One of the biggest causes of food waste in households is cooking too much food. Understanding portion sizes and knowing how much food to prepare per meal based on your household size is essential. This will avoid having so many leftovers, you can’t use them up.

Before cooking check how many people will be eating. Refer to a recipe or the number of serves on the label of packaged foods for a guide on how much of that item you will need.

As we learned in Week 2, having meals in mind that use some common fresh ingredients can make it easier to adapt to changing situations. When less people than you expect are home for dinner, for example, the excess ingredients can be used in the next meal.

There are many on-line tools and recipes that can provide inspiration for meals that use ingredients you already have.

You can also experiment with substituting ingredients in a recipe with another ingredient you already have.

Have 2 or 3 go-to recipes which suit a wide range of ingredient substitutions e.g. use up leafy greens or other vegetables in fried rice, a stir fry or frittata. Have vegetable stock on hand to make a delicious soup using leftover vegetables and herbs.