A Green & Frugal Kitchen

Often those who have a greener lifestyle are also more frugal in the way they live and eat.  When it comes to the kitchen avoiding waste is, for me, really important. This combined with growing your own can in the summer and autumn really keep the food bills low, especially if you are able to have a small flock of chickens or ducks in your back yard.

Cooking Planning

As I mentioned in my first post on this site I think planning is the best way to be green in the kitchen. Knowing your food cupboards, freezer and fridge helps to avoid food waste.

Each week make a meal plan. Look at what you have in, what needs using up first and plan your shopping around this. Taking a list to the shops saves you money, time and avoids splurge purchases that may end up in the bin further filling landfill.

What to buy to be Green?

I think that by planning what you eat for the week and making sure nothing goes to waste you can reduce the amount you spend on food each week. For me, this means that the little extra money in you pocket can go towards making better food choices in terms of where your food is sourced.

Choosing locally farmed, organic and whole produce is better for both me and the environment. Reducing meat and dairy consumption is also more environmentally sound. Do we really need to have meat everyday, or for some with every meal? A vegan diet is of course the ideal however, if like me you do choose to eat meat and dairy reducing the amount of it and enjoying lots of healthy vegetarian recipes throughout the week is better for human and environmental health.

Portion Control & Reusing

A lot of waste that goes in the bin at the end of a meal could be avoided. If I make too much food I won’t just plate it out to eat there and then. Instead I will either freeze it up or plate it up for lunch or dinner the next day. Meat scraps go to the pride of moggies and veg to the chickens and ducks.

It seems a lot of people now wont use leftovers to make another meal. I personally find this a sad commentary on a disposable society. Food, clothes, household items are all being reduced in price so much that instead of reusing people will just throw away and buy some more. With food the cheap buy-one-get-one-free offers and other supermarket ploys get people to overfill their fridge and their belly leading to waste and obesity on a massive scale.

Making Bubble & Squeak by mixing leftover mash and vegetables from the night before with a little butter, onion and salt and pepper is a meal in itself. Making sure you fully strip the carcass of a a chicken for a curry the next day and then boiling the bones up to make a stock or chicken soup the day after gives three meals from the Sunday roast. There are so many ways of stretching food and making more from it and hopefully in time I will get my favourite recipes for doing this up on the site for others to use as well.