Too Good to Go

 

I recently signed up to the Too Good to Go app and this afternoon I finally got a bag from my local Dobbies that has a Sainsbury's food hall.  I was really surprised at the quality of the produce.

My Magic Bag cost me £3.99 and contained:

• 6 apples
• 2 mangoes
• sweet and sour sauce
• baby carrots 
• 200g smoky cheese
• 6 premium eggs
• lemon and lime posset (a posh pudding)
• coleslaw

Full price would have been £12.70, the reduced price would have been £6.78.  So for £3.99 I have the makings of several meals, snacks and maybe some preserves.  I'll keep a note of what I make for a future blog as a bargain is only a bargain if you actually use it!   

I've made a few local businesses my 'favourites' so I can keep an eye on their future bags. You have to be quick to get some bags!!   I have a local butcher and a greengrocer as well as some well known high street chains on my list.

Since I was in a frugal money saving/use it up kinda mood this morning, I raided the fridge to use up some leftovers.  And to make room for my incoming Magic Bag! 

I had some cooked rice left over from Friday night that had to be used today.  I made a rice crust quiche.  Recipe HERE.   I mixed the eggs (from Tuppence!) with some sad looking spring onions, a handful of frozen sweetcorn and grated in the end of a piece of grana padano cheese.

I filled up the oven with a bag of sweet potatoes that were lurking.  I cut some into wedges and seasoned them with my home made fajita seasoning.  It makes me so happy to see a full oven!  My house guests haven't quite mastered the art of making full use of it when it's on.  I'm sure they'll learn quickly though when they're paying their own electricity bill! 😱😂

Lunch today was some quiche and a few wedges.  Tonight's meal was the same but with added coleslaw and the posh pudding!! 😋

I'm now entering the second week of the Easter break and I 'think' I'm finally getting my mojo back!  I've actually made plans to get and about but my main tasks are garden and plot preparations 🌱🌼 

Volunteering

Last summer I wrote a post about how my local community food shop works HERE Today I had my first online induction session to join them as a volunteer in the fabulous work they do to make sure as much food as possible doesn't go to waste. 😀😀😀

I've volunteered to work a few evenings a week to drive the above van (it's electric!) round the supermarkets and collect their excess food that would otherwise go to waste.  Sometimes it's a few crates of fruit and veg, sometimes it can be as much as 20!!  On today's FB page they've just posted they have 12 frozen ducks available for collection tomorrow (bring your own bag!) 😂 Last Friday they had 6 large birthday cakes. 🎂 No questions asked, if you can use it up you can have it.

I also learned about the various small local community food groups that prepare free meals/food to distribute to families.  One of them operates in my school's catchment area so I hope to get involved with them too.

Really excited and looking forward to my next induction day on Friday where I'm going to the hub to see how all the projects are run. 😎

How MY community food shop works

This photo is from my wee community food shop FB page earlier this week.  Just recently the council has given them this former beauty salon to use.  They clearly say open to all and if you can use it then take it.  Their ethos is simply to stop food waste.  It's only open for 2 hours each day.

Community food shops might be different in other towns/countries but in my wee city there are lots of different ways to access 'free' food.  Needing food and wanting to help reduce food waste can be 2 different things.

We have an excellent food bank service here (I won't comment further other than that it's disgraceful we even need one!!) Local supermarkets donate huge amounts of food and money through their community schemes.  Local businesses and the public can donate food (and money) directly.  As a school this is the main charity we support.  My food bank cannot take fresh goods (bread, cakes, fruit and vegetables) and legally (for health and safety reasons) they cannot accept out of date items.  They use the cash donations to buy fresh food on the days they send out food packs.  To use our food bank you need to be referred.

As I mentioned in my comments yesterday to Marksgran, during lockdown a group of local cafe workers/cooks on furlough set up a kitchen to make and donate food to families.  Supermarkets had a huge excess of fresh food going to waste and were happy to donate it all.  Local businesses like an egg producer and a fruit farm donated produce that would have otherwise gone bad.  This group of amazing people cooked and delivered meals to families and vulnerable people DAILY free of charge.  No referrals, no questions asked.  If you needed food, they delivered.

The community food shop grew from this.  Even after taking what they needed to make the meals there was STILL a huge amount of food leftover and they began offering it to anyone who could use it.  And then if there was any leftover food it went to the local safari park for the animals!!

Now that lockdown has eased and cafes are reopening the food delivery service is continuing under another group of retired ladies.  They get first dibs on the excess food from supermarkets and restaurants.  Remember, most of the food they use would be thrown in the bin!!

So the food bank still gets their food, the meal service still gets first choice of fresh food that cannot legally be donated to the food bank, the community shop gets what's left from the meal service and the safari park gets whatever is left at the end of the day. Supermarkets don't dump their out of date food into landfill.  I think this is an amazing chain that stops food waste AND feeds people.  Something positive to come from lockdown!

I'm always happy to discuss issues in my comments but if you leave a rude or insulting comment I'll simply delete you.

Free lunches

There's no such thing as a free lunch so the saying goes.  But the above photo says otherwise!  Since poor Emma is getting too old and arthritic to do more than shuffle round the block, I've resolved to try and walk a lot more by myself.  I walked into town this morning to checkout my local community food shop.  Local supermarkets donate their leftover food at the end of the day and this shop GIVES IT AWAY FREE in order to help reduce food waste.  How brilliant is that?!  All they ask is that you only take what you will use.

Today I was looking for some soup ingredients.  I got parsnips, celery, broccoli, gluten free rolls and a wee loaf of GF sliced bread and a lettuce for the chickens.  All a mix of Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Aldi products.  Today they had milk, loads of bread and cakes from supermarket bakeries, flowers, tins of chopped tomatoes and chickpeas, potatoes, oranges, mushrooms and persimmons.  I'm sure there was a lot more but I really only focused on the veg.

I've already got a pan of spiced parsnip soup on the go.  And I'll make some broccoli soup later today.  With the rolls and the bread, that's my free lunches sorted for at least a week!! 😋

Meanwhile down on the plot, I whacked back my raspberry patch.  I cut out about 2/3 of it, mostly old canes and discoloured leaves.  It looked like it hadn't been done for a while.  Probably not the best time to do it but it was so unruly I couldn't actually harvest any berries!  There's clearly a mix of varieties in there as some are just flowering now.  I tied some string round the patch to hold them in for now.  Not pretty but practical!

The strawberry patch hasn't yielded as much as I'd hoped (probably old plants).  I've put a lot of time into weeding it and covering it to stop the birds eating them all.  But I'm thinking of removing them and just making it a pumpkin patch next year.  Lots of ideas are floating round my head. It's still my favourite place to just escape from everything 😎