A Waste of Space

I haven’t written anything for weeks because I haven’t cooked anything for weeks beyond the narrowest repertoire of pork shoulder steaks, rice and chicken and rice. I feel like all my meals are one drizzle of gravy away from being confused with what people feed the dog.

My body which isn’t good with fruit or veg at the best of times appears to have completely and utterly rebelled and is refusing to let me consume anything green or leafy at all without throwing an epic tantrum. I’m at the stage where I’m dreaming of crunchy kale and lightly steamed broccoli.

The problem is that I haven’t stopped buying vegetables or trying to eat them because I love them more than they love me. It leads to something I’m almost ashamed to admit in our current climate: not only do I not green juice, my diet is paler than most people’s complexion in early February, but I also throw food out all the time right now.

This feels akin to saying I also tap dance on rescue puppies or shout at sleeping babies in the street. The world is full of articles and initiatives about reducing food waste and I seem to be chucking food out left right and centre.

It’s particularly galling as I live on a really tight budget and literally can’t afford to be throwing money away, but I also can’t face not buying fresh food because it feels like not trying or being defeated by dietary issues. I can’t decide if I’m more governed by my own tightness or bloody mindedness.

I slightly miss having flatmates who would just steal all your food and then lie to you that they had in this situation. (I lived with a guy like this for several years and it drove me and my other flatmate so mad, we once took a solitary but overlapping bite out of the Nando’s he’d brought home and then convinced him he’d done it himself when he was drunk as revenge for his thieving ways…)

Slightly less pettily and a lot more environmentally friendly, I’ve just signed up to the new Olio app which has launched around London. You take a photo of what you’ve got a surplus of and a description and it links you up with someone who wants half a bag of dried beans and some coriander for example. It’s like Tinder for groceries.

I’m quite excited to have solved 90% of my problem while being glued to my phone as per, but now all I’ve got to do is tackle my other bad habit of leaving things to go off in my depths of my fridge. If anyone actually wants a bag of yellowing Brussel sprouts, I don’t want to meet them…