Aware that anyone who read my post yesterday, would well be within their rights to consider me a wanton food waster, I decided to put the record straight. I started by doing some good old fashioned research and typed "food wastage" into google. One site informed me that Canada wastes the equivalent of $3.5 billion of food a year. (Quite a lot of this is edible and some is still in its original packaging) My native UK, however, is far worse. $15.5 billion a year! The site listed some statistics informing that (per day), approximately 222,000 loaves of bread are wasted, 1.6million bananas and 5, 500 chickens.
So, faced with the prospect of adding to these horrible numbers, I decided to clean out my fridge and use as much of the produce as I could. Now, I have been preserving and making chutney, jam etc. for a while, but I also have the added stupidity of buying things I don't know what to do with. After buying the salmon on Monday and going to our friends to pilfer their wild fennel supply, I noticed a Vietnamese supermarket I hadn't seen before. Of course, we had to take a look. Some items, such as cheap Thai brand coconut milk and curry pastes were a great find, however, I have a tendency to fill my cart with other "treasures", just because they look exotic and exciting. So, 3 large bags of unknown herbs went into the freezer. This is not a good idea. The freezing process makes the herbs extract too much water and they go mushy. Still, I am determined to salvage and use them, so have laid them onto tea towels to dry.
So, I have a bag full of fennel. A bag full of basil. A bowl of tomatillos and some Vietnamese herbs, which after some research turned out to be: Sawtooth coriander, Vietnamese mint and pepper leaves. Here is the plan:
1. The fennel will be frozen as it's going to be used with fish, baked or for sauces, so only the taste is required.
2. The basil will be used in 4 ways.
a) Some has been made into basil oil.
b) Some will be minced and made into ice cubes for soups, tomato sauce, etc.
c) Some will be used for my lunch
d) Some will be used in our Vietnamese dinner tonight.
3. The tomatillos will be used to make a salsa for a friend's party on Saturday.
4. The Vietnamese herbs will be used in dinner tonight.
a) The pepper leaves will be wrapped around ground pork flavoured with lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and dipped into sweet chili sauce.
b) The other herbs will be used in 'Char grilled tender beef skewers', recipe from 'The songs of Sapa' by Luke Nguyen. This is the first time I have used this book!, so later I will give a review.
b) The other herbs will be used in 'Char grilled tender beef skewers', recipe from 'The songs of Sapa' by Luke Nguyen. This is the first time I have used this book!, so later I will give a review.
Impulse buying: Japanese pickles sit in my fridge for years. 
So, some lessons:
1. Don't buy unfamiliar fresh produce unless you have time to research and use it the same day.
2. Don't throw herbs into the freezer unless you research their suitability.
3. Stop buying things with no particular recipe in mind. (Avoid the "I'll use them some way" attitude).
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