Our month of joining the Reduce Food Waste Bandwagon has paid off. Publicising our decision to reduce food waste has been a great motivator and we’ve learnt from the experience. Firstly there is lots of food we can easily waste; part jars, leftovers, stale bread, imperfect fruit. Secondly we don’t actually waste that much. I’m pleasantly surprised! Our main bad behavior is overzealous fruit purchasing when things are cheap and potato peel. I did think about freezing peel to add to veggie soups but I know I’m never going to want to eat such a soup. Instead we’ve been more […]
Simple Lemon Cordial Recipe
I started the batch of homemade limoncello yesterday. It left me with 17 de-zested lemons and 20 de-zested oranges to use quickly. They won’t store very well without their tough zest to protect them and as you may know I’m not a fan of food-waste. Any move towards a self sufficient life means using every part of everything you can. There should really be no waste in a self sufficient household. So what do you do with 17 lemons? The oranges were easy – I juiced and refrigerated them for this week’s breakfast orange juice. The lemons caused more thought […]
Limoncello Recipe
We’re still trying to preserve, juice and munch our way through the windfall of free citrus fruit. After much deliberation, day dreaming, book-reading and internet browsing, I decided to designate 17 lemons and 20 oranges to the ‘limoncello‘ treatment. We have started the process of making limoncello liqueur and arancello liqueur. We still have 89 days to wait till we find out whether both were successful. At that time I’ll let you know. But for now, if you have lots of citrus fruit to use here is the recipe for homemade limoncello liqueur: Homemade Limoncello Recipe Notes: This recipe is […]
Reduce Food Waste – Week Three
Well it’s definitely getting easier to waste less food. It’s becoming more habitual to think about any leftovers quickly. This week there have only been a few potato peelings and half a cup of cooked cous-cous wasted. They got fed to the animals so really a very good attempt at wasting no food. Well I think anyway. I’m getting into the swing of creative thinking too. For example last night MrDB made far too much garlic bread so today I used it in a romesco sauce recipe. It worked a treat, tasted great, saved us cash and reduced our food […]
Reduce Food Waste – Week 2
We’ve now finished two weeks of trying to reduce our household food waste. This might not be the most exciting reading, BUT it is getting us motivated and inspired to keep on reducing the amount of edible food the Dirty Boots household wastes. I think we’re slowly improving too. Even Mr Dirty Boots has been keeping an eye on things and boiling all his potato peelings for the animals. This has saved us some dog food too! I’ve been monitoring portion size much more closely which is making a big difference. The main way I’m finding that we can waste […]
Reduce Food Waste – Week One
Last week I confirmed that Family Dirty Boots would be jumping on the ‘reduce food waste‘ bandwagon. I am going to be perfectly honest and admit I’m really surprised how much food we have in the house, but don’t consume ourselves.. Compared to our previous city life our food wastage is tiny. All that we don’t eat goes into dogs, cats, hens or the compost heap. Cooked bones are the only food item we send to landfill and even those are boiled down for stock first. However, when you actually start taking note of all the little bits and bobs […]
Making the Most of the Vegetable Plot
I often hear vegetable growing enthusiasts bemoaning the small size of their carrots or cabbages. Later they will be disappointed at the short season of their cauliflowers – failing to eat them before the curds start to open out and flower truly. This is why it pays to be greedy in your veggie garden. Start to eat things as soon as they are edible. One, small, perfectly formed cauliflower a week for a few months, can bring much more enjoyment and sustainability to your life than two weeks getting bored of continual cauli consumption. Particularly when the produce is past […]