If only we had some rough guidelines to help with this tricky dilemma of when to save and when to throw. Perhaps those commentators above who sound more confident in this area could oblige.

sweetpaprika.wordpress.comp

Very well said Becca, on all counts. My dad is ruthless about getting things eaten for the hell of it, which is barking. It takes the pleasure out of food, and it’s just as wasteful eating something joylessly as it is chucking it.

And you’re right re. compost. I started keeping a compost crock, but we’re on the second floor of a block of flats and, idealistic as you’d like to be, it just wasn’t practical. Flies were everywhere.

Might petition for a communal compost area.

If something is past it’s best, there may be a cunning trick to revive it or still wring some use out, stock/soup generally being the last fall back, and I’m always cutting the mouldy bits of bread/cheese etc. to give it an extra life. But if something is truly past it there shouldn’t be any shame in throwing it out instead of unpalatably choking it down at the potential risk of your health.

The problem here is what happens to the waste once it’s binned. Along side all the edible food waste we create is a fair amount of inedible waste in the form of vegetable peelings and so on. If this was all composted and put to good use instead of left to rot in a landfill there wouldn’t be such a issue. I find it so frustrating living in a non-residential street level flat, because although all the residential homes in my borough get a food caddy for organic waste we don’t, and without a garden or even a balcony there just isn’t room for us to compost ourselves. Which is a shame, because I know we’d be practically zero waste if we did.

I was raised in the 60s when we really didn’t have the choices that we do now, so we tended to eat the same things each week. I do think that now we expect to be able to think.. “Oh, what do I fancy today?” get it, and eat it, rather than think “Oh what do I have available?” and eat that regardless of what we might have preferred.

Indeed not. But I suppose the point is that using something just to get it eaten is just another kind of waste. I probably should have said that 🙂

If you had just put that salsa on a plate with some nice charcuterie and maybe some goaty cheese, you would have been well away.