MEDLARMAGHEDDON

It's been a while since I've done a food-related post but this year for the first time, I had the dubious pleasure of dealing with what was a) a fruit I knew practically nothing about and b) the inevitable immense harvest.

If the title wasn't obvious, I'm talking about the ancient, obscure, unusual and astoundingly delicious medlar fruit.

9 STITCHES

There's that old saying about a stitch in time saving nine - which of course means if you tackle a problem early you'll save yourself a much larger problem later on. This is also a saying from an era when mending and darning were not only commonplace but essential. These days a split stitch, broken heel or missing button is less often attended to early, if at all. Cheap, convenient and fast-changing fashions often mean we end up with more clothes than we really need and that we also generally neglect them (not helped much by the inferior quality products on the market that give up after a couple of runs in a washing machine).

TOTES UPCYCLED

Diary of a self-confessed scrap fabric hoarder.

Aside from knackered knickers, almost every bit of clothing that stays the course until it's threadbare will end up in my fabric scraps suitcase...It used to be a bag, now it's a suitcase. When it reached the verge of spilling over into a second suitcase I started to think seriously about what the hell I was going to do with some of this hoard (there are only so many rag dusters you can use in one lifetime, after all).

GONE TO THE DOGS - ZERO FOOD WASTE

Well, that's another Christmas down, and fridges around the country are groaning under the weight of all those family dinner leftovers (in fact there is a food advisory ad campaign doing the rounds here right now to warn people of the dangers of food poisoning from tidbits that may have sat around in the summer heat for a little too long).  I didn't make it though the month completely guiltless despite my zero food waste efforts - I can own up to 1 cucumber, half an eggplant, quarter of a pot of yoghurt and a bunch of mint. So I'll wrap up the year with another quick couple of suggestions before coming up with a different personal challenge for January (but including a resolution to come up with a better food plan system from now on).

Anyway, now might be the time to indulge your pets a little if you do have more food than you can handle on your plates. That glib remark that I made in my first post about never having leftovers if you have a dog was based more in fact than humour. My dog, the first dog I've owned, is a little over 7 years old now and he has been instrumental in keeping my food waste to a minimum since he arrived -  puppy size -  into my life.

BOTTOM OF THE VEG DRAWER

I'm a serial offender when it comes to having a couple of limp carrots, a shriveled chilli and a few black spotted tomatoes hiding away at the bottom of the veggie drawer. But team it up with a dried up cob of fresh corn and some kidney beans and you've got the makings of some delicious vegetarian nachos.

LOST BREAD

Just a sprinkle of sugar, promise

The pre-sliced plastic wrapped grainy bread so favoured by folks in this part of the world is something of an anomaly in France, where they have a much greater fondness for the staple white baguette. Personally I prefer to buy my loaves from a baker (and consequently have an elaborate wrapping system of cloth and paper to keep them fresh for as long as possible in the fridge - though it's worth noting that bread freezes very well).

FINAL 2013 MINI-CHALLENGE

One of my many delicious farm shop hauls from a local village in Kent, UK

December is a pretty excessive month overall; a merry-go-round of gifts, meals, drinks and parties means a pretty full fridge and a lot of leftovers. So my final month-long mini challenge will be a zero food waste December. To be honest I'm pretty good at not throwing out food but it does feel like over the last couple of months that regular small shops have been replaced by less frequent larger ones, and that I've also been buying more produce before finishing off what I have in the fridge. To put it bluntly, my shiny non food waster badge is getting a little tarnished. To top it all off, food goes off in a blink at this time of year (in the tropics) so it's even more important to keep those eyes smaller than your stomach!

WASTE NOT

The first question people generally ask about Buy Nothing New Month is 'does this include food?' Well, no it doesn't (unless the freegan life is the life for you, ho ho) but it doesn't hide the fact that food waste is a huge problem in our convenience society (think about it, if we had no waste and ate less meat then we could easily feed, house and clothe 9 billion+ people). Collectively, we Westerners throw out anything up to 40% of the food we produce (this includes food that spoils or is discarded before it even makes it into our homes). I grew up in the New Zealand agricultural/horticultural sector and even by the late 80s, when I was still a young teen, I had a disturbingly clear picture of what soil to plate food production looked like, as well as an insight into how free market trade could crush a local industry.

RE-IN-CANE-ATION

I have a knack for spotting good *trash* (and here, as everywhere, I'm stunned at what people are willing to throw away) and after seeing this one sitting around on the street for a few days I decided to take it home and turn it into a herb planter. I'm starting a modest tropical style vegie patch this year, and as I'm still a green thumb in training, the most sensible option is planting in containers that can be moved around the garden til I find the optimum spot.

THE GIFT OF THRIFT

Op-shops, charity shops, thrift shops, secondhand shops...a vintage rose by any other name takes some sniffing out. My love for the op-shop treasure hunt probably started back when I was a poor uni student a couple of...*cough*...a while ago.