One of the topics I am passionate about is food wastage. In an ideal world we would show respect to our food and have none of it go in the bin.
Recently I was able to team up with Love Food Hate Waste (https://lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz) as part of Wellington on a Plate and hold a cooking demonstration on how to use up some of the most commonly usable but thrown away household food items.
According to the Love Food Hate Waste website: “New Zealanders throw away 122,547 tonnes of food a year. That is equivalent to 213 jumbo jets of food that has to go somewhere to rot, instead of being eaten. All of this food is worth about $872 million each year. That amount of food could feed the population of Dunedin for two years!” That’s only in New Zealand, globally “one third of food produced globally is wasted; that is 1.3 billion tonnes of food that is never eaten.” That to me is just mental and we can all do (and should) do our part by reducing our waste as much as possible. Shared here are some of the recipes that use some of LFHW’s top ten chucked out food items that you can try at home.
- 8-10 apples (can also substitute/mix with other fruit such as pears, rhubarb etc)
- 1/4C sugar
- Water if required
- 5 Cardamom pods (optional)
- 1C flour
- 125g butter, diced
- 1/2C sugar
- 1tsp mixed spice
- Peel, core and dice the apples. Add to a pot along with the sugar and a little water (and the cardamom if using). Cook on a low heat until the apples are soft and starting to break up. Depending on the variety of the apple they may require some water added if becoming too dry and starting to stick.
- In a bowl mix together all the topping ingredients and crumble together with your hands until well combined.
- In a baking dish spoon in the apple mix and top with the flour topping.
- Bake at 170C for 30-45 mins or until nice and golden brown and bubbling.