Ever been told to not waste your food because there are people who don’t have any and go hungry?
Well, your mother is right.
South Africans waste more than nine million tons of perfectly good edible food a year while half of the population go to bed hungry every night.
I hate throwing food away, but the truth is, I am guilty of wasting several plates of food because I either cooked too much or the food went off.
Cooking for one can be tricky, but I now make a conscious effort to buy and cook only what I need.
Of all the habits I could have inherited from my mom, I got the worst one - I always cook too much rice or macaroni.
So I came up with a solution: I stopped buying rice and I force myself to reuse whatever macaroni is left. Al meen dit ek moet heel week macaroni eet.
Mac and cheese. Mac in a salad. Mac op brood as ek moet(thankfully it hasn’t gotten to that level yet).
When I was younger my ouma could never get me to touch an overripe banana. No matter how hard she tried, I was going nowhere near that vrot thing.
This is exactly how tons of fresh fruit and vegetables are wasted before it even make it to the store shelves.
Just because it looks funny we wouldn’t dare eat or even touch it. But a vrot-looking banana has many uses, as I’ve learnt.
In the words of award-winning celebrity chef Siba Mtongana, “there is life after waste” and there are many ways to jazz up your leftovers; all it takes is some planning and a little creativity. Try it!