Monday, January 18, 2010


Menu Planning

It's estimated that the average household brings in between 5 and 10 grocery bags full of groceries every week. Of that number at least one bagful ends up in the garbage each week as rubbish. This is a result mainly of fresh produce going off before it can be consumed, left overs that never get eaten and exotic ingredients that never get used.


The single biggest thing I have done to reduce waste is to menu plan. I menu plan weekly because that's about all my brain can manage and only buy fresh food as I need it. For example as I menu plan I write down exactly how many carrots I will need for the week based on what dishes I am cooking. If I only need 2 I buy 2 carrots and not a whole bag.

The other thing I do is write out the menu plan and store it in a plastic folder which I attach with magnets to the fridge. In this folder I put any new recipes I intend to try that week. Generally I have pulled these from magazines.

I now have almost no food wastage and the little I do have I feed to my worms.

1 comment:

Linda said...

I haven't had any problems with carrots going off, they just tend to stay down there in the drawer of the fridge until we are ready to use them.

Some of the food magazine recipes are published on the www.taste.com.au site.