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Victorians throw away 700,000 tonnes of food waste every year, why not try to reduce your impact on landfill while saving yourself money.
With a little bit of planning and having strategies in place, you can stretch your $ a little further while reducing your environmental footprint.

1.Turn excess fruit into jams & preserves.
Buy fruit that’s in season and quite often you can turn that pile of unwanted peaches into a yummy jam. Better still help reduce the waste from the local green grocer or fruit and vegie shop by buying all that manky fruit that looks unappealing but is great for making jams. The great thing is you can often get the fruit a lot cheaper as well.

2.Make a cake, with the recent glut of banana’s due to the favourable ripening weather conditions, why not make a banana cake with any left over bananas. As they tend to ripen extremely quickly you may suddenly have a pile of very sad looking bananas so start baking today for a yummy treat.

3.Any left over vegetables can be made into a casserole or soup just keep some legumes in the pantry for a yummy meal that only costs a few dollars per serve, why not try a beef and lentil casserole, just add all your left over vegies.

Back in the early days of submarines, there was fresh fruit and vegies that quickly deteriorated. To ensure that there was no wastage everything was cooked, even though it may have looked very unappealing.

4.Use any fruit and vegies that cannot be recovered by making soups, jams, conserves or casseroles by adding them to the compost bin.

Think about permaculture where everything is recycled back into the system. The great thing is fruit and vegies make great compost and the worms will love it:))

A restaurant near Seymour is growing its own vegetables and herbs and raising chickens for the eggs. The great thing about growing your own is that not only is it good for the environment and making tasty dishes, but it actually saves you money.

As vegetables continue to increase in price, growing your own is the ultimate way of saving some dollars while getting organic produce fresh from the garden. The flavours and nutrients are at their highest levels and the taste is quite overwhelming when compared to supermarkets vegies that have been sitting in a cool room or spending time being transported by truck.

Bruce and Lindy at the Wool Shed Cafe have a plentiful supply of vegetables, depending on what’s in season. During summer for example, they have fresh capsicums, tomatoes, cucumbers and beans and the excess is preserved in their delicious chutneys and pickles.

The great thing about Bruce and Lindy’s garden is their use of permaculture. Food scraps are fed to the chickens or mulched for reuse in the garden, while the chicken poo makes fantastic manure.
The other part of the equation is the gardening itself – its good exercise! Digging, planting, tilling the soil, weeding, composting are all great activities that require you to expend energy.
So, if you have the space, even a small pot for some herbs, start to grow your own you can create your own vegetable patch with only one square metre of space.

Even in the movies it’s becoming hip to become self sufficient, the restaurant owner in “The kids are all right” have their own vegetable patch – see it and be inspired!

Even in the movies it’s becoming hip to become self sufficient with the restaurant owner having their own vegetable patch in “The kids are all right”

The findings of a recent survey confirm that in households where there is a male/female relationship, the female still cooks the majority of the time.
What does this mean, well if the wife/female doesn’t want to cook and the male partner can’t be bothered or is too scared in fear of being told off then the easiest option is ordering take out/take away food.

So give your partner some encouragement and limit the criticism to get some extra help in the kitchen.

Compare the size of our rubbish bins to out parents & grand parents. Now we have a huge dedicated bin for recycling and another for general waste.
Why do we need so much more space for rubbish, well buying more stuff, especially packaged food will quickly put your garbage bin under pressure.
Sixty years ago we made everything, all our meals were cook at home or we prepared our lunches for work/office.
A modern supermarket may stock 20 000 to 30 000 different items.

Prior to the fifties, Supermarkets didn’t exist, we went to a number of speciality shops for our food supplies: the Grocer for packaged, dry or canned foods, Green Grocer for fruit & vegetables, Baker, Butcher, Milk Bar/confectionery shop.

Yet we managed fine making our own cookies and other treats, jams and break fast cereal was porridge, toast, fruit or the good old bacon & eggs (Ok if you;re doing manual labour), lunch was sandwiches, fruit and dinner made from scratch.
We had our milk home delivered with a trip to the local Milk Bar satisfying our basic requirements of flour, sugar, bread etc.

Somewhere along the way our basic range of products exploded, have a look at the pasta source aisle, how many products are there?
Making a great pasta source is pretty simple, why pay for a processed product with preservatives, chemicals & artificial flavors when there are simplier alternatives?

The main point is all these products have packaging and can be made at home but “I don’t have the time”.
Well maybe ask yourself what you are doing with the other 8 hours you are not working or sleeping.
Yes modern life is crazy yet we can make some decisions about how we manage all our activities.

Just like dining at a restaurant, adopt similar rules:
1.You cannot leave the table until everyone have finished
2.Excuse yourself when leaving the table
3.No home style habits, cleaning ears with anything on table, licking the plate clean, slurping soup, lifting the soup bowl to your mouth to get the last 50ml os soup, passing wind, burping, shouting, screaming, arguing, slotching with elbows on table, falling a sleep etc…
4.Serve up some nice bread, ciabatta, sour dough with some nice olive oil
5.Keep the portion sizes small, if your using the large restaurant style plates, the food should occupy no more than 25% of the surface area, you won’t starve.
6.No competitive style eating, chew your food slowly and savour the flavour
7.TV switched off, computer switched off
8.Engage in conversation, talk about all these silly rules, how your day was etc