I was astonished to read your report about food waste (UK consumers ‘don’t know what to cook’ as £1.2bn of food is binned a year, 20 January). This is the recipe that my sister taught me some 60 years ago: one each potato, carrot, onion, stick of celery. Cut up and fry in butter or oil. Add red lentils, dried herbs and water. Cook for 20 minutes or so. Blend if you have a blender. This is a very forgiving soup – you can add root vegetables, green vegetables, beans, pasta, rice, leftover dinner. My friend adds old cake. We have this for lunch every day in the winter. We are in our 70s and hale and hearty.
Judith Furner
Eastbourne, East Sussex
• Re “Food waste: Are you throwing your money in the bin?” (22 January), the answer is “Unavoidably, yes”, because supermarkets sell fresh produce wrapped and in large portions. Living alone, I cannot use a 1kg bag of potatoes before they rot; similarly with greens or fruit. If supermarkets are serious about cutting food waste, perhaps they could sell perishable produce loose, as they used to not so long ago.
Kris Felton
Longworth, Oxfordshire
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