Did you hear me on Jim Davies morning show on BBC Radio Leicester? I was invited to talk easy eco, green cooking tips with Jim and a listener, Judith, who only eats vegetables she has grown in her garden, to help keep her grocery bills down.

Talking about vegetables and getting the most out of our food, always brings us round to leftovers – something I absolutely love to talk about (and eat!). But as Jim pointed out, it’s not always easy to eat fresh produce in time, plus conjuring up a meal from leftovers can sometimes leave us scratching our heads.

So to help us all get the most out of our food, whilst saving time, money, waste and energy, I have put together my top 5 products, plus I’ve posted links to some fabulous websites that’ll get you out of those leftover menu dilemmas.

1. Whirlpool WBC 3546 A+ NFCW Frost Free Fridge Freezer 6th Sense White
- your food storage best friend. Perfect for lengthening food storage times and ideal when batch cooking

2. Lock & Lock Food Storage Set 7 Piece
- not only are these fantastic for bulk cooking, they are perfect for keeping the portions right – no need to over cook, or over eat!

3. 3 Tier Stainless Steel Multi Steamer Pan
- fantastic for keeping in the nutrients in your food, plus they use less energy (3 vegetables can be cooked simultaneously on one ring)

4. Storage labels – ideal for keeping track on how long your food has been stored, plus they also show you when it has to be eaten by. No guessing or waste

5. FOOD STORAGE BAGS-POTATO-VEGETABLES- KEEP FOOD FRESH
- fruit and vegetable storage bags keep food fresher for longer, ensuring you have plenty of time to eat them up.

For some brilliantly practical leftover recipes, visit:

www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Want to know what vegetables are in season, check out:

www.eatseasonably.co.uk

Have lots of ’spare’ land or want to find an allotment, visit:

www.landshare.net

I’d love to hear what your favourite easy eco cooking/storge saviours are, plus how do you get the most from your food. Do leave your comments below.

Sponsored post

After watching the fabulous Big Fish Fight week on Channel 4 recently, I, like the 500,000 people who are backing Hugh Fearnley-Whittinghstall’s campaign, have vowed to eat a wider range of fish.

The programme and campaign, if you didn’t see it, (to see a trailer, click through to my previous blog post Channel 4: Hugh’s Big Fish Fight – starts tonight) aimed to expose the devasting practice of fishing by quota, whereby vast quantities of fish get thrown overboard because they do not meet the criteria or quotas set by Europe’s common fisheries policy or because they have no market value. The campaign also aimed to encourage people to eat a wider range of fish to give our over-fished favourites a chance to be replenished.

But before we all rush out and buy a plethora of unsung heroes, it is vital that we give a little thought to how our fish is stored, processed and ultimately used at home. What we can’t afford to do, in my opinion, is to indiscriminately buy this wonderful fish, only to store it insufficiently, or prepare too much and end up throwing it away. And that’s why I say, for fresh fish buy frozen.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a myth that frozen food is inferior in quality to fresh, but this is often not the case. In fact with fish, it is the opposite. Frozen-at-sea fish are caught at the peak of their quality and frozen within 4 hours, meaning that it is at it’s freshest, tastiest and has all of it’s nutrients and goodness ‘locked in’.

Unless you live by a local harbour, any fresh fish that you buy from a supermarket or similar can be up to 14 days old. This is because fresh fish can spend a long time in the food distribution chain before it reaches your supermarket counter. In some cases it can be up to 10 days old before it’s even reached the harbour!

Another great advantage of buying frozen fish is that it is convenient – always a huge plus when you are a busy mum like me. Not only does frozen save you time, but because you only need to cook what you need when you need it, there is limited or no wastage at all too. With food prices continuing to rise, it is vital that we get the most from our food and again frozen fish ticks the box, it is less expensive than fresh (did you know that frozen fish and seafood can be up to 25% cheaper than fresh) plus it has a longer storage life – freezing, the most natural form of preserving – just add frozen water!

So taking all of the above on board (excuse the pun) I have decided to cast my net (there I go again) and introduce some new fishy flavours to my family.

As I am a NewIceAge mumbassador, I have been kindly sent a voucher from the wonderful people at TheNewIceAge.com and The Fish Society, to try a variety of whitefish, shellfish and crustaceans from their incredible online store www.thefishsociety.co.uk.

