PEOPLE are queuing up to take money from us in order to tell us how to run our homes in hard times – and it’s understandable when you consider what a throwaway society we’ve become - the average household throws away between £15,000 and £24,000 worth of food in a lifetime.
Although it’s almost certainly very annoying, the truth is that anyone over a certain age has a great advantage in dealing with even a short and minor recession.
If you were brought up in the decade after World War 2 you will have had drummed into you that nothing must be wasted, from patching clothes to making bubble and squeak.
My late mother would have been horrified at the idea that food is just thrown away because we can’t be bothered to do something with it before the sell-by date (not that they had any such thing in those days).
Most of the baby-boomer generation – at least those with parents on a working man’s wage - were brought up to enjoy slow-cooked cheap cuts of meat, eat offal and not turn their noses up at a suet pudding.
It is ironic that the combination of the threat of a recession with a new consciousness of our ever-increasing impact on the climate and resources of the world has brought back to our homes a sense of frugality.
Today’s generation of parents have not been informed by a decade of rationing and war and have been trained to get their information from the web or some sort of expert.
This brings us back to people selling economy and frugality. Just on the market is a £12.95 tome called The Use-It-All Cookbook, in which Bish Muir offers over 100 recipes and ideas for using your leftovers, and using up that sad-looking carrot or half tub of yoghurt at the back of the fridge.
Soups, stews, pies, and risottos sit alongside the information to transform leftover bread into bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, and make a chicken go from roast dinner into stock, soup, risotto and a sandwich
There is also advice on planning your shopping, storing your food, basic tools for the kitchen, and essential ingredients for the store cupboard; and each recipe features the comparative average cost if bought in the supermarket.
The book’s publicity clams that changes in people’s shopping habits and fears over food hygiene, means food wastage is increasing at a rate of 15 per cent every decade – so take that to its logical conclusion and we will soon be throwing away more than we buy.
I can make one money-saving suggestion of my own – you could save £12.95 by going and talking to your granny or anybody old enough to remember what true poverty and food shortage was really all about.
Collect a few of their recipes and tips and you may well make some real savings.
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1 comment:
Right on the nose. I and my wife) am 60 years old, my grandmother lived with us until she died at age 80-something in 1969. She remebered the Zeppelins bombing London, and horse soldier yelling "The Queen is dead, long live the King". Bothe she and my parents wasted nothind of food, within the household clothes were passed on the the next child and sometimes to cousins. My first bicycle was bought used, most of the vehicles I have owned have been bought second-hand. Current stable a 1956 Triumph m/cycle owned since 1980, and a 2007 Ford Focus station wagon bought last year.
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