The Thrifty Cookbook: 476 Ways to Eat Well With Leftovers (3 page)

These are ideas you can play with, alter and refine according to your own taste; they are quick and unfussy, requiring very little preparation and producing even less washing up. Using up food you might otherwise chuck means you are doing your bit for sustainability, and it should leave you with more cash in your pocket, more space in your fridge and a welcome reconnection with your kitchen. Cheap to the point of being free, it’s not just about common sense – it is tasty and infinitely, almost smugly, rewarding. And, yes, it could even help change your world.

Once you start to notice how much food gets thrown away, it’s amazing how your mindset alters – what used to be unconsciously acceptable becomes irritating. Becoming aware of waste almost immediately begins to change the way you shop, store and plan to use your food. So what follows is really only plain common sense.

The single best way to cut down on food waste is to make a shopping list and stick to it. My granny had a plastic board with a wax pencil dangling on the end of a thrillingly scarlet ribbon – now I use it. My mum used to write with a washable black felt-tip pen on the white ceramic tiles above her workspace. I loved the element of graffiti that entered her normally well-ordered kitchen.

I tell myself that being methodical about food shopping doesn’t make me a fuddy duddy. It’s nicer to think that it makes me savvy, streetwise and environmentally responsible and it does save on endless excursions to the shops to get one extra ingredient. If you stick to the list and generally refuse to be seduced, it should mean that you have what you need (and just what you need) in the fridge and cupboard, rather than an odd array of all your favourite foods that don’t quite go together.

Lists also save money. Supermarkets have long been experts at making us buy more than we need and we are endlessly optimistic about how healthy we
might
be – stocking up on too much perishable food. Then there’s the fact that pre-packed fruit, vegetables and meat are rarely exactly the right amount, so that some of it goes mouldy before it’s even been touched. Seductive Buy One, Get One Free offers (delightfully known as BOGOFS) might be good value for pasta or shampoos, if you can remember where you’ve stored them, but with fresh food they more often simply fuel our increasingly throwaway culture.

Buying less, more often and, if possible, locally means that if you suddenly find you are having a particularly sociable week and are hardly at home, you are not left with a load of food rapidly demanding attention. It makes buying cheaper seasonal foods easier, cuts out the toil of a once-a-week marathon shop, is likely to reduce packaging and – believe it or not – is often significantly cheaper. Shopping locally is not just about supporting your local community in the battle against supermarket supremacy; it is almost guaranteed to reduce your overall food bill as well.

If you regularly throw away, say, one pear at the end of every week, then stop buying the four-packs and go for three single pears bought locally instead. Put yourself back in charge of how many, what size and what degree of ripeness you want, with the added advantage that you will be reducing packaging too. You could also consider getting your weekly (or monthly) basics delivered by an online supermarket, freeing you up to buy fresh produce as needed. I reckon the average urban family can save around £100-200 a month shopping like this.

Think of the kitchen as having three storage areas – the cupboard, the fridge and the freezer. Getting them under control may mean a little investment up front but is ultimately less wasteful. A can of beans or pulses can turn leftover meat into a tantalising soup, stew or salad, while coconut milk and curry paste mean you won’t be phoning out for a delivery of curry and chucking some leftovers in the bin. Bottled ingredients such as capers and anchovies last for ages in the fridge and will perk up almost any dish instantly. And I don’t want to live in a world without frozen pastry – it turns something boring into something glorious.

If the following list looks daunting, I am not suggesting that you rush out and buy everything at once, and you certainly don’t need everything on it to make the most of these recipes. The list is general, and you probably have most of it already. There might be a couple of ingredients here that you haven’t used before but in small quantities none of them is expensive. The point is: build up what you need and ignore the rest.

Pasta: penne, lasagne, linguine, spaghetti, Chinese egg or rice noodles

Rice: short grain risotto rice (such as Arborio, Carnaroli or Nano), long grain rice (such as basmati)

Couscous

Lentils (dry or canned) – green, Puy or red

Bouquet garni or bay leaves