I was delighted to find this book waiting for me when I returned from holiday over the weekend. Yes, I am a bit biased because Anna Pitt asked me to contribute a recipe and I have done so. It's a pleasure to see my own simple offering there amongst a cornucopia of excellent ideas.
Anna is an environmental campaigner, after my own heart. She's spent a serious amount of her career championing food waste up and down the country. She's an avid social media geek and I found her - or did she find me? - on Twitter. @AnnaPitt
She has recognised the link between the quality of our diet, where we get the food from, how we treat it and whether we throw it away. People are slowly beginning to realise that sell-by dates and best-before dates are generally a marketing ploy. If it looks edible - it probably is edible (unless you are medically vulnerable).
I eat mouldy cheese, limp lettuce and rotting fruit. And you know something? Sometimes it tastes better. A little over-ripe fruit added to a pie or conserve intensifies the flavour without the need to add so much sugar. Anna advises going back to old fashioned tried and tested methods of ensuring that the food on your table is good enough to eat. For example, she advocates the 'sniff test'.
But there are good suggestions in here that were new to me. For example she advocates cutting celery from the top, rather than blade, by blade. It keep much better if the bulb is whole.
This is a very wide-ranging book. It's not just recipes and rhetoric. There are authoritative chapters on the history of food waste, about linking food waste to hunger and malnutrition. There's even a discussion about the effect on our economy, with loads of facts and figures that will probably find their way into some of my blogs. But above all this book will be a welcome addition to your recipe shelf. Just the tips on preserving make it worth its weight in slightly overripe produce!
https://leftoverpie.co.uk/buy-the-book/
I have not received any payment for my inclusion in this book - save for a review copy of the book itself.