Despite working in advertising, where
our job is to drive consumers to consume, I do worry about excessive consumption.
Australian’s spend $10.5 billion a year on food we don’t eat, CDs we don’t
listen to, clothes we don’t wear and books we don’t read. That’s $1,200 per
household. Clive Hamilton dubs this ‘unethical consumption’ in his book Requiem For A Species.
We’re certainly (and sadly) no exception,
but I try really, really hard not to waste food as I consider it the most unethical. An unworn dress can be donated to charity to be cherished
and worn by someone else, but uneaten food – especially if it goes into
landfill instead of compost, just creates, well, more landfill.
If you think of the resources used to
produce food – water, agricultural equipment, processing, packaging and
transport – that tub of yoghurt I just hurled into the bin represents far more
waste than the plastic container and some curdled milk. Sometimes it really
doesn’t bear thinking about.
According to the website Homelife, Australian’s
toss out 145kg of food per year, for every man, woman and child. OMG. (Hit the link to get the shocking details of what that's made up of...)
So in an attempt to avoid such wastage I do
try, although I confess not with complete success, to use what’s in the fridge; to love my left-overs.
We had a brunch one weekend that left
cooked spinach, mushrooms and baked tomatoes (not surprisingly the eggs and
bacon were all eaten!). I chopped them up, popped them in an oven proof dish,
made a frittata base with eggs, milk, some mixed herbs, salt and pepper, topped
it with cheese and baked in the dish, in a roasting pan with a couple of centimetres of
water in it (it just cooks the egg mix more gently so it stays juicy and
doesn’t go rubbery). I can only guess that it tasted okay as it disappeared
before I got any.
 |
| Frittata a la left overs |
Tonight I chopped up what cooked meat was
in the fridge and fried it with left over veggies and rice. I added some frozen
peas and made a two-egg omelette in the microwave to slice on the top. It might
not have been the most amazing fried rice but it served a good purpose and was
eaten.
Do you have any ways that you use up your
leftovers? I’d love to hear your tips please.
