6 No-Waste Meal Planning Tips, According to a Chef
TikToker Alison Mountford is on a mission to help you use up what’s in your kitchen.
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We have a problem: About a third of all the food we produce goes to waste. That means more than 800 million people around the world don’t get enough to eat and nearly one trillion dollars are lost every year. Meanwhile, the wasted food that doesn’t get composted (the majority) emits methane, which is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Global food waste accounts for an estimated eight to 10 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions.
The good news is, individual consumers can make a difference. Almost half of the food waste in the United States comes from people buying too many groceries, letting food go bad and tossing old leftovers. The average American family of four spends $1,500 each year on food that ultimately isn’t eaten. So, if we adjust our grocery shopping and cooking habits, we can do the environment some good — and save money at the same time.
Chef Alison Mountford is here to guide you. She’s been working to reduce household food waste since 2016, and now her TikTok page (@itschefalison) teaches her 191,000 followers to meal plan, grocery shop and cook more thoughtfully. Mountford emphasizes meal planning to limit your shopping to the food you’re actually going to eat. Here are her six best tips for successful meal planning.
Check Your Schedule
Mountford’s number one tip is to think about what you have coming up in your week, whether that’s a tiring work schedule, family events or errands to run, and plan accordingly.
“Let’s say you have a late meeting on a Tuesday,” Mountford tells Food Network. “By the time you get home, you’re going to be burnt out, you’re going to be exhausted. That is not a day you should try a brand new recipe.”
Instead, plan a meal that you know you’ll be able to execute. Sometimes we like the idea of, say, a nice salad, but when we get home we’re actually craving mac and cheese. Do your best to anticipate what you’ll be in the mood to cook and eat — even if that means ordering a pizza instead of cooking at all. Mountford is all for ambitious culinary projects, but it’s probably best to save the homemade pasta, scratch phyllo dough and six-tier layer cake for the weekend.
Save Recipe Inspiration
It’s always hard to think of an answer when you get put on the spot. Mountford says that when you sit down to write a grocery list, sometimes you can’t come up with anything that sounds appetizing. So, she suggests keeping an ongoing list of foods and recipes that sound good to you when you come across them. That way, when you’re coming up with a meal plan, you have something to draw from.
Start in Your Kitchen
Physically standing in your kitchen makes it easier to take stock of the ingredients you already have.
“It’s really, really hard to remember what is sitting in your fridge,” Mountford says. “Just by starting your meal plan from standing in front of your fridge or pantry, you can generate ideas and start your recipes from something that you already have on hand.”
Keep Ingredients Moving
Speaking of what’s on hand, try not to let ingredients sit in your kitchen for too long. Mountford has noticed that when something’s been sitting in the back of our pantry or fridge for too long, we often get grossed out by it or lose interest in it and throw it away, even if it hasn’t gone bad.
Mountford finds it helpful to rotate through ingredients to keep them feeling exciting. So, it’s a good idea to anchor your meal plan around a couple of key ingredients that you want to use up. (Think of it as a Chopped challenge!)
Let Your Kids Help
By having your kids contribute to the household meal plan, you’ll cook meals that the whole family will look forward to eating. Mountford says that the conversation around what you’re in the mood for is a good place to start.
“I’ll ask my kids and one of them will think they’re saying something silly like, ‘I want chocolate chip pancakes for dinner,’ and then I’m like, ‘Great! That’s an awesome idea. What kind of side dishes do we need to make that a complete dinner?’” she says.
Learn From Your Mistakes
Making banana bread with that overripe banana isn’t going to save the world, but throwing it away isn’t going to destroy the planet, either. So, if you let something go bad, just throw it out, ask yourself why it went bad, then adjust your future meal plans. The most important thing is to keep working on those good habits.
“It just makes me so happy that people care,” Mountford says. “If you start a new habit and you’re not hitting your mark, it can be discouraging, and I want this to be something that people feel encouraged by. It’s okay to make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world, just keep trying.”
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