Speaker 1: Ronnie Kahan does not like to hear about people throwing
Speaker 1: away their lettuce. If you compost lettters, it takes about
Speaker 1: two weeks to decompose. If you throw it in the bin,
Speaker 1: you can bump that number up to twenty five I
Speaker 1: mean sorry, twenty five years. That is as the founder
Speaker 1: of food rescue charity OZ Harvest, Runnie is an expert
Speaker 1: on preventing food waste on a massive scale. But what
Speaker 1: about on the small scale? Yep, she can help with
Speaker 1: that too. So what should you do with that soggy
Speaker 1: letters and wrinkley tomato that's sitting in your fridge right now?
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amatha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy in Ventium. And
Speaker 1: this is how I work a show about how to
Speaker 1: help you do your best work. On today is my
Speaker 1: Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview from
Speaker 1: the past and I pick out my favorite tip from
Speaker 1: the interview. In today's show, I speak with Ronnie Kahan.
Speaker 1: And before I logged on for my interview with Ronnie,
Speaker 1: I was looking at my fridge and saw that I
Speaker 1: had some very ordinary looking lettuce and some cherry tomatoes.
Speaker 1: That have seen better days. So I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what I should be doing with the contents of my
Speaker 1: fridge to help prevent waste.
Speaker 2: So with your lettuce, do you have an onion? By
Speaker 2: any chance?
Speaker 1: I can't eat onion. It doesn't agree with me.
Speaker 2: Not a problem. Take your lettuce, were in a pot
Speaker 2: with some stock, aha and hudsh it up? If you
Speaker 2: had a potato, if you had any other veggies other
Speaker 2: than the cucumber, we won't put the cucumber in there.
Speaker 2: I've got some carrots, carrots beautiful, Throw them in there
Speaker 2: because you will have beautiful soup. Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Oh give me some other tips that okay, common things
Speaker 1: that people would normally throw out, But what can we
Speaker 1: do to rescue them?
Speaker 2: Well, lettuce is the first thing that everybody throws out,
Speaker 2: because it sits in the bottom of the fridge till
Speaker 2: it goes sludgie, and then we forget about it, and
Speaker 2: then it's too late to do anything, and then we
Speaker 2: kind of throw it in the bin, and we don't
Speaker 2: even put it into compost. Do you know that if
Speaker 2: you throw a lettuce in the bin, it will take
Speaker 2: twenty five years to decompose. Why put it in compost.
Speaker 2: It'll take two weeks.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: Wow, you tell me if you're ever going to throw
Speaker 2: a lettuce away again into the bin.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to do that, Ronnie, never ever.
Speaker 2: Good. So don't end buy the two for one specials
Speaker 2: if you think you might not use you both your
Speaker 2: lettuces unless you're going to make lettuce soup.
Speaker 1: Wow? What else? What else can I be doing? So?
Speaker 2: Tomatoes when they go a little funny, are divine grilled.
Speaker 2: You can add them to free tata with your cucum.
Speaker 3: If you think they're a little soft, all you have
Speaker 3: to do is you can cut them into rounds, or
Speaker 3: you can slice them and put them into a little
Speaker 3: bit of vinegar, water, pickles, pickling peppers, bay leaves and
Speaker 3: pickle them.
Speaker 2: These things are not hard to do. I'm sitting with
Speaker 2: a couple of apples that look a little soft. As
Speaker 2: soon as I get off this call, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to chop them up, put them with some sultanas, cinnamon stick,
Speaker 2: a little bit of water, cook them up, and I
Speaker 2: have the most beautiful stewed apples.
Speaker 1: Wow. What are some other things that you find are
Speaker 1: pretty common in households that get thrown out? When you
Speaker 1: could be doing something pretty amazing with them.
Speaker 2: Bread's another big one that we throw out. It's obvious
Speaker 2: that you could make bread and butter pudding, but you
Speaker 2: could use it for French toast. You can freeze bread beautiful.
Speaker 2: So if you buy a loaf of bread and you
Speaker 2: think you're not going to use it all, slice it.
Speaker 2: Put half of that bread in the freezer, don't buy
Speaker 2: the next two days later, use what's in your freezer.
Speaker 2: You know, our freezer is like the pause button. We're
Speaker 2: not using our freezers. Well enough.
Speaker 1: I like that. How about shopping, Like, what should I
Speaker 1: be thinking about when I'm at a supermarket or at
Speaker 1: the paran markets where I do a lot of my
Speaker 1: shopping and I'm buying produce. What needs to be going
Speaker 1: on in my head?
Speaker 2: The most important thing is nothing should be going on
Speaker 2: in your head because you should have a list in
Speaker 2: your hand, because before you go shopping, you want to
Speaker 2: check your fridge, you want to check your pantry, and
Speaker 2: you want to make a list. It's going to save
Speaker 2: your money and you're only going to buy what you need,
Speaker 2: which you can then use within the next few days.
Speaker 2: So really, we've got this beautiful mantra, Look by cook store,
Speaker 2: look what's in your fridge and pantry. Buy what you need,
Speaker 2: store it properly. So for example, if you've bought too
Speaker 2: many herbs, freeze, if you've bought too much, or you
Speaker 2: think you're not going to use it, allocate and work
Speaker 2: out how but store it and then cook it and
Speaker 2: eat it and of course use the leftovers.
Speaker 1: So simple like how many times a week would you
Speaker 1: be doing food shopping?
Speaker 2: So I don't do big shops. I do little shops.
Speaker 2: I buy what I need. I'd rather go past the
Speaker 2: organic shop or at my market.
Speaker 1: I now do.
Speaker 2: Were very fortunate in New South Wales because US Harvest
Speaker 2: does a fruit and vege box, so I get my
Speaker 2: fruit and vege once a week from ours Harvest, so
Speaker 2: it's veggies with a cause, and I make that last
Speaker 2: through the week. I try not to buy other things
Speaker 2: through the week. My supermarket shopping. I buy very little
Speaker 2: processed food. I mainly buy fresh, so I don't do
Speaker 2: big supermarket shops. And I'd rather go and buy my
Speaker 2: milk every few days if I'm I use almond milk
Speaker 2: or you know, I buy my eggs fresh from the
Speaker 2: market once a week, so I'm really try not to
Speaker 2: do a lot of shopping. If I'm going to buy
Speaker 2: a fish, I'll buy it on.
Speaker 1: The day for the day I love that, so.
Speaker 2: Fresh, local and as little as possible, and stretch it
Speaker 2: as far as possible.
Speaker 1: I hope for you are our feeling inspired to whip
Speaker 1: up some delicious food with what's currently sitting in your fridge.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for more tips to improve the
Speaker 1: way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter
Speaker 1: that contains three call things that I've discovered that help
Speaker 1: me work better, which rained from interesting research findings to
Speaker 1: gadgets and software that I'm loving. You can sign up
Speaker 1: for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how I Work
Speaker 1: dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventium with
Speaker 1: production support from dead Set Studios. And thank you to
Speaker 1: mattin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode
Speaker 1: and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.