Food waste is not just for Christmas, sadly we just waste too much food.
In the UK, we throw away 6.6 million tonnes of household food waste a year in the UK, almost three quarters is food we could have eaten, Wrap found out. A disproportionate amount of this is at Christmas time.
The Big Issue found that we waste 5 million Christmas puddings, and 74 million mince pies each year. Not to mention huge amounts of vegetables, fruit and snacks. In addition, we buy approximately 10 million turkeys each Christmas, according to the Food Standards agency, yet we throw away over 100,000 tonnes of poultry every year, most of it completely edible. Look at their tips to Reduce food waste and stay safe this Christmas
Try Act for Ealing’s 5 easy ways to use leftovers this year to reduce our food waste.
- Leftover recipes: Turn leftover turkey or meat into a curry, stew or a pie. Some great ideas from BBC Good food.
- Make Stock: Put the turkey or meat carcass in a big pot with water and any herbs or old veg you have lying around. Bring to the boil and then simmer for a few hours to make a yummy stock. Freeze the stock for later.
- Leftover Hash or bubble and squeak: Mash up leftover potatoes and veg and fry in a pan as a delicious hash.
- Freeze any leftover hard cheese or milk for later. Read up about this and other Foods you never knew you could freeze
- Leftover brandy butter to make these delicious Brandy butter cookies.
- Turn mincepies into fridge cake or homemade icecream.
- Give away unopened ingredients that weren’t used, donate these to Ealing Foodbank or Ealing Soup Kitchen. Or you can give them away on Olio
For more inspiration, go to:
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