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Cymraeg

Get waste aware to cut the cost of Christmas dinner!

‘What could you do with an extra £50 this Christmas?’

Every month, families across Wales are throwing away up to £50 worth of good food and drink. When it comes to Christmas, that’s a lot of turkey, trimmings and treats!

Making the most of our food and saving money this Christmas doesn’t mean cutting down on the indulgence and fun. If anything, having a well planned Christmas will leave us with more money in our purses and more time to enjoy ourselves.

Christmas Turkey

So what’s the secret? The Love Food Hate Waste campaign has some suggestions….

It pays to plan

Christmas is probably the one time of year when even the most ‘last minute’ of us will sit down, ponder over who is coming to stay and make some sort of plan.

Planning your meals in advance will save you time, and ensure you always have something to feed the hungry hordes.

Take a look in your cupboards, fridge and freezer and make note of what foods you already have, this will help you to avoid doubling up when hitting the shops.

Know your dates

As well as keeping up with all the social dates in your diary, don’t forget to keep an eye on the dates in your fridge too.

Use up foods with the shortest dates first, and when shopping check to see if fresh foods can be frozen in case you don’t get round to eating them over the festivities.

Best before dates are for quality, so you can eat these foods after this date, they just may no longer be at their best – eggs are the exception. Use by dates are for safety, you can eat or freeze foods right up to the end of the use by date.

Lovely leftovers

Leftovers of bubble and squeak and cold turkey sandwiches are a Boxing Day tradition.

This year spice things up with a Christmas curry; try the turkey and chickpea coconut curry on lovefoodhatewaste.com and use up those leftover veggies with the mixed vegetable curry.

Or transform your Christmas panettone into a lovely bread and butter pudding and your leftover Christmas pudding into a luxurious ice cream.

Perfect portions

Catering for family and friends, not to mention the unexpected guests, often leave’s us unsure of how much to cook.

The Christmas dinner portion calculator and party portions calculator on lovefoodhatewaste.com, remove the guess work by suggesting how much to cook.

Savvy storage

Simple tips on storing our foods over the festive period can help us make the most of them, and make them last into the New Year.

Ensure your vegetables are at their best for the main meal by keeping them in the fridge; most vegetables will stay fresher for longer stored in the fridge in the pack or bag they came in.

Most of our Christmas leftovers will keep for up to two days well wrapped in the fridge, or pop them in the freezer to have on a chilly January evening.

There are loads of Christmas and Party recipe ideas – see below.

Recipes

Christmas Leftovers