THERE is nothing I like more than rooting about in the fridge to clear out the leftovers and transform a few scrappy bits and pieces into something delicious.
But I have to work fast and surreptitiously. Because, no matter how many times I tell the boys that ‘best before’ dates aren’t all that important and ‘sell by’ dates are only there to help shop assistants rotate their stock more efficiently, they don’t believe me.
“If something smells OK that’s because it usually is,” I tell them, although I admit you do have to be more careful with ‘use by’ dates. But, since most manufacturers work within a margin of safety, most things are usually fine for a few days afterwards: “And thoroughly cooking any product will destroy most bacteria anyway.”
The boys don’t buy this. Ever since Albert watched an item on TV about people falling ill after eating contaminated chicken he likes to check the dates on foodstuffs before he eats. So I have resorted to hiding the packets.
Still, they all eye me up suspiciously if I serve them anything they suspect is thirty seconds or more beyond its ‘best before’ date.
Under sufferance, they will take one or two mouthfuls, but then swear it tastes awful and smells vile, before starting to gag and refusing to eat any more.
You would think I was trying to poison them. But what they don’t realise is I have been doing this for years, and not one of them has come down with food poisoning yet.
The fact that one third of the groceries we buy in the UK never get eaten, with the average family throwing away £700 worth of perfectly good food every year is justification enough, I feel, for my minor deception.
While more than 45% of all our fruit and vegetables go to waste, I throw caution to the wind and cut off the mouldy bits before using the rest. Once the carrots are cooked or the apples are put in a fruit salad or crumble, no-one ever notices.
Growing up in Ireland, we used buttermilk, which is basically soured milk, for cooking. So when our milk goes off I have to pretend I’m pouring it down the sink before using it to make pancakes, which always seem to taste better than those made with fresh milk.
Stale bread is fine toasted, or used for breadcrumbs or bread and butter pudding. Mashed potato leftover from sausage and mash can be kept in the fridge and used to top a cottage pie later in the week.
I don’t worry about using an old jar of jam or Branston Pickle I’ve discovered at the back of the shelf, because anything highly sugary or salty is full of preservatives. Canned food, too is very low risk.
I often tell the boys about the man from Manchester who celebrated his golden wedding anniversary ten years ago by eating a 50-year-old tin of Buxted chicken he and his wife had received in a hamper on their wedding day.
Experts at the time were quoted as saying that tinned food, if sealed and stored correctly ‘can last indefinitely.’
There have also been reports of canned food more than 100 years old found in sunken ships, which scientists tested and found ‘biologically safe to eat’. And when some 5,000 year old honey was discovered in Egypt, it was declared perfectly edible and harmless.
In that context, the leftovers I served the boys up last night were positively youthful. Having chopped up and fried two chicken breasts that were two days over their ‘use by’ date and still looked and smelt fine, I sliced up and added some leftover cooked sausages that had been in the fridge for about five days.
After throwing in a few bacon pieces and adding tomato sauce, I served it up with pasta and grated cheese from the good bit of a block of hard cheddar that had started to go mouldy.
It may have been a poor man’s version of chicken and chorizo and it wouldn’t have won any prizes on Master Chef, but two of the boys actually asked for more.
And creating something from the sort of odds and ends that could so easily have ended up among the 1.3billion tonnes of food that goes to waste every year does give me a smug sense of satisfaction.
 
IT was Albert’s school sports day last week and parents were invited. “Would you like me to come along and watch you?” I asked. He looked horrified. “If you do, I will hate you forever,” he said. I took that as a ‘No’.