January Challenge - reduce food waste

Now that Christmas is over, I'm turning my attention to something that I've been meaning to do for a while - making an effort to reduce food waste in our household. 

I've always felt that we weren't too bad - I never throw out fruit or vegetables just because of the 'best before' date when they are still perfectly fine to use, but I've been aware in the last couple of months that I've been throwing away decaying fruit or vegetables more often than I would like. I have been particularly aware of this because normally we compost any veggy peelings or tea bags, but due to the unwelcome signs of a rat burrowing in my compost heap, I've stopped putting anything on my compost heap until the rat is dealt with! (Luckily I have a friend who works in pest control, who is very helpful on the odd occasion that I have had this problem.) It's amazing how heavy the rubbish is now that we are adding tea bags, veggy peelings and the like - it has made me aware of how much stuff we normally compost and manage to keep out of the black bin.

Other problems we have is a child who regularly pours a huge bowl of Shreddies and then abandons them half eaten, and my tendency to stock up on useful foodstuffs and then forget what I've got in the back of the cupboard. So I'm sure that with a bit of organisation, we could do better!

Now that the children are back to school/college I can start to make progress, so my first task yesterday was to look in the fridge to see what was left over from the Christmas holidays that needed eating up. I have quite a bit of left over stilton and a head of broccoli - so yesterday's lunch was Broccoli and Stilton soup. I also found half a yellow pepper and a rather tired lettuce - so they went in too! I'd never thought of cooking lettuce before - but came across this suggestion for using up left over lettuce a while ago - it's a leafy green vegetable that goes well with the broccoli.

So here's my recipe for Stilton and Broccoli soup. 

1 onion
1 head of broccoli 
Optional lettuce, yellow pepper
About 2oz Stilton - a piece aboout 2" square
A glug of oil 
2 veggy stock cubes
A couple of tablespoons of white wine, sherry or other left over alcohol.


Chop the onions and saute in the oil in a large saucepan over a low heat till softened. Chop the broccoli into chunks, including the stem (you can cut off any tough bits on the outside of the stem, but the centre of the stem is often nice & juicy.) Add the broccoli and then add water sufficient to cover the broccoli. Add other optional chopped veggies, the wine or sherry and crumble in the stock cubes. Bring it up to the boil, then turn down to a simmer with the lid on the pan for about 20 minutes so that the broccoli is soft and easy to liquidise. Cut the stilton into chunks and add to the soup, continue to simmer for another 5 -10 minutes until the stilton has melted, then I use a hand blender in the saucepan to blend the soup. Alternatively, you could use a liquidiser, or if you prefer a chunkier soup, use a potato masher to break up any large pieces of broccoli and mix up the soup. Taste the soup and check if it needs any more seasoning.

Serve and enjoy!