Love food hate waste

Falconbird many years ago I attempted soup using a sieve and I agree with you - such a lot of mess for so little return. A few years ago I bought a soup recipe book, The Soup Bible and, using a blender, I now make soup regularly. I have a large stock pot, which I fill almost to the brim, and then freeze the blended soup in portions (I use those plastic takeaway containers - about £11 from Amazon for 50).
So do get yourself a blender, you won't regret it - there is simply nothing like home made soup

I will confess that the leek and potato soup we had at the weekend (from the freezer) with 'broccoli thrown in' actually had leftover broccoli in cheese sauce thrown in. I didn't know if it would be OK but we and the DGDs loved it - it was tasty and creamy!

DH likes his soup blended and I like it a bit chunky so I blend it a little bit with a stick blender which I have had for years, take mine out then whiz it a lot more for him.

I also have a proper blender but usually use the stick one (less washing up)

Paid £4 for a small gammon at the weekend and had it with salad on Saturday. Chopped up most of what was left and put it into cauliflower cheese yesterday (DH doesn't do vegetarian for Sunday dinner)! He's had a ham sandwich today and I've made soup out of the reserved stock and used up all the old vegetables which were about to become unusable. Tastes OK now it's blended. Not bad for £4 plus a few veggies? Blame it on a mother and mother in law who lived through the WW2!

I think I am on my third stick blender and wouldn't be without it.

Falconbird - I have one of those stick blenders (mine was from Lidl) which I use in the pan of soup if I want it blended. Much easier to wash up than a traditional blender and takes up less room in the drawer.

PS I have been known to put lettuce in a casserole. It disappears but adds to the overall food content,

Honestly - I'm in in my late sixties and I've never made a successful soup. It's always more like a stew.

I've been thinking of buying a blender or juicer. I used to make it and put the veggies etc., through a sieve but it was a lot of mess and time for little result.

Have just looked on the packet of vitamins but it is the ordinary one, not over 50s (which is cheaper), and each tablet has 12mg of iron.
Not sure about the over 50 or over 70 tablets then.
Usana are excellent but expensive, but you have to order online.

Falconbird I make stock from the remains of the chicken. If you are vegetarian I suppose you could boil up clean peelings, or you could just use good stock cubes.
Then chuck the veg in, cook and blend or mash
(Ps are you winding me up , everyone knows how to make soup)
We had leek and potato yesterday with some leftover broccoli thrown in and it was very nice (mashed, not blended).
Some Gnetters have soup makers.

We take or Vitabiotics Wellwoman and Wellman who do them for women (and men) over 50 and another for over 70s.
We take them if and when we remember!!

Limp lettuce goes on the compost heap!

I can see we on GN are doing our bit to not waste food.
Rowantreementioned pastry , i sometimes make jam tarts with left over pastry . Also keep a bag in the freezer for pastry offcuts then when there is enough you can make something .
I also freeze fresh herbs then you can just break off a bit to add to recipes.
anyone got an idea to use up limp lettuce, I can't get excited about lettuce soup !

Don't need a recipe Falconbird. Mine is very much a fridge clearing device; sauté chopped onion, leeks, garlic first. Then add chopped carrots, potatoes etc. I use Marigold veggie stock which doesn't have an aftertaste to cover plus a couple of cm. Simmer until soft enough. You can stir in a tin of baked beans and or red beans, broken up spaghetti or soup pasta and I like to put in 4 cubes of chopped frozen spinach from Sainsbury. Simmer again until all cooked. All takes about 20 minutes and is a sort of minestrone. You can vary veg as required!

Rosequartz - what a good idea. Can you recommend a vitamin tablet for post menopausal women. I believe we're not supposed to take too much iron. Also do you have a good recipe for veg soup. I haven't got a blender.

Like you rowantree ai am a work in progress. I am trying very hard and getting better but the odd chunk of cucumber does get found in a disgusting state occasionally. Bread frequently gets mouldy, but the birds get it so I dont see that as wasted food.

