Waste Not, Want Lots

Last week the Eat Cambridge food festival brought us a fortnight of tasty treats from food vendors such as Norfolk Street Bakery and UrbanLarder. At the highlighted main event, however, I found myself drawn through the bustle of hungry shoppers to a stall with a difference.

A non-profit organisation founded by Kelvin Cheung in 2008, FoodCycle is a charity dedicated to recycling food otherwise destined for the scrap heap. The idea is simple, each Saturday a volunteer collects unwanted foods from supermarkets, who then deliver it to a kitchen of volunteers to turn into a mouth-watering three course meal. That meal is then served to the public, for free, in a pop-up café.

Growing up my mother saved every piece of food that entered the pantry, not letting a scrap escape her delicious soups and curries (or occasionally the more questionable risotto). I’d always thought this severe frugality but now I understand that her die-hard ‘waste not, want not’ attitude was also birthed from environmental concern. It’s nice to find an organisation committed to that same ethic, combating a waste problem originally noticed during World War One. Not only do FoodCycle protest the billions of tons of food wasted each year but they do it in an actively enjoyable way to enrich communities.

I turned overripe fruit and unused eggs

 into wholesome banana muffins.

You don’t have to give your own time to reduce food wastage thought, as it’s simply something we can all do from the comfort of our own kitchens. Here are a few helpful hints and tips to get you started:

• Plan Your Meals: Impulse buying and improper preparation means that we often buy more than we need to, leading to spoilt foods and bizarre tins lingering in the cupboards. Write a clear shopping list of the meals you want to prepare throughout the week in order to beat unwanted, and unneeded, foodstuffs on your next big shop.
• Get Friendly With The Freezer: It is, of course, impossible to plan your entire life meticulously, and this is where your freezer comes in. Buy a few storage tubs and freeze leftover meals for quick and nutritious ready meals later on. The same works for leftover vegetables by chopping, freezing and adding to dishes as needed. However, do check that your foods are freezer friendly first.
• Bake, Make, and Shake: If you do find that your fruits and vegetables are going soft save them for tasty pies, flapjacks, pickles, jams, and juices. It’s a fun weekend activity in itself seeing what you can concoct from those weekly leftovers, creating heavenly bakes for sharing with family and friends. Search the ingredients on websites such as BBC good food for delicious solutions.

It’s easy enough to get involved in waste reduction from your own home, but if you’re eager to get out and do good in a local, friendly community then please follow this link and volunteer your time at FoodCycle.

To find out more about food wastage, and how you can prevent it, check out the Love Food Hate Waste website.