Leftovers seem to have fallen from our routines . . . like crumbs from a rich man's table, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE.
THERE ARE those of us who could be poster girls for the new campaign against wasting food. We're the ones who are happy to scrape the blue fur off the marmalade and regard use-by dates as being purely for wimps.
We're the ones who scoff leftovers and have a fridge full of jars of misty, ancient egg whites and lettuces which are turning to green slime in the most natural way possible.
Once upon a time, when many of the nation's children dined on bread and jam, wasting food simply wasn't an option. In more prosperous households, where wasting food was more of an option, it was simply regarded as a sin. Generations of cooks minced and shredded and shrouded unspeakable things in batter (yum). No wonder women didn't work outside the home, they didn't have a minute.
The food timetable of most households was written in stone, and you knew what you were going to eat that night by the day of the week it was. Friday, obviously, was fish. In our case, a fish pie made with canned salmon and hardboiled eggs, topped with mash, which I hope I will be forgiven for saying was absolutely revolting. On the whole though, a hatred of waste, born of the desire for survival, has made for great cooking. Nigella Lawson, in fairness to her, has been singing this song for years. The Italians and the French, notoriously parsimonious, are the best cooks in the world. They look down on us as profligate savages. Traditionally, the French or Italian housewife shopped every day, touring her local shops for the produce that was fresh that morning - a similar search would be a damn long walk in Ireland these days. The thing is that the French also brought us the hypermarket - a super-sized supermarket - and the raw fact of the matter is that French people don't shop like that anymore.
Last week, it was claimed that one-third of the food bought in the UK is thrown away untouched. Yoghurt featured heavily in these dispatches. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) survey found that 1.3 million yoghurts and yoghurt drinks are thrown away in the UK every day. Which is perfectly understandable because you buy yoghurt while resolving to live a virtuous life and then of course you just can't face it - no one really likes natural yoghurt - and it just ticks away in the fridge turning sour.
Potatoes were also high in the list of wasted foods - 5.1 million whole potatoes thrown away each day - which isn't surprising when you think of how potatoes send their shoots out as soon as they hit a centrally heated atmosphere, and sit on their shelf like a set of muddy extraterrestrials, waving their aerials above their earthy heads. No wonder I know two sensible women who keep their vegetable racks in their respective halls, where the heating is never turned on. This may not be exactly the look that interior magazines are after, but it works for them.
Some of the star items on the waste list are less easy to understand though. Some 1.2 million sausages are thrown out every day, which seems extraordinary when they are so delicious. Presumably sausages just get forgotten about once they go into the fridge, that oubliette of modern life. And 300,000 unopened packets of crisps thrown out every day seems peculiar as well, although I would wager this is because crisp packets are so bulky and unwieldy and keep falling out of kitchen cupboards and driving you crazy. And 4.4 million whole apples? Must be those economy bags of them. And bread is thrown into the bin almost as often as it is thrown into the bread bin. So much for making breadcrumbs out of it. All of this wasted food, the Brits reckon, would fill Wembley stadium eight times over, and emits methane on such a scale that it is really damaging to the environment. And we better take note of what the Brits say on this, because it will be a decade before anyone does a similarly useful study here. Actually, I would reckon that the situation here is a whole lot worse, because we're so chaotic. Food management is a thing of the past among the under 60s.
As I rush around the supermarket going "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God", I cannot help feeling I am not the only one who personifies panic buying. But I am still of the generation that regards wasting food as morally wrong. That Weightwatchers advice that you should pour washing up liquid over leftover food never really played in our house. Why, we'd rather eat it instead. And the advice from Wrap on portion control won't really play either. Wrap says one mug of rice will feed four adults but if it would I'd like to meet those four adults and measure their wrists.
When we lost the housewife we lost a whole lot. Now Wrap is recommending that householders plan and shop for a fortnight's meals at a time. Truly, the more things change the more things stay the same.