Food waste: We need to think differently about what we put in the bin

We regularly hear about the food waste we incur, or create as a nation. Some scary statistics suggest that around 50% of the food we buy every year goes into the bin.

The main reasons for this is that we buy too much and don’t eat the salads and fresh fruit and veg on time and chuck them away.

With food labelling being what it is, we are naturally terrified of making ourselves sick from gone-off food, especially meat.

Some homes confess to actually throwing out whole, uncooked chickens and unopened packs of fresh meat.

Having a cat is a great way to gauge whether or not something is okay to eat — according to my mother anyway.

We always test out something dubious on Blackie. If he eats it then it’s fine for us. So far, he hasn’t failed.

Dogs have no such radar for food safety, as they are descended from wolves who scavanged as much as hunted.

With poverty and hunger being more prevalent in our first world society than we might care to accept, the perfectly good food that gets thrown away from supermarkets every day is shocking.

I’m a big fan of the reduced price section and generally only shop for a couple of days at a time, except when I buy good meat in bulk direct from a small farmer and then I fill up the freezer.

I have two huge boys to feed, so if I buy a week’s worth of food, they will eat it all in a couple of days anyway.

Laura Kidd wearing a design by Fintan Mullholland as she meets one of the local residence pictured at Airfield Estate, Dublin.

We didn’t always have all food available to us at all times — indeed, foods such as tomatoes were only on our plates in summer, ditto for all salad vegetables and many fruits.

In the days before year-round growing, we got through a time of year called the ‘hungry gap’.

We got excited about the first of the new potatoes and at home in the suburbs we had five hefty apple trees that we picked from September when they were ripe and ready.

I remember the loud crunch as I bit into the vivid white flesh of the just-plucked fruits.

All the apples were ready at the same time so we would either distribute them to the neighbours or wrap them in newspaper and store them in boxes.

My Mum and Dad were very resourceful and made all our food from scratch. We grew some veg in a small plot in the garden, like lots of people in the neighbourhood.

If they were younger now, they’d have a blog or a TV show. Wasting food is the same as throwing money away. But that’s enough of a lecture.

To highlight the food waste issue and what we can do about it, the people at Airfield Estate are working on a cool event called a Trash Bash.

The event takes place on September 9 and will be a supper that’s made entirely from the kind of food we normally throw away.

How many times have you cooked half a head of cauliflower and then turfed the other half in the bin?

The menu on the night aims to cook from the food that takes up most of our rubbish space, remember we are also paying for it to be taken away and dumped into landfill.

Fermenting food is great, because you can quickly fill up a jar with a medley of veggies such as carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower, or radishes and cabbage, any good, firm veg will work.

Sadly courgettes don’t ferment so well, so it’s courgette cake and soup and griddled versions of that summer glut favourite.

Of course, the best thing to do with your leftover veg is to compost, or feed it to your wormerie, but why waste food that’s good enough for human consumption?

Airfield Houseis running the two-day food festival to focus on food waste and what we can do to reduce and use it.

It seems crazy that we all buy ‘good looking’ vegetables, as they never look that way once we cut them up. Some supermarkets are now cottoning on to ugly veg, the sooner the better.

This year, the theme for the two days is ‘Food, Waste, and Sustainability’ and is running from 8 to 11 September.

At the Trash Bash, the Airfield chefs will create a menu from food that they often have to throw away at this city farm and cafe. (Food regulations mean there isn’t the option to be frugal in commercial kitchens.)

They want to inspire people to think differently about what they put in the bin.

The informal event will feature pesto made from the tops of veggies that we usually throw out, vegetable pate, fermented vegetables, billy goat, bone broth, couscous with foraged herbs and ugly veg, fruit crumble with a crunchy brown bread crust, scabby apples and much more.

The festival is open to the public over the weekend and will include a number of talks and food demonstrations for adults and children that touch on the topics of Food,Waste and Sustainability.

The EPA, INDI, Biodiversity Ireland, and Joanna Donnelly of Met Éireann will deliver talks in Airfield’s Green Barn, as will a host of food experts including myself, Andrew Douglas, and Conor Saunders.

Will Livingstone from River Cottage HQ will be there for the weekend, delivering workshops and talks alongside head kitchen gardener Kitty Scully, late of this parish.

There will be a large food market housed in stunning Magnakata tents, with offerings from a host of small artisan food producers.

Children and adults will be able to get stuck in and creative, making funky creations from recycled materials inspired by a temporary art exhibition called ‘Waste Not Want not’, which will be on display over the weekend.

www.airfield.ie