1 simple tip to reduce food waste

Sometimes it can be hard to avoid food waste, even if you are diligent with your meal planning. You may have not needed as much as you expected, or unexpected been out of the house and not eaten a certain meal. But this shouldn't mean that we have to let good food go to waste. Today I'll share my favourite tip for avoiding food waste by turning leftovers into delicious meals. Granted this really only applies to vegetables (but for us this is where most of our food waste occurs).

Turn it into soup

Winter is coming and soups are a great dish for all the family. Plus put them in Tupperware and they store really well in the freezer. Soups are so simple to make and it doesnt matter if your food is no longer looking its best. They are great for pack-lunches and if you don't have a microwave at work/college then consider taking it in a thermos flask. Below I'm sharing one of my favourite recipes as we find carrots can be going off but are still great for in a soup. 

Simple carrot and coriander soup recipe

Ingredients
1lb of carrots
2 pint of stock
1-2 onions sliced
Coriander to season (fresh is preferable but not essential)
Little bit of butter/ oil

Method

1. Brown the onion in the butter oil for a few minutes.
2. Add the carrots and the stock and bring to the boil.
3. Allow to simmer until carrots are soft.
4. Blend the soup to the desired smoothness.
5. Add coriander to season.
6. N.B you can also use a slow cooker to cook the soup in. 

How to store your soup
- Store in an air tight container in the fridge for 2-3 days
- Store in tupperware in the freezer for up to a month
- For easy portioning pour into plastic cups and freeze. Then once frozen take out of the cups and put in a zip lock bag- I saw this idea on Pinterest a while ago and love it. This works even better with silicone cups as it means you can reuse them time and time again. 

How meal planning can cut your grocery costs + FREE PRINTABLE

Meal planning is one of the best ways to save money on your food shop. It allows you to only buy what you need and avoid waste. Discover how we incorporate meal planning into our food shops. At the end of the post are the printables we use to help with our planning, and we are sharing them with your today. 

When we do the weekly shop there are a number of stages to the process. 

1. Update inventories of cupboard, fridge and freezer. We keep a list of everything in them and when it comes to the time to prep for the shop we update the list.
2. Create a meal plan based on inventories. Breakfasts and C's lunches reaming the same week to week. Dinners will be based on what we have already. Often if we have purchased food in the reduced aisle in bulk then we will plan the meals around these purchases. I will look out for sales on meats and may buy these at a different time. But whilst I'm buying meat on clearance I am constantly thinking of how to incorporate it into meals. If we are short of food in the inventories then this is where I turn to my recipe book and plan out a meals to cover the gap.
3. Write a list of what needs to be purchased. Though we may have meat or the carbs (potato/pasta) in the store cupboard we need to buy fruit and veg weekly. In addition other common items include milk and yoghurt. 
4. Shop be it online or in store. I prefer shopping inshore because I can pick up better deals and choose sell buy dates. However, there is more of a temptation to be drawn of track and buy items I don't need. Though I find that if I'm going with a set list I'm less likely to go off track anyway. 

To access the free printable with todays post click the image below where it will take you to google drive. From there you can print it as many times as you like.