I’m very mindful of food waste, so I like to plan out what we are going to eat the following week.
It usually has a bit of flexibility in there, just in case…
Quite often there’ll be one dish that will cover six serves (so three meals for the two of us).
Just so I can have a quick to prepare dish on the days my husband works in the office and doesn’t get home until nearly 7pm.
Last week I decided to try a new recipe, that promised eight serves.
I’d obviously come across this recipe before, because I discovered I’d printed it off a few times and put them in my food folder.
Must be good I thought.
It was a Vegetable Shepherd’s Pie.
To cut a long story short, it wasn’t great!
Because it had red lentils and carrots as part of the filling, and used sweet potato as the topping, it was very… orange.
Honestly it just looked like orange slop on a plate.
That said, it tasted really nice.
The flavours were great.
But we both realised we weren’t going to eat it like that again.
A bowl full of orange mush.
I really didn’t want to throw it away, but what else to do with it?
Acccording to the Federal Government each year Australians waste around 7.6 million tonnes of food across the food supply chain.
This equates to about 312kg per person, and costs the Australian economy around $36.6 billion.
Each year.
The stats go on…
Households are responsible for about 30% of the total.
This equals around 2.5 million tonnes per year and costs each household up to $2,500.
Horrifying isn’t it?
Since we’ve been meal planning I’ve found we have a lot less food wastage.
Although I do go instore to buy fresh fruit & veg, by using a click and collect service it’s also kept us more on budget.
We no longer wander up and down every aisle purchasing random things, and it avoids my husband’s tendency to ‘go rogue’ (sorry Michael)!
Just buying what you need (or what’s on offer).
So back to the (now named) Orange Slop and what to do with it?
A quick look at my menu plan and I decided it could be the mash in a Bangers and Mash meal.
It was perfect.
Because of all the other veg in the filling (onion, leek, carrots tomatoes, peas and corn) it didn’t need anything extra – just a veggie sausage and gravy.
It tasted great.
We were now half way through the dish.
My husband came up with the idea to make it into a sort of a bubble and squeak.
Frying it up in a pan so it got nice and charry.
Yep – that worked well too.
The final serve was Sunday brunch when he turned the last portions into two patties, perfect with a poached egg and mushrooms.
Phew, we got through it.
All eight serves!
I can honestly say we won’t be making that dish again (in fact the recipes are now in the recycling bin).
But I’m so pleased we didn’t just throw the food away.
Now to start thinking about next week’s meal plan.
Ann 🙏