I just read an article about how much food we waste. According to a BBC study, “the average British household throws out ?420 of food a year,” which apparently means that 33% of the food we buy is wasted.

I’ve often looked at all the fresh vegetables for sale, things that require peeling and cleaning and cutting up, and wondered how much of what people virtuously buy actually gets eaten–given that almost none of the people I know seem to cook at all. And my own family wastes far more than I like to admit. But it’s not so hard to change this pattern, by making a night (or even two) a week the time to come up with a meal based on the oddments in the fridge. I’ll continue with some suggestions about summer meals that make good use of bits of cheese, odd vegetables and fruits, and other things that seem to pile up in spite of our best intentions.