LFHW - wrapping it up with soup

So, my week of LFHW blogging comes to an end. This morning I was out on a bike ride, much tougher than expected thanks to the incessant headwind for the first 25 miles, and so I had a bit of emergency refuelling to do. This would not have been the case had I not let us get into the parlous state of having NO CAKE in the house when I left. No cake!! I rectified that this afternoon, making the parsnip cake that horrified Mrs Green with its lack of butter and eggs. I can confirm it is still very much delicious, proved by the fact that I seem to have eaten four pieces. Oops...

So how's our waste total for the last day?

Breakfast: same as Monday, porridge/cereal and tea.
Food-related waste: a teabag.

Lunch: The other half of yesterday's soup, and an individual fondant fancy wedding cake each, from yesterday.
Packaging waste: paper cake case.

Snacks: banana, cereal/fruit/nut bar, bottle of fruit juice, lots of home made cake and tea.
Food-related waste: banana peel, more teabags.
Packaging waste: plastic wrapper, plastic bottle and lid.

Dinner: Roast pork fillet, roast potatoes and parsnips, carrots and peas; stewed rhubarb and yoghurt.
Food-related waste: a few manky bits off the potatoes, parsnip peelings, rhubarb trimmings.
Packaging waste: thin plastic bag from pork.

Compostable food waste: 145g.
No non-compostable food waste.
Recyclable packaging: 2g (cake cases).
Non-recyclable packaging: 45g (plastic bag, wrapper, bottle*).

*sadly I just wasn't able to carry the juice bottle home to recycle, and there was no recycling bin in the village where I bought it, so I've counted it as non-recyclable.

This brings the total for the week to:

Compostable food waste: 1890g
Non-compostable food waste: 433g
Recyclable packaging: 1282g
Non-recyclable packaging: 133g
Grand total: 3738g



So, of all my directly food-related waste, 85% (by weight) has been composted or recycled. I could only make serious inroads on that with something like a bokashi bin (worth it for less than 500g?). I hold my hands up to one "could have been eaten but wasn't" item (the sauerkraut) but overall I think those numbers are not too bad at all. The secret? Just a little bit of forward thinking:

• Plan it! Think about your shopping before you go, and think in terms of meals rather than individual items. Look for links between meals to help you use all of an ingredient if you can't buy exactly how much you want.

• Get friendly with your freezer. Use it to store up whole meals or excess ingredients (if they will freeze), and use it to help you save time and effort through cook-once-eat-twice thinking.

That's my LFHW week over, but the campaign continues, and if you can count on anything at all you can count on there being more low-waste and leftovers recipes appearing on this blog as it continues!

See what happens...

...when you don't plan ahead and end up doing chunks of your shopping in random bursts? Our bin weights is 1.2kg for the past two weeks. In mitigation I will say it contains a completely stripped chicken carcass, and we have not eaten out as much this fortnight as we have before! There are several meat trays in there, and a bit of ham that hid at the back of the fridge until it was unusable, plus other unrecyclable plastics from pasta, spinach, celery and other things it seems impossible to buy any other way.

Tonight I will knuckle down, make a list, check out the freezer, and see how well I can plan out the week. I have to try and convince Mark that he can shop at the market (all of 200m from his office)! I'll also use up some of the many bananas I brought home from the half marathon leftovers, and turn them into my new favourite banana cake recipe, so there'll be no need to buy cereal bars etc.


Wholesome Banana Chocolate Breakfast Bars
(from 101 Cookbooks via Chocolate and Zucchini)

• 200 grams (2 cups) rolled oats or mixed rolled grains
• 60 grams (2/3 cup) ground almonds, a.k.a. almond meal
• 30 grams (1/3 cup) dried, unsweetened grated coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 120 grams (4 1/4 ounces) good-quality bittersweet chocolate
• 4 very ripe, medium bananas, about 400 grams (14 ounces) when peeled
• 1/2 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) whole almond butter (can substitute olive oil, or slightly warmed coconut oil)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a 9" square tin (or equivalent) with vegetable oil.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the oats, ground almonds, coconut, and salt. Set aside. Chop the chocolate so the largest pieces are about the size of a chocolate chip. Set aside.

In another medium mixing bowl, combine the bananas, vanilla, and almond butter, and mash thoroughly using a potato masher. Add the oats mixture and mix well. Fold the chocolate in gently.

Pour into the prepared baking dish, level the surface, and slip into the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, until the top is set and golden-brown. Let cool completely before slicing into bars.

The recipe happens to be vegan, gluten-free, and no added sugar, but primarily the bars are just yummy! Oats, bananas, nuts, a little dark chocolate - all good stuff. A couple of notes on the ingredients: you can get almond butter in health/whole food shops if not in the supermarket. I haven't seen unsweetened shredded coconut (desiccated is too fine I think) so I substituted chopped pecans, but seeds would work well too. I guess you could put good old soaked fruit instead of chocolate.

Day 4 - precycling, planning and treats

My other blog posts have been a bit epic, so I think I shall keep this one short. I am also upset that I failed in my quest for completely alliterative titles ;)

As I was reading the paper in the staff coffee bar (one paper, many readers, less recycling to do :), an article caught my eye. It gave a name to what lots of us waste-free bloggers have been doing this week: Precycling, i.e. selecting what we buy so as to reduce the amount of waste and recycling generated. In the Guardian article, Tanis Taylor discusses trying to cut down on food packaging, and in particular muses on the need to plan ahead and be organised, and stick to that plan. She also tells us about some examples of shops who positively encourage people to bring their own packaging - more, please!

Planning ahead is something I have struggled with occasionally this week as I am very much an impulse buyer, especially around the bargain shelf. Before, I would not have thought that much about picking up reduced items packed in plastic, even though they were "treat" items that I could have done without (small sweet peppers, prepared tapas-type dishes). Somehow the "bargain" aspect seems to click in and override the more rational part of my brain dealing with waste (and calories, for that matter!). But to be honest I haven't really missed them this week - although I did confess to getting caught out by the bargainous chocolate on Tuesday.

This is odd, as in lots of other ways I am pretty organised and I generally love planning things. I do usually think in terms of whole meals when I shop, for example. But I am a sucker for extras, "treating myself" to something, especially in that afternoon slump. It couldn't hurt to find a few more non-edible treats I can still enjoy easily (like going for 5 minutes' walk in the fresh air!).

So, fellow bloggers: what's your waste-free treat?