My food waste is very much a 'work in progress'. I hate waste, but I am rather dithery and forgetful, and tend to find the odd pack of yellow herbs stuck to the back of the fridge or a soggy quarter of cucumber in the salad drawer I'm trying to address all this - leftover bits of cheese rind or apple etc go out for the birds, and we compost our own peelings and raw veg/fruit cores/peel. Now we have a new kitchen it's much easier to see what's what; I cleared out far too much vintage dried food (some of which looked as if it'd been munched by insects so I couldn't use it). Very ashamed, but trying hard now not to allow this to happen again!
I've just learned a new recipe for pastry offcuts, too, so I won't be baking the bits to leave out for the squirrels and parakeets any more....;)

I don't buy what I can't eat, so nothing much hangs around for more than about 2-3 months. All I can find that's over a year is salt, pepper, oxo and flour.

I don't use salt at all, so I think that what I have may the leftovers from the stockpile my father had when he was using it as a mouthwash. He died in 1988. The rest of it probably went on the garden path.

I have a friend who eats road kill pheasants so even dead bodies aren't wasted where he lives.

Quite frankly, although I hate waste, I wouldn't think twice about chucking away a tin of something I'd found at the back of a cupboard that was a couple of years out of date.

It's not exactly going to break the bank.

tiggy the other way tinned food can fail is with bacteria like clostridium botulinum, it's the toxin produced by the bacteria that poisons, so sterilising the food won't make any difference if the food has already been infected long enough for the toxin to accumulate. Do you remember the botulism outbreak in 1978, when tins of Alaskan salmon were recalled?

I love that advice, rosequartz - make a soup with all your leftover veg and take a vitamin tablet!

Exactly crun. I think that is what I was trying to say in a rather cack-handed way ! However if the sterilisation fails in any way or the can is punctured then the bacteria will start multiplying and the food will become unsafe.
As for your can of condensed milk rosequartz not only will it be still sterile but sugar is also a preservative (have you ever seen a mouldy bag of sugar?) so just make something yummy with it and enjoy.

I come from Liverpool where Connie onnie sandwiches were a staple. That tin wouldn't have lasted to 2012 Rose.

You can make soup with all those leftover vegetables and a good stock, then take a vitamin tablet if you think the food was lacking in vitamins.
But I am sure your vitamin intake would be adjusted in the next lot of fresh veg you eat, tanith.

Vitamin C gets destroyed in cooking whereas vitamin A is released by breaking down the cell walls of veg by cooking.

However, I have a tin of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard (2012) I am unsure of - as it is milk will it be ok to make a banoffee pie with leftover bananas? I didn't buy it, one of the DC must have intended to do something with it and the last one left home years ago!

I know exactly how much I've wasted in the last year:

One apple and one orange, which were rotten inside when I cut them open after only two or three days, and had obviously been so while they were still on Tesco's shelf.

Half a loaf of bread and half a carton of milk that went off while I was in hospital. I was taken in by ambulance, so there was no opportunity to use them up beforehand.

The previous year I wasted nothing at all.

"Bacteria can only survive in the right conditions and canned food does not provide the conditions necessary therefore it is safe to eat however long it has been there."

The reason canned food remains safe to eat is not because the conditions won't allow bacterial growth, it's because it's sterile: there aren't any live bacteria in there to grow. The can is heat treated after the food is sealed inside, so the bacteria that went in with the food are killed, and the seal then prevents any new bacteria from getting in. The contents remain sterile as long as the can isn't punctured.

No waste in this house either. Tinned food is fair game for many years past the best before date. It can only go off if the tin is 'blown' which indicates that it was not preserved properly in the first place and bacterial action is taking place. Bacteria can only survive in the right conditions and canned food does not provide the conditions necessary therefore it is safe to eat however long it has been there.
Fruit and vegetables start to lose their vitamin content as soon as they are picked so are best eaten fresh. However the odd old veg in the bottom of the fridge is not going to do you any harm and will still provide some nourishment. I would avoid the wrinkly and wizened ones as these are unlikely to taste very nice. I think there is far too much information given to what is good/bad for us (mainly given out by those with a vested interest) and we have lost our trust in our own common sense.

We waste very little but I think that's because I plan meals in advance so I know how much I need. I make soup with the veg left by Tuesday as I have a fresh delivery on Thursdays. Fruit is never wasted I make a big fruit salad about twice a week but DH grazes on fruit all day anyway.

Jamie Oliver did a food waste thing where he went to houses and showed people what to do with food they often wasted. I like his salad tip. He lined the salad drawer with 2 wet tea towels and then prepared all the salad vegetables and tipped them in. Covered it all with another wet tea towel there was ready prepared salad for several days and because it was already prepared it would get eaten. I'm going to do that this summer when we eat a lot of salad.