It's going really well. I'm impressed with how we've done. We've had very little waste so far - it's only what the children haven't eaten. We've had some vegetable waste too but we have a compost so the vegetable waste goes in there. We're reusing leftovers and finding other ways of using them. Yesterday I had some bread that was past its best - it was a fruit loaf I'd made. I turned that into a bread and butter pudding. We also had some leftover meatballs that I mashed up and put into a shepherd's pie. And if there are any other leftovers, I freeze them or the children have them for dinner the next day.
I have a blog and I write a lot about food and recipes. As a family, we're big on budgeting and saving money. It's also something I feel strongly about. We all need to take care of the environment. We can't stop the damage we're doing to the planet so we need to think about how we're living.
We grow a lot of our vegetables. We're in our second year now and it has reduced what we need to go out and buy. We're big on recycling; we recycle everything we can. All our vegetable waste goes into compost and we use what we can instead of throwing it all away. Our two youngest are two-years-old, so they don't really know what we're doing. But with our oldest, it's something we do try and instil in him.
With food, he asks if he can have more, but he might not eat it all. So we tell him to eat what he's got and if he's still hungry, he can have more. He's nine so he's a lot more aware. He knows about putting vegetable peelings in the compost and he helps out with recycling.
As told to Katherine Purvis.
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