5 ways to reduce food waste when weaning

Food waste is recognised as a massive driver of climate change, producing methane when allowed to rot in landfill and creating a carbon footprint from harvesting, transportation etc.
I’ve noticed how easily you could produce a lot of food waste when introducing baby to solids so I thought I’d share some ideas on how to reduce food waste during this (very messy) time.

Batch cook and freeze

There are always those days where you don’t have the time or energy to think up something to make baby for their meal. This is where batch cooking is a godsend!

Save energy by cooking veggies in batches and cook a variety of veggies (easier with the same cooking time). Then you can use different pairings or mixes for different purees or in cooked meal recipes. Purees are great to put in ice cube trays as easily-measured meals.

When you make a multi-ingredient recipe, make enough for up to 10 portions then just freeze what you have for another day. Lots of recipes can be frozen and most that you find will say so.

When cooking a meal for yourself(ves), you can also take some out to use as finger food or create a puree for baby before adding any salt or sugar.

Use leftovers in another recipe

I often find that after preparing 3–4 little piles of veggies, most of it will be left after baby has had a go at it. The morsels you can salvage that aren’t half-chewed are great to use in other recipes, alongside leftovers from your own meals (minus salt) and batch-cooked veg.

For example, we made some jacket potatoes recently for my partner and I but we cooked 5. We used the leftover potatoes to mash up with some leftover steamed broccoli, mixed with some milk, cottage cheese and cheddar cheese (or use vegan alternative) and sprinkled a bit of cheese on top. We stuck it under the grill in a muffin tin and had some lovely little ‘gratin’ dishes.

Give to your pet

Some of you out there will have little furries as part of the family. We have two dogs and guinea pigs who come in very handy! The half-chewed morsels that we can’t stomach eating ourselves will quite often go in the dogs’ dinner (if they haven’t been snuffled off the splash-mat first).

Obviously first you need to familiarise yourself with what your pet can and can’t eat and adjust their usual food measures accordingly so they don’t become little porkies.

Compost

Alternatively you can put the leftovers in the kitchen compost bin for collection to be used as organic fertiliser or in anaerobic digestion for energy production.

Use to make a stock

You can use all kinds of leftovers to make a stock! It doesn’t directly save waste as such but you are reusing scraps for a meal you wouldn’t have otherwise had, and it will have so many minerals in it!

Another tip — you can use the water from boiled or steamed veggies to make future purees, recipes that require water or add to stock mix.

I hope this has given you some ideas and inspired you to use less food for more meals. Bon appetite!

Related posts:

Now choose operating system for web server. I suggest use Ubuntu for more package advantage. Make sure, that should be listed in free tier. Basically, Amazon instance will provide you a dynamic…

Every single person in the world has hardships. Every single person in the world has something to be thankful for. And we will always have both at the same time. It can be so hard to keep a positive…

Aaahhh the Sunday session. Finding a snuggly, sun-dappled beer garden, or a sticky carpet venue, buying terrible beer by the jug and whiling away a day and night in one big go. Heaven. When we…