So, British shoppers reckon they throw away nearly 10% of their weekly food shop, according to a recent poll by Sainsbury’s and WRAP, the anti-waste campaign group. The average household could save around £50 a month – that’s £12 billion a year across the country -  by avoiding food waste. Almost half of those questioned said they didn’t know how to store food safely, while more than two-thirds didn’t always make a shopping list (something I am guilty of). And shopping while hungry makes us impulse-buy products which we later throw away (my husband does this – drives me crazy).

I hate wasting food and am even a little embarassed about how I incorporate leftovers into the next day’s meal. My all-time worst example must be blitzing pork scratchings in the blender to make a crunchy topping for a shepherd’s pie. Actually that was quite nice UNLESS you knew what it was. I just told the kids it was my “secret ingredient”.

Other examples are:

- the boiled potatoes and bearnaise sauce that I mushed together to make a topping for my turkey and mushroom bake yesterday (with the few slices of leftover smoked sausage cubed into the bechemal sauce mix)

- today’s pasta bake with Piccalilli (unopened but the sell-by date was 2009) tossed through with cream, bacon, onion, mushrooms, cheese, garlic, herbes de provence etc. It was tangy but nice

- My marzipan and raspberry cake. I had a punnet of raspberries that were within their sell-by date but were not at their best (Waitrose! It’s not like them to sell slightly dodgy fruit). The marzipan was going cheap at Lidl so I made up a basic sponge mixture then poured half into a lined loaf tin, then scattered the berries over and topped with 1/2 the sliced marzipan. I smoothed over the rest of the cake mixture and topped with the rest of the thinly sliced marzipan. Bake at 160 degrees celsius for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. The marzipan crisped up to a lovely, crunchy, sugary topping – delish with creme fraiche or even plain yoghurt for breakfast.