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Brits throw away one bag of food for every three we buy, according to the team behind the Love Food Hate Waste campaign. Interestingly, research published yesterday by the campaign shows that fruit and veg make up 40 per cent of the waste -- that's around 3 million tonnes a year.
Apples, potatoes, bananas, tomatoes and oranges top the list of fruit and veg that go in the bin, so we've decided to give you the easiest recipes we know for when these five foods start looking sad in our fridge. We've added five other fruits and vegetables that in our experience tend to go bad quite quickly, too.
1) Apples
WRAP says we throw away 4.4 million apples per day. That's plain crazy. Crumbles are a piece of cake to make, but if you're not baking savvy it might scare you slightly. Baked apples, on the other hand, are almost as easy to make as throwing wrinkled apples in the compost bin.
Baked apple recipe: Peel the wrinkled apples, cut them into boats and place them in an oven dish. Sprinkle a little sugar over them and stuff them in the oven until they go soft. If there's just one layer of apple pieces in the dish it shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes. Add a little lemon juice or cinnamon if you have it at hand and you're in for a treat. Serve with ice cream, custard, yoghurt or cream.
2) Potatoes
An estimated 5.1 million potatoes are wasted every day. That's quite astounding considering how many things you can make with potatoes. If they're raw and haven't sprouted yet, you can make anything from mash to soup. But we're guessing you already knew that. What about when they're already boiled, roasted or mashed? We happily use all three versions in vegetable soups (see recipe 7, below) or oven-roasted again with peppers and tomatoes. With old leftover boiled and roasted potatoes, however, our favourite way to resurrect them is an oven-baked omelette.
Potato oven omlette recipe: Cut the leftover potatoes into small cubes, mix with sliced onions and tomatoes if you have some. Put it all in an oven dish. Mix four eggs with a little milk or water (maximum a quarter of a pint), salt and pepper and pour it over the vegetables. If you have some cheese, grate and add it to the mixture -- it'll make the dish taste all the better. Bake at 180°C for 30 minutes or until the egg mixture is properly cooked.
3) Bananas
Did you know you could freeze bananas and defrost them for smoothies? Around 1.6 million bananas go to landfill every day. That's a helluva lot of potential smoothies. If they're too brown even for smoothies, we normally make a banana bread.
Banana bread recipe: Mix one to four ripe bananas (depending on how many you have) with 125g melted butter and 125g sugar. Use slightly more sugar if you only use one banana. Set aside. Sieve together 250g of flour, one teaspoon of baking powder. Add one teaspoon of nutmeg or cinnamon if you've got it. Mix the flour with the banana mass and pour it in a loaf tin. Bake for around 45 minutes at 180°C.
4) Tomatoes
If your tomatoes are too soft for salads, make a sauce from them which can be frozen until you want to make that spaghetti bolognese. Hopefully you'll save some of the 46,000 tonnes of tomatoes that are thrown away in the UK every year.
Tomato sauce recipe: Sauté a chopped onion and crushed clove of garlic in a saucepan. Dice the soft tomatoes and add them to the onion mix. Pour in half a pint of water and let it all simmer until it's mushy. If you have a blender you can make the sauce nice and smooth. If not, you can just press it through a sieve to get rid of tomato skin and bigger pieces of onion. Cool and freeze in freezer bags or plastic containers.
5) Oranges
When we buy oranges they last for ages we and can't believe that 1.2 million go in the British bins every day.
Orange lolly recipe: When oranges start going funny and you don't feel like eating them, squeeze them and -- if you have a lolly mould -- freeze the juice as ice lollies. Otherwise, freeze it in a bottle and impress breakfast guests with 'freshly' squeezed OJ. If the fruits have already gone mouldy, we're afraid there really isn't anywhere else for them other than the bin.
6) Plums or berries
Jam is absolutely the easiest and yummiest way to use up berries and plums that just won't pass for fresh anymore.
Berry/plum jam recipe: Remove plum stones and maybe the skin if you like, weigh the amount of plums or berries you've got and put them in a sauce pan. Add the same amount of caster sugar and bring the mixture to the boil. Keep reducing it until it becomes thick. Pour it in a bowl or old jam jars and store it in the fridge.
7) Broccoli and carrots
Soup is the ultimate vegetable saviour. Broccoli, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage -- you name it -- they're all perfect for a hearty, healthy soup.
Veg soup recipe: Clean and cut the vegetables in question into chunks and boil them. If you've got an onion, chop it up and brown the bits in a spoonful of oil or butter. Add salt, pepper, any herbs you might have and the boiled vegetables. Purée the concoction in a blender, add a bit of milk or cream if you have some and serve with some good bread. If you don't fancy eating the soup just then, you can freeze it. Just don't add the dairy until you want to reheat and eat it.
8) Mushrooms
Mushrooms get top prize for looking sad quickly. Unless they smell badly or are mouldy, you can make use of them though. If they're just drying out, we'll put them on a cotton string, dry them and use them for stews. Cooked and blended mushrooms also go well in any vegetable soup, but the easiest way to use them up quickly is in an omelette.
Mushroom omlette recipe: Chop and fry however many mushrooms you've got in butter with salt and pepper. Set aside. Mix a couple of eggs with a little water, salt and pepper and pour on top on the mushrooms in the frying pan. Fry at low heat until the egg is properly cooked. Serve with something green or a few slices of tomato.
9) Lemons and limes
What fridge doesn't have a couple of half lemons or limes? It's like they just come in halves. We squeeze the juice over our apple desserts (see recipe 1, above) or use this lemon or lime curd recipe, which we found on Love Food Hate Waste's website. It's great as it's quick, easy and the curd keeps well in the fridge. We hardly ever have two whole lemons or four whole limes lying around waiting to be used, which the recipe requires. But we generally have one lemon and one lime, so we've tweaked the recipe slightly.
Lemon/lime curd recipe: Squeeze one lemon and one lime (more if they're quite dry). Mix the juice with two eggs and strain the liquid. Add the sugar and butter and cover the bowl or mug with film. Remember it must be microwave safe. Cook in the microwave on high for one minute. Stir the mix thoroughly and cook uncovered on medium for six minutes. Whisk the mixture every minute to make sure it doesn't curdle. When it's cool and thick, spread it on toast.
10) Salad and spinach leaves
Most of us have had a bag of salad or spinach just sitting there in our fridge, slowly decaying. If the leaves are just dry, you can put them in a bowl of water to invigorate them. This normally makes them edible. If you don't have time to cook the spinach before it goes bad you can put it in the freezer until you need it. Sadly, when salad or spinach starts to go soggy, there's just nothing we can do to resurrect it. Instead of chucking the whole lot in the bin -- bag and all -- we suggest you compost it. Many councils now give discounts on composts bins. Even if you live in a city and only have a tiny outdoor space you might be able to do it using a Bokashi bin. But obviously, the very best advice we can give is: Just eat your greens.
Recipe: not much will bring these back from the dead. Ideally make sure you compost them or feed them to the worms.
And one obvious but handy top tip
On its website, the Love Food Hate Waste campaign offers advice on keeping greens for longer by storing them correctly. The top tip: store them in the fridge rather than the fruit bowl or vegetable basket, and extend their lives by up to 14 days on average.
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