Over the next couple of blogs, I will be sharing with you my thoughts on the fantastic frozen fish treats that I have chosen, showing you how simple they are to cook and how delicious we all found them and why as the Queen of Easy Green™, I back frozen fish for saving time, money and waste.

I will also be giving you an opportunity to discover some new fish favourites yourself, as The Fish Society have kindly agreed to offer you, my readers, a £10 discount with orders over £65 (when visiting their website, just use the code ICEAGE).

So pop back soon to find out how I got on and land yourself a treasure trove of frozen fish goodness.

Keen to make sure I spread the Queen of Easy Green message far and wide, I am proud to announce that I am now writing a monthly eco, green column for my home town newspaper, The Boston Standard.

As New Year’s resolutions are still (hopefully) in the forefront of most people’s mind, my first column shows you how easy and green, it can be to save money whilst losing weight.

To find out more, either see the article below, or visit www.bostonstandard.co.uk.

Please feel free to add your own ideas and hopefully I’ll be able to include them in my next column.

Wondering how to make ends meet? Want to get your grocery costs down but keep the quality high? Menu4Mums, the online family meal planners, have given us these top tips to help you save on your grocery shop. Why not challenge yourself to see how much you can save?

Tip 1: Plan your meals. Look online at supermarket offers (or look at the Menus4Mums Bargain Spotting page) and build meals around these ingredients. Plan a suitable meal for each day with a good balance of protein (eg meats, pulses), carbohydrates (eg potatoes, rice, pasta), and vegetables. See what needs using up in your freezer or fridge. Think about using up leftovers too. And try to include an interesting variety of tastes and textures. Then write your shopping list.

Tip 2: Never shop on an empty stomach. If you do, you just know you’ll end up at the checkout with a trolley brimming with cake, crisps, and chocolate – and a huge grocery bill to boot! Instead, if you are feeling a bit peckish, have a banana or a quick snack. It could save you a lot of money.

Tip 3: Taste test lower range products. We don’t mean suddenly going from premium brands to the most basic products. But if you give some of the middle range brands a try, the chances are you won’t notice a difference. Look at the health data on the packaging too – some lower range foods are actually healthier than the premium varieties.

Tip 4: Give the supermarket a miss sometimes. Try buying your meat at your local butcher – you’re likely to be impressed by the quality. Plus if you want just 3 chicken breasts, you don’t have to fork out for a pack of 4 so you only end up paying for what you need. Seasonal fruit and veg is often cheaper at your local market or farmer’s market, and you could turn it into a trip out with the family. Or check out your local farm shop for quality, local, seasonal produce.

Menus4Mums help busy parents ditch the takeaways and ready meals and serve up tasty, healthy food for their families, saving them time and money in the kitchen. Find out more at www.menus4mums.co.uk.

I am so excited to announce, that after months of planning and anticipation, the Queen of Easy Green™ website  www.queenofeasygreen.co.uk is launching today.

As the Queen of Easy Green™ my mission is to help busy households save time, money and waste in the home, effortlessly.

Sharing my fun, practical, money-saving tips and advice, I will help you get the most value from your food, time and money, whilst also reducing unnecessary waste.

‘Rising food prices tops consumers worries, with 50% of consumers anticipating higher food bills in the coming year … with almost 70% of consumers searching for ways to save money when food shopping.’ (Mintel, 2010)

Rather than preach unrealistic, austere budgeting measures, the Queen of Easy Green™ is all about effortless, opportunistic money-saving tactics, savvy tips, ‘easy to be eco’ products all delivered in a down-to-earth practical manner from a fellow busy mum’s perspective.

To help us all live an easier, greener lifestyle, as the Queen of Easy Green™ my tips and advice include topics such as:

• Savvy food shopping, eating local, frozen food, eat seasonally
• Grow, make and pick your own
• Econvenient food preparation and storage
• New, innovative time and waste saving gadgets and gizmos
• Quick, easy family recipes – make once – love twice, loving your leftovers, storecupboard saviours
• Energy saving, ethical, environmentally-friendly products
• Simple ways to reduce, reuse and recycle

The Queen of Easy Green™ is not about being penny-pinching, it’s about being money wise. With any extra money saved, I believe we should treat ourselves – why not, life’s about having fun with our friends and family – now what could be a better incentive than that?

