Just Because You Can...

 ...It Doesn't Mean you SHOULD

I mean, those pancakes would probably have tasted just as good without the banana skins, as would Nigella's Curry. Putting the skins in the foodwaste bin or on the compost heap means they are still used up.

Bob had some cheese for his birthday. He carefully peeled off the wax coating, and enjoyed the cheese with crackers. But he said it was a shame nothing could be done with the wax. We discussed using it for waxwraps. It it obviously food-safe quality. Perhaps if I grated it, I could iron it onto a cotton square. It didn't want to grate. I left it 

in the freezer overnight, then put the hardened pieces in the processor. The ramekin of granules sat on the side in the kitchen for a week. Then I noticed a couple had escaped and stained my teatowel. I wasn't sure a waxwrap which might leave red stains on food was a good idea. Some research suggested that this is paraffin wax, which may take centuries to degrade and should not go into the compost heap or food waste bin. I threw the stuff away in the regular bin. [Babybel red coating is edible, apparently. Ugh!]

The "I can, but should I?" question came up again when one of my pastry cutters broke. A new one would not be expensive, and I can afford it - but is it needed? I have dozens of cutters of different shapes and sