‘APPLE & BANANA WARNING’

Q: I read your last column on food waste and was wondering if you have tips for how to keep food from going bad quickly. Because of where we live, it’s much easier to do weekly bulk shopping, so our onions sprout stalks and our peppers tend to soften. Any suggestions?

A: Thank you for your helpful follow-up question. For many of us, trips to the supermarket happen once a week or less, but we still want to eat fresh-enough fruit and veg. How you store your food at home does make a big difference, and the two people I spoke with for the last column, Dr. Colum Gibson, Environmental Consultant at CIT’s Clean Technology Centre, and Pauline McDonogh, Waste Prevention Coordinator for Southern Region Waste, had some excellent advice on this.

First stop is the supermarket or fruit & veg shop, where you should buy as fresh as you can for the coming week. At the same time, if you can snag a deal, for example, if peppers are close to their “best-by” date and their price is reduced, go for it, especially if you’ll use them first or make food you might freeze. Because shops will “never contravene food safety laws,” says Gibson, what you buy will still be good and you can freeze produce up to its sell-by date.

There could also be some flexibility: “There might be a best before date on carrots, but carrots can last,” Gibson points out. We often have a butternut squash on hand which seems to last ages and saves us when we’re out of fresh veg. The “use-by date is trickier,” he adds, as milk might go off before or last well after. In all cases, he says, notice the date but use your senses.

While you’re shopping, Gibson also advises you take a peek at how the supermarket stores fruit and veg, as they will use the best methods. For example, you’ll always see the bananas, which help things ripen, stored separately. They give off ethylene gas, Gibson explains, as do pears and apples, which means they are handy for helping ripen some of your other items, like an under-ripe tropical pineapple, but they should be kept separate in general, if you don’t want things turning too fast.

Stopfoodwaste.ie has much more advice, very specific to each food item, like what should and shouldn’t be stored in the fridge and for how long (apples, for example, can last there for a month), how to bring shrivelled beets back to life by soaking them in cold water, and some of the innumerable uses for stale bread, like for croutons or French toast. If you buy tomatoes on the vine, eat those that have fallen off the vine first, as they’ll ripen the quickest; if you buy potatoes in plastic, take them out of the bag and store them in a cool, dark, dry place; stick peppers in your fridge’s vegetable drawer and eat them soon after they’re cut; and, you can use onions or garlic if they’re sprouting, but use the sprouting onions first, and the thicker-necked before others, as they are the oldest.

BATCH COOKING

Some of our bad habits, like tossing uncooked chicken breasts that we bought last week, are from what Gibson calls a “time lag,” or that period “between when we purchase and when we waste.” With the passage of time, it becomes much easier to just throw it out, he says, as “we’ve almost forgotten the price of things by the time we get to the disposing of them.” But you still spent the money, so better to cook it early and freeze it – use the time lag to your advantage: “you have a meal for nothing at the end of the week.”

McDonogh also notes that we often “just need a few fresh ingredients to make a meal,” with pastas, rice, beans or other dry staples filling out dishes. McDonogh is a big fan of batch-cooking, which allows you to use what you have and make it last longer, and you can freeze leftovers. Gibson also says that one of the best investments you can make, for when it’s time to get a new one, is a great fridge and freezer.

Stopfoodwaste.ie is an invaluable resource – on buying, storing, freezing, cooking and other tid-bits of information, like on canning, fermenting, and drying, how banana peels are good for the soil, how broccoli and cauliflower stalks are edible, and that you should store yoghurt in the fridge, not in the fridge door. Small changes will give your food a longer life, and get you through the week.