on New Year's Day

On Jan 1st, 2011, the day I was supposed to begin writing about food, cooking and eating, I was busy celebrating the new year and meeting friends evey hour of the day. Towards the end of the day, we met at Cafe Ceramique, a place where you choose an item and colours and the staff there bring over the chosen colours and brushes & you just paint away!

So why is this coming up here? I felt bad about ditching my promise on day 1 and decided to make something food/kitchen related. Not sure what the real name of this thing is, I've been refering to it as cutlery holder.

3 hours of flowers drawing (and a week later aftering being baked), I share with you my cutlery holder.

So excited that on the day I went to collect this I made a matching napkin holder, will post a picture once it's ready - and I might go back to make matching salt & pepper shakers ;-)

Love Food Hate Waste

Love Food Hate Waste is a campaign from the UK that raises awareness of the need to reduce food waste. The website suggests simple ways/things (meal planners, recipes, storage tips, etc...) to reduce waste. However my favourite part was portioning.

This tool asks you what food you'll be cooking and for how many people (and children) and then the portion calcultor it recommends the portion size. For example: if you are cookin rice for one all you need is 1/4 mug. this is the healthy amount for an adult to have. Also, you can add what will you have with it, for example Chicken, and it'll suggest 140g

As an Arab, we tend to triple the portion per person. If we are inviting 10 people the food will consist of 27 dishes each enough enough for 50 which traditionally makes one the perfect host who then gets extra points forcoming up with ways to dispatch the extra food. The new generation is woking towards amending this rule and working out something that is balanced between traditions, generousity, health, the environment and common sense.

Love Food Hate Waste is definately providing good guidelines to achieve our goal in reducing food waste. By having the two weeks meal planner you would have an idea of how much shopping you need to do beforehands. "Planning meals, keeping the cupboard and fridge stocked with basics and keeping an eye on the 'best before' and 'use by' dates can take some of the hassle out of shopping. It saves us time and money and helps cut down on food waste".

I can go on about the recipes page, but I'll jut quote them: "cookery advisor Caroline Marson and Love Food Hate Waste supporters make economic use of all the odds and ends that invariably get leftover from previous meals or forgotten in the fruit bowl or the back of the fridge". Another great thing is that the meals are categorised into Vegiterians meals, Kids meals, Lunch, Parties, for Freezing, etc.. or choose meals by the main ingredients (meat, fish, cheese, etc..).

By reading the facts & figures you'll realise by managing the food before, during and after cooking not only you'll be saving money, but also reducing the environmental impact in the long run.

I really liked this campaign and hope to see a local or regional version of it soon :)

Enjoy reading http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/