Stopping the waste - Back of the Fridge Spelt Salad

I remember being told over and over again as a child that throwing food away was sinful and disgraceful.

That with all the people dying of starvation in the world I had to consider myself lucky to have such food abundance at my disposal.

As a child I knew I should eat what I had asked for, but I also knew I would get what I asked for easily; I knew that putting food on the table was not a problem for my family.
What I could not visualise, though, were the masses of Panamanians living in the outskirts of the city who would leave their homes at 3am every day to be at their jobs by 6am.
The Panamanians working as maids in our homes, (private) school bus drivers, windscreen cleaners at traffic lights.

As far as I knew they too went back home after work like my mum and dad did and sat down at a table to eat a dinner they had chosen rather than the only dinner they could afford to have – Because, of course, they all had dinner. It didn’t occur to me that they didn’t.

Not even when we drove past mud huts on the way to the beach house it occurred to me that a lot of the people who crossed our paths daily weren’t actually worrying about what to eat for dinner. They worried about whether or not they would have dinner at all.

My dad also liked to tell me how his mother (the grandma I was named after) had learnt to cook during war-time Italy and therefore had learnt to make do with the rations she had; everything was good for a dinner and nothing was thrown away.
I am pretty sure, though, that my grandpa Cesare was, like me, the kind of person who cannot fathom eating the same thing 2 days in a row and therefore she grew ingenious changing, moulding and using the same things over and over again, but with very different results.
I would like to think I have inherited some of her imagination.

As a teenager I came to resent leftovers, though.

We had moved to Italy by then, mum and dad worked all day long and we didn’t have maids like we did in Panama – Things were very different.

And so mum would make a big pot of food on Sundays that I could easily heat up in the microwave after school for lunch when they were not around and that’s all I would eat for a week.

The most regular item on my lunch menus was veal and white wine stew and I guess there could have been worse things to OD on, but, man, once I left for uni I refused to touch the stuff for more than 10 years and had my first portion of it only last year… I just couldn’t!

I won’t blame mum, though, she worked hard for years and had to cook lunch and dinner for dad and me every single day and, well, I can see how one could run out of inspiration fairly quickly.

And, let’s face it, I could have stopped being such a lazy teenage git and learnt how to cook myself instead of whingeing about having to eat the dreadful veal in white wine!

It’s not like she was serving me poo with a side of snot.

Anyway, the point of this story is that I have realised with some disgust that I have become someone who does waste food to an extent.
I don’t throw away bagfuls of food every week and as much as I try to freeze anything I cannot eat by its expiry date I can also let the last tomato die a solitary death at the back of the fridge when I am bored and decide I don’t want the tomato, but I want a pepper.

And then I buy a pepper, use half of it and if I am bored I let the other half also die a solitary death. Ok, maybe not – I will julienne it and freeze it because peppers freeze very well, but you get my point.

And let’s not talk about my cupboards!

I buy tins of what not, spices, nuts, grains and forget all about them after using them once – I have so much stuff in those cupboards that I can’t see their contents properly and therefore end up only using whatever is at the front.

Last weekend I reached the peak of shame when I climbed on my work-top to look into the “Baking” cupboard only to pull out half-used bags of flour (all the same type of course), almost empty bags of sugar (all different kinds), 3 boxes of icing sugar and a box I was unsure about.

The Boy looked at it, then at me, then at it again and just asked “What IS that?”; upon further inspection we assessed it was a box of custard powder.

What the heck?!

I don’t even like custard powder!
Ok, so I shifted the responsibility and decided it was the housemates' just after I realised it   expired a year ago.
In the bin it went, but I would like to think I would have done something with it had I known it was there whilst still usable.
Or maybe I wouldn't have.

And so my new regime has started: I am now clearing my cupboards, my fridge and my freezer of all leftovers because I’m not proud of how far I’ve allowed this to go and because my parents and my aunt are probably cringing whilst reading this (and my grandpa and my grandma are turning in their graves).

I thought I was relatively good at containing waste, but I think I can improve and, let’s face it, a lot of the best recipes come out of “back of the fridge” ingredients.

Just like this salad – A great addition to this week’s lunches.


And you? Have you made anything nice out of salvaged leftovers recently?

Back of the Fridge Spelt Salad

Serves 2 (as a light lunch)


80gr spelt
10 cherry tomatoes roughly chopped
Handful of pecans
Zest (grated) and juice of 1 lemon
50gr chorizo roughly chopped
100gr feta cheese roughly chopped
1 sad looking spring onion sliced
1/2 tin butter beans drained
4 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste


Cook the spelt to packet instructions which normally means boil it for around 30 minutes; drain it and let it cool for around 20 minutes.


In the meanwhile mix the lemon zest, chorizo, feta, spring onion and butter beans in a big bowl and whisk together olive oil and lemon juice in a smaller bowl.


Mix the spelt into the big bowl, add the dressing and toss.
Finish seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.


Enjoy!