Andrew Kay: my rapidly reducing waste line

Yes, check the spelling, waste not waist. Okay, a diet might not be a bad idea as I steer a steady course for my 58th birthday, but right now I have far too many other things occupying my mind to be worrying about calories.

I did recently sample a low calorie cake that was quite delicious, but I find cake easy enough to cut from my diet anyway, it’s the other stuff that I find hard to cut, the champagne, foie gras and truffles – only kidding, contrary to popular belief my diet can be quite modest.

I was reminded of this when I was introduced to Zero Heroes on Twitter. It’s all part of a campaign run by Lewes Council to promote the reduction of food waste.

Now I have been long campaigned against the profligate nature of the weekly shop. Let me explain. The weekly shop is all too often a trolley dash around a major supermarket in which we are enticed to fill our baskets to capacity with tempting offers, bogoffs and the like, many of which are really surplus to requirements. Tempting as two trays of heritage tomatoes for only 40p more than one tray may be, will I actually use them? The truth is that we are being lured into buying more food than we can eat, simply because it is cheap. It is however the opposite of cheap if, by the following weekly shop it is still sitting on the refrigerator shelf looking less than appetising. It simply means that the one pack of tomatoes that you did want cost 40p more than it needed to.

“Tempting as two trays of heritage tomatoes for only 40p more than one tray may be, will I actually use them?”

Now that is waste times two, wasted tomatoes and a waste of 40p, or a sum similar to that. Food waste in my view happens on two levels, the food we buy that we do not need and the food we throw away when in reality it still has potential.

I discovered many years ago that I could make rather a lot of hearty dishes from leftovers. I make a rather good soup which is known as salad soup. I like my salads dressed and I like them to look generous. This means that they can often be too big for purpose and result in leftover salad. Of course the vinegar and oil dressing will make the whole go limp overnight and by the next day the salad can look rather more like a compost heap than a dish for the table.

But not to worry, add the salad, dressing and all, to a pan of stock, there is no shame in shop bought stocks and I often use the Swiss vegetable bouillon powder to do this. Bring the lot to a gentle simmer and leave it for 20 minutes or so. Then blitz with a blender, not for too long if you want some texture.

It’s a real winner, the dressing now adding zing to a rather good vegetable soup. If you want it to be thicker then throw a few slices of stale bread into the pot whilst it simmers, that will certainly do the trick.

I am between kitchens right now but I know that my shopping practice, buying what fresh foods I need as and when I need them has a dual impact, not wasting food and not wasting money too.

To find out more visit zeroheroes.me
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