Today I made rice pudding because I had loads of milk to use up and it seemed cold enough outside to consider a winter pudding. It's so easy and with semi skimmed milk a low fat dessert. Try adding a bay leaf for a change, it works very well.

Why are the British embarrassed about asking for a Doggy Bag at a restaurant?  Why do we still pretend that we are taking the leftover food home for the dog?

African pot cooking Caribbean food and the end of a very nice summer.

Tonight I made Pakora with a bag of out of date spinach which was just begining to wilt. Use any vegetables that you have shrivelling in the bottom of the fridge.  Just cut the vegetables into slices, or shred according to their density.  Remember that courgettes will cook a lot quicker than chunks of carrot. I have yet to find anyone who doesn't wolf down a plate of these delicious Indian snacks. Gram or Chickpea flour is easy to find, usually with gluten free products on the supermarket shelf, from wholefood shops or anywhere 'ethnic'.

Pakora are always popular in our house. Very often I make them with chard as I have it growing in the garden. Pakora are one of those snacks that you can whisk up quickly if people turn up for happy hour and you want something hot and crispy to nibble on.

Grow local, buy local, eat local. The thirty mile food challenge is encouraging us to 'consume only food and drink grown, raised, caught, produced and/or processed  within a 30-mile radius of wherever you live throughout September 2013. The 30 miles is ‘as the crow flies’...that’s a pretty big area: in fact it gives you nearly 3,000 square miles to choose from!'

We don't have to go that far... I was trying to run over a muntjac down my road for nearly two years.

Leftover French bread turned into a pizza for lunch today.  Did you know that if you run a stale baguette under the cold tap for a second and then place it in a hot oven for 5 or 10 minutes it's nearly as good as new?

Today for Zero Waste Week I used up all the leftover pieces of cheese in my fridge.  I made Potted Cheese. It's the perfect recipe to use any type of stale cheese and is delicious on toast or with baked potatoes.  It keeps for a week in the fridge. And don't throw away the milk can, wash it out and keep it to bake a mini fruit cake at Christmas.

• empty tin
•  

• Leftover cheese
• Soften onion and add evaporated milk
• Grated cheese
• Mix well
•  

A perfect way to use up all those leftover pieces of cheese in your fridge. All types of cheese can be used. It will keep for a week in the fridge and is a good vegetarian recipe.

Ingredients

225g grated cheese ( chop up cheeses that are hard to grate i.e Brie/Camembert

170g (small tin) evaporated milk

1 very small onion or 3 spring onions finely diced

1 tsp chopped chives

pinch of mustard powder

pepper

a little oil or butter for fying the onion

Method

Heat a small knob of butter or splash of oil in a saucepan and soften the chopped onion

Pour in the evaporated milk

Add the grated cheese, mustard powder and a little ground pepper

Stir well until the cheese has melted

Stir in the chopped chives

Pour into ramekins and leave to set in the fridge

Eat spread on toast or with a baked potato

This week is Zero Waste Week and we are being encouraged to reduce food waste, use up leftovers, resist BOGOF offers, reduce portion size and DON'T WASTE FOOD. So to my surprise, my daughter returned from Jamie Oliver's Feastival today with a car load of green coconuts that had been dumped by one of the food traders. We have got over two litres of coconut water and that was just one box.  And there were ten of them...