend too. Gosh, so many list recently.
Enjoy your week
~ Sustainable Mum ~
Posted in Challenge | Tagged avoiding, Food, shopping list |
It has been a week since I started trying to reduce our food waste. The first few days have been everything between easy and delicious to somehow difficult and not pleasant.
The best: a delicious wrap for lunch made out of leftover steamed pumpkin, a boiled egg, some capsikum and cucumber as well as humous. I realised in the morning that that pumpkin will go off if I don’t eat it that day, so decided to steam it before I went to work and do something with it. The outcome was one of the best wraps I’ve ever had.
The worst: bread with baked beans. I really do not like baked beans. I have them at home for a quick lunch/dinner for Little M when time is not on my side. In this instance I quickly warmed up some baked beans added a bit of fresh tomato and put it on top of a nice rye sunflower seed bread from the German bakery. Love these breads, they make every meal delicious. I had to learn that in some cases even this bread doesn’t help. So, obviously Little M hadn’t finished his dinner and I faced the task of doing something with the last bit of bread that was soaked with cold baked beans. Well to cut a long story short I ate it but REALLY didn’t enjoy it. Baked beans have to go onto Big N’s plate the next time, that’s for sure.
The average: you can never do it wrong with leftover pasta. I had it twice this week and liked it both times. Not extraordinatry but always a yummy dish.
My first week showed me that it is easy to avoid food if you eat it all. What a learning! But who wants to end up with a muffin top? Or even worse having to eat baked beans?
So for this week I actually planned our meals. Going shopping with a proper shopping list and just buy what you will need the next few days will hopefully make a big difference.
Let’s see how the next 7 days are going to taste like.
~ Sustainable Mum ~
Posted in avoiding, Challenge, Food | Tagged avoiding, Food |
I never like it when we through away food. With Little M we tend to through out more food as he often doesn’t eat as well as we do (although his looks tell a different story. Sorry sweety). We could eat all his leftovers, but really, who wants to eat leftovers that have spit all over it or sandwiches that are half eaten? Not on my daily diet plan. In our old appartment we had an easy solution, a compost bin. But since we moved, there is no compost anymore. So we are currently throughing out food far too often. Very “Unlike” to speake in facebook terms.
A few weeks ago I read about the “Love food Hate Waste” Campaign and knew straight away that this is something I want to try. So here I am now making a commitment not to through away food for the next 30 days.
I will try to prepare and cook food so we either don’t have leftovers or we have enough leftovers for lunch next day. Little M’s leftovers will be most challenging as they are often just a few veggies, fish or meat eaten halfway through and then left on the plate. Will that be my dinner for the next 30 days?
We’ll see and you will see too. Wish me luck.
~ Sustainable Mum ~
Posted in Food | Tagged avoiding, foodwaste |
My last 30 days challenge (reusing Little M’s bathwater) inspired me to look further into ways to save water. We used to use a bucket in the shower to catch all that cold water that goes down the drain while you wait for the warm drops to arrive. We stopped using it because it was really inconvenient: the bucket was always in the way, the water splashed everywhere when we carried the bucket through the house and and how do you properly water your pot plants with a bucket full of water without spilling half of it? I know there are ways to get around it. But isn’t behaviour change most successful when an idea becomes a normal habit of your life? And that is best achieved if it is easy and hassle free.
So enough of excuses, we are back in the shower water saving business. How did it come? I went to the Organic Expo in Sydney on the weekend and came across the “Joeycan” (see image). It is doing two jobs in one: catches water and functions as a watering can. Clever and solves the issues we had with the bucket. It is not the most stylish design, but I guess it is not that important for a container that sits most of its life in your shower. We’ll definitely use it.
If you want to know more about it go to their website joeycan.com.au.
And this is how it works:
~ Sustainable Mum ~
Posted in water | Tagged reusing, shower, water |
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