To keep up with the last eco-easy news, advice and hot products, pop over to www.queenofeasygreen.co.uk and join in the conversation, or just let me what you think about my new site. With a little bit of savvy saving and canny know-how, together we can make 2011 our easiest, greenest yet.

See you there,

Lyndsey

Fabulous news, as the Queen of Easy Green™ I have been invited to join the At Home magazine and every fortnight, commencing January 2011, I will be sharing my exclusive easy eco tips and advice, to help us all save time, money and waste and live a greener life.

Keeping it seasonal, my first guest blog post is all about trimming our waste. But I don’t just mean our food waste, I mean our waist-line too. I’ve got some fantastic ideas that’ll help you lose lbs but save £’s at the same time. To find out how, just pop over to www.athomemagazine.co.uk. And don’t forget to leave a comment, I’d love to hear what ideas you have for your new year – waste-watching!

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by Energyrethinking.com asking me if I’d like to guest blog for them.

energyrethinking is a joint initiative with Shell, The Energy Saving Trust, IoD, Michelin and Tomorrow’s Company and is all about finding ways to use energy better.

Sharing my love for easy eco ways to help us all save money, reduce waste and use less energy, of course, I jumped at the chance. Here is my first guest blog post for them,

http://www.energyrethinking.org/earth-mummy

Don’t forget to keep popping over in the New Year too,  you’ll find loads of great energy saving information, as well as some more tips from me.

TTFN

Lyndsey

p.s. I have an exciting announcement to make very soon – pop back shortly to find out what it is.

Eco easy is the trend for 2011 and if you, like me, want to ‘green-up‘ your life, but don’t want to comprise on durability and quality,  the good news is that there is an ever-growing choice of stylish, superior products out there – more of which I will be sharing with you over the coming months.

In the meantime, fellow eco-lover and guest blogger, Jillian Gile, shares her favourites here:-

Gifts and Gadgets to Make Your Kitchen Smarter

The best gifts are those you tailor to the recipient. So what do you get for someone who loves to cook? Chances are, they already have the fanciest gadgets, so why not try for something fun? These kitchen gadgets are useful, fun, and will also help reduce waste in the kitchen, which makes your gift three times better.

Bamboo Anything

Bamboo is quickly becoming one of the most popular woods for kitchen gear (as well as flooring, clothing, etc). Bamboo grows quickly, so it’s the ultimate renewable resource.  Even better – bamboo products are gorgeous enough to give as gifts. Bed, Bath & Beyond has a line of bamboo cutting boards, salad bowls, salad servers, utensils, and more.

Green Bags

If the cook on your gift list loves to work with fresh produce, Green Bags might be the perfect gift. These bags store fruits and vegetables just like any other zip-top plastic baggy, but are created from a material that absorbs the ethylene gas – the gas that makes produce rot. You can get green bags from the company website, EvertFresh.com. The pack of three would make a great stocking stuffer.

Canvas Shopping Tote

If you love to cook, you also have to learn to love the grocery store. To get the best produce and other fresh products, you may even have to make multiple trips a week. Make your cook’s shopping life a little easier by getting them reusable canvas shopping tote bags. There are hundreds of varieties available, so you can even customize the bag to fit their interests. You can find these bags almost everywhere, but you can stop here first.

Apartment Compost Bin

Cooking scraps are an inevitable part of life, but there’s no reason to throw them in the trash and add to the world’s landfills. For cooks who don’t have a lot of space, and who you know would appreciate it, try an apartment-sized compost bin. As they usually involve creepy-crawlies like worms or grubs, you might want to check first to see how receptive they might be to the idea. Attractive models are available for sale, like this one at Amazon.com.

Jillian Gile lives in Washington State, where she acts as an amateur cook and freelance writer. She is a guest writer for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on accredited online colleges for Guide to Online Schools.

With Christmas nearly upon us, our focus more than ever is on food, as well as ways to make our money go further. To show us how we can all be more energy efficient and save money in the kitchen, please welcome our guest blogger Natalia Gameson editor of  the money and energy saving website, energyrethinking.org.

