Love food hate waste

I am bad at wasting vegetables.

Nothing. I hate waste.

If there is any stale bread the chickens eat it.

Same here- and totally ignore SBdates too.

I would have opened the tin of coco milk, had a look and a sniff- and use it if it seemed fine.

Very little wasted here. The worst thing is meat as I eat very little but DH likes all his meals with meat. Sometimes I have to throw this away as I just can't face it ... naughty really!

I too hate waste but I do wonder if the veg that I sometimes use actually has any goodness/vitamins left after its been in the fridge for a couple of weeks.. they say the vitamin content diminishes quite quickly so is it actually any good for us if not used whilst its fresh?

I have those green bags thats keeps stuff fresh so it looks fine but is it actually any good?

sorry a bit off topic

Give him your leftovers the next day then.

That was to ayse

I don't waste vegetables - they last for ages, especially in the fridge. But I do tend to be over-optimistic about household fruit consumption and am quite often taken by surprise at how quickly it can go off or mouldy.

I waste as little as possible. Things I will not risk are cooked meats, fish or eggs, so I don't buy big packs of, e.g., ham or corned beef. Once they're opened you have just 2 or 3 days to eat the contents. When I see eggs approaching the end of their shelf life I make some cakes .
Vegetables either go into the pot for soup or they get composted if they're past that.
I too would have used the tinned coconut milk. I'm sure it would have been fine. I ignore most 'best before' dates and use my own judgement, 'Use by' dates I'm a little more wary of, but not if the items are tinned or pickled - vinegar is a preservative for heaven's sake!

Missed your post, tanith, I do hope it's not true about veg in the fridge! (or in a vegetable rack, come to that)

I am a complete and utter Scrooge when it comes to food. Nothing gets wasted. It gets dried (I have a dehydrator, I really am that anti-waste) or souped or curried. Or hidden under pizza toppings. My poor children, they will never know what weird things went into their spag bols when they were small.

I have always grown most of our veg and a fair amount of fruit. When you grow it, and it's such hard work, you really appreciate food.

Ana fruit can be used up if you catch it quickly enough preferably before it crawls out of the bowl :
Apples and pears can be lightly stewed then frozen
Grapes freeze and use in drinks as ice cubes then eat.
Banana cake - yummy
Raspberries , strawberries etc freeze for cereal , yoghurt etc
Oranges squeeze for juice
I find pineapple and melon the hardest and as they are quite large so take longer to get through.

My mother used to make bread pudding regularly and she used to mix in all sorts of things to use them up - a bit of apple pie, left over stewed prunes, any fruit that was a bit past its best was peeled and chopped and thrown in the mix

The coconut milk would have been alright. Canned food can last a lot longer than the best before date, providing the cans are not dinted.

I was appalled at the amount of veg that we were throwing away, so now buy frozen veg and am really impressed by the quality. Frozen onion, peas, beans and broccoli are now a staple in my freezer - I take out what I need as I need it and waste nothing. I have however just found a multi-pack of crisps that are 2 years out of date.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?