Wednesday 4 June 2008

Do we need a Kitchen Revolution...?

The new buzz around town seems to be The Kitchen Revolution, published by Ebury soon. It claims that you can save money, reduce your food miles and basically rescue your slightly tarnished halo by learning to live with leftovers. The basic premise is it gives you a menu plan that starts with your big Sunday roast, then gives you menus to follow throughout the week to use up the leftovers, interspersed with the odd seasonal recipe, a bit of (no doubt well-stocked) larder raiding and bulk-cooking. Sorry, but does any of this sound terribly familiar? Haven't people been banging on on this theme for some time now and isn't it what might be known as 'common sense'? And have we really become so far removed from our kitchens that no-one even has leftovers any more.. (ready meals don't leave a lot, i grant you, but are we really just throwing that food away - it seems so). I suspect that, for a lot of people who only buy neat and tidy chicken breasts, lamb chops, pork fillet, etc, the idea of using leftovers from the shoulder of pork might send them into a flat spin, but have we really forgotten how to make bubble and squeak, soup, hash, sandwiches, for God's sake? (I'm quite cross now - people are happy to rant food prices are climbing, but apparently they can't quite see their way clear to reducing their own food waste). Anyway, if you have any great leftover ideas, not only for all those people out there who are au fait with frying up leftover roast potatoes, but for those who do need a kick-start, let me know. I, for one, love Elizabeth David's favourite recipe for leftover roast lamb with rice - Suleiman's Special, I think - but I always struggle with roast pork.

2 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more, pardon the pun but do we really have to spoon feed people these days, how to use up the contents of their fridge. It seems that the sight of a Banana slightly going black is classed as waste and goes straight in the bin!

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  2. The sad fact remains that a third of our food in Britain goes to waste, so you can't knock anybody for trying to re-educate those of us who obviously aren't yet feeling the pinch of rising food prices enough to stop throwing it away.

    Love Food Hate Waste is trying to make a difference - good luck to them...

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