Are you wasting food?

If you're wondering why I have a jug with a strainer and a jar on top, I'm making quark cheese.

It's a sad and cruel fact that in a world where 9 million people die of hunger or malnutrition each year, the amount of food being wasted in Western countries increases most years. In the UK 20 billion pounds worth of food is wasted each year, in the USA it's between 30 and 40%, and in Australia it's 25% wasted. We are increasingly disconnected for the source of our food and in many cases people don't even know where their food comes from. They don't connect milk and cheese with cows, or eggs with chickens.

I used to waste a lot of food. I'd go to the supermarket and stock up because I didn't want to go back to shop again before I had to. I bought food "just in case we needed it". When we didn't eat it, it was thrown out. That is a shameful confession and one I did not want to make. But I have created the food wastage problem just as much as many of you have.

But I stopped wasting food. Have you?

When I was growing up, my mother never wasted food. It was a homemaker's duty to have a nice collection of recipes for leftovers. Most home cooks took pride in what they could produce from little bits of this and that. I remember bubble and squeak being made from leftover vegetables and turned into what Americans call hash browns; I remember corned beef fritters being made from the corn beef cooked and served the day before; I remember shepherd's pie or lamb curry being made with the remains of a roast leg of lamb. We loved all these meals, they where all served, not as "leftovers" but as another meal produced from the large number of recipes my mother knew. Leftover cooking was common. It was just another skill of a busy housewife who worked hard to feed her family within the confines of a meagre budget. Nothing was thrown out, nothing was wasted.

When I stopped wasting food, I made sure I only bought what I knew we'd eat - no more food "just in case". I reorganised my fridge to make sure the foods that I had been wasting were at the front of the fridge and in full view. I regularly scheduled food made from leftovers into my menu plans. When my boys were living here, if we had roast meat, or something that wouldn't be eaten in one meal, I'd always make a curry or pie with the leftovers the next day. I scanned the fridge and my vegetable boxes every two or three days to see what had to be used that day. Now we organise our food differently because we grow a lot of it and there is little waste. If I have bread left at the end of the day, it's either frozen for toast, made into breadcrumbs and frozen or given to the chooks.

I always keep an eye on use by dates too. If milk is getting close to its date, I make a custard or rice pudding. Cheese almost on its date can be added to homemade pizza. Vegetables, even small amounts can be made into soup or stock and frozen, or made into a vegetable curry for that night's dinner. The key to this is monitoring your food to make sure it's used before it spoils.

We've become a lazy mob and this is reflected in the way we waste food. I know that if my grandma or my mother had seen some of the food I've thrown out, they would have told me to wake up to myself. I'm glad I did wake up to this big problem because it's easy to fix, it saves us money, saves the planet from being choked with landfill and methane and it's the right things for all of us to be doing.

Have you checked your fridge lately?