Here are some tips to help that to happen.
1. Optimise shelf life of food with correct storage principles immediately upon getting them home. Allow sufficient time to do this properly. It takes me about an hour and a half to unpack my groceries, but everything is stored in airtight containers or other appropriate plastic or glassware. This also means I can buy cheaper brands, and nobody notices and complains as they're none the wiser!
2. If you keep a Pantry Inventory you can rotate food appropriately. This means doing a mini stocktake of refrigerator contents weekly and pantry contents monthly in order to use food before it passes the use-by date and has to be thrown away. This takes about a minute to do in the case of the fridge and about 15 minutes for the pantry. This has the added bonus of not ending up with half a dozen cans of tomato soup, and three jars of Vegemite, because you are constantly aware of what you have and what needs replacing. Keep a magnetised list on the fridge or inside the pantry door.
3. Take advantage of seasonal produce. It's usually nice and cheap and good for you. Menu plan using whatever is available.
4. Utilise leftovers as the next day’s lunch. If the family is leaving food on their plate, adjust serving sizes to suit. Cooking a double batch for future use is a great idea as it also saves time and energy.
5. Before throwing any food away, place everything up on the bench and do a cost calculation of what I'm actually throwing away financially. This is a great wake-up in itself. On the odd occasion when something has to be thrown out, I feed it to my chickens and they recycle it into eggs.
Deb
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