Food storage - stop wasting food

This is the first post in a short series on cooking for one. If you're in a larger family, search in my right side bar, under my photo, and that will give you recipes and information about family food for two, four, or larger. But before we get into cooking, we need to have our systems in place so we don't waste food. Food prices are still rising and it's wise to look at how you store food so you don't throw food (money) out every week.

When my kids left home, I fell into shopping and cooking for two quite easily. The shopping trolleys full of groceries were gone, I was cooking smaller meals and it was convenient to cook for four, eat two of those meals, then freeze two for later. When I'd done that for a couple of months, I had a very healthy stockpile of frozen homemade meals ready to go for the days I didn't feel like cooking. That system worked for Hanno and I for many years and I never had a reason to change. But when you're solo, cooking for four isn't such an attractive option. It's better to cook for one. And you have to set up a system that will help you do that and not waste food.

 

The simple art of stockpiling- a previous post on stockpiling 

 

Before we cook food, we have to buy and store it first. I no longer have a vegetable garden but I do grow all the herbs I eat and I have a fruit trees and passionfruit vines, so I have occasional fruit. I buy the rest of my food. If you're trying to work out a way of cooking for one, first work out how you'll store your food. When Hanno got sick my sister stayed with me for a couple of months so I continued shopping, storing and cooking the way I had for the previous 20 years but when Tricia went home, I started wasting food and that was what triggered most of my current changes. Almost every week I threw out a half-eaten lettuce, a collapsed cucumber, a mouldy wedge of pumpkin or something else that died before I had a chance to use it. One of the problems with buying fresh food is that you don't know how fresh it actually is. Most food at the supermarket looks fresh but you don't know if it really is fresh or if it's been sitting in a cold room for a month or two. If it's the latter, it will wilt when you put it in the crisper of your domestic fridge and probably won't last a week. If you're growing your own vegetables, they should last for weeks before you notice any problems.

 

Most of us have a fridge and freezer, most have a pantry where we store all the open packets or jars of food currently in use. If you can add a small stockpile it will help you a lot - by cutting down on the trips to the supermarket and money saved, as well as the knowledge that you can feed your family well into the future if you lose your job, someone in the family is sick or any weather-related catastrophe hits. 

I had all those storage options - the fridge, freezer, pantry and stockpile cupboard, what I added last year was a Zwilling vacuum sealer unit. I saw a vacuum sealer on sale at Aldi but I wanted reusable bags, and that's what Zwilling gave me. I've worked with it for a few months now and I love it. Even though I tried hard, I was wasting food every week but now I've gone back to zero food waste. It's particularly good for storing fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, cold cuts, cheese, left over meals. The starter pack I got comes with bags for flat storage and two containers - one is glass, one plastic. I've had coleslaw in the glass container and it's lasted almost a month so far. You can store soup and other liquids as well as dried foods.  I bought my starter set from amazon.com.au. I've just bought another set of bags, I use the bags more than the containers. The bags are strong and can be washed and dried after use and be reused many times.