Seasonal Food

With food price rises on the horizon, going greener in the kitchen this winter could be a key way to take back control of your finances. There are three main methods of saving money in the kitchen: cutting down your food bills by eating produce that’s in season; cutting down on your food waste; and cutting down on your gas and electricity use. energyrethinking.org, the energy saving community, has put together the following tips to help you make a start.

Eating seasonally
Eating food that’s in season, is a well-known money saver – it’s cheaper to buy items that have been grown in the UK and are readily available, rather than forking out a small fortune for a punnet of strawberries in February, for example. Squashes, celeriac, apples, pears, coriander, mint and scallops are all currently in season. If you want to eat seasonally but are not sure where to begin, www.eattheseasons.co.uk, has lots of helpful advice and recipe ideas.

Our new seasonal food video featuring TV presenter, Vicki Butler-Henderson, also has plenty of easy-to-follow tips. The video follows Vicki as she visits a food exhibition to gather tips on cooking a low-cost meal for friends in an energy efficient way.

Food waste
Each year, we throw away an estimated 8.3 million tonnes of food, according to WRAP. A truly astonishing figure considering food costs are rising. But if you’re throwing away too much food, it’s easy to stop by making a few simple changes.

Firstly, plan your meals at the beginning of each week, so that when you go to the supermarket, you’ll know exactly what you need to buy, and exactly what you already have in your fridge at home.

If you’ve cooked too much food, put it in a Tupperware box and take it into work the next day as your lunch. For more advice on using up leftovers, see www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes. (don’t forget your Count On It labels to help you keep track – Lyndsey)

Cut your energy use
Make sure your appliances are in good working order. If the rubber seals around your oven door are broken, for example, your oven may not be as well insulated, and could be using up to 50% more energy than usual to maintain the oven’s temperature.

When cooking food in the oven, avoid the temptation to keep checking on it– every time you open the oven door, precious heat escapes.

Similarly, when you are using the hob make sure the ring matches the size of the pan you’re using – heating a tiny pan on the biggest ring will waste energy you don’t need to use.

Defrost food overnight in your fridge rather than using the microwave. This will help your food to stay at the right temperature – without costing you anything.

For more tips on saving energy in the kitchen, check out our tips at www.energyrethinking.org/cooking.

Do you have any money or energy saving tips in the kitchen? We’d love to hear them at energyrethinking.org/user-tips

A little while ago I saw a product that I wished I’d had when my little chaps, were babies, the Koo-di ‘Fridge to go’.

The reason I wanted to trial the product was because when I used to go on day trips with my boys, I’d always find that any expressed or bottled milk that I’d took with me always seemed to ‘warm up’ quicker than I had expected. On several occasions, I threw it away – which is absolutely sickening, considering how long it’d taken to express – but I just didn’t want to risk it. Yet again more unnecessary and expensive waste, which could have been avoided.

However, the Fridge-to-go does away with this problem, as it’s patented chilling technology means that it works like a refrigerator and can keep food and drink cooled and safe to eat for up to 12 hours.

Although it looks like a regular cool-bag, the Fridge-to-go uses ice packs which are zipped within the lining of the bag and surround the contents in ice-cold temperatures, which take longer to cool down than ordinary ice blocks AND they don’t leave your food and bottles soggy and wet.

So rather than take Koo-di’s word for it, I decided to test it out for myself, but instead of bottles of milk and weaning foods, I opted for icecream – to see if it was just as good as it claimed. Here’s how it went:-

To test the Fridge-to-go I put a couple of scoops of icecream in a glass and popped it inside, at the same time, I put another glass of icecream in a regular cool bag and set the stop watch running.

Two hours later, I checked on both of the glasses of icecream, in the regular cool bag I found a glass of melted icecream at room temperature. To my surprise in the Fridge-to-go, I found the icecream was still ‘firm to touch’, so I decided to leave it a little longer. Three hours later, I checked again and was amazed that although the icecream had melted, it was still very cold.

The ‘Fridge-to-go’ had completely wiped the floor with the regular cool bag and had surpassed my expectations with it’s ‘refrigerator-like’ capabilities.

So, although summer is a long way away, if you’re looking for something to give you peace of mind with your babies food, I’d definitely consider trying the ‘Fridge-to-go’.

Available in two sizes, Koo-di Fridge-to-go (two bottles) is £14.99 and the Maxi is £19.99, to find out more visit their website www.koo-di.co.uk