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.

There are of course certain foods that you should never feed your dog (and as a novice dog owner I've been on Google more than once to double check before adding something to his bowl), but as far as your general table scraps go, dogs can eat most any old thing (you know that three week old bone covered in rotting flesh that your dog just found...? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about).

In the UK, the 'quick sale' food turnover was both more common and much cheaper that it is over here (certainly in Darwin anyway, I don't know about the rest of Australia), and after doing a few sums I realised it was cheaper to buy blocks of frozen pet meat from the pet store, and mix them up with a selection of quick sale veg, than to buy anything tinned. On good days I could get a huge selection of veg for under 2 quid; bags of potatoes, beans, carrots, broccoli and leafy greens  - would all go into a big pot along with the meat and some cheap pasta.

While I don't have access to that level of cheap food at the moment, the hound (who I brought back with me from the UK in case anyone didn't pick that up) still gets a lot of my table scraps - not to mention any restaurant goodies I didn't quite finish....though I do worry he's turning into something of a gourmet (except when he finds that 3 week old rotting bone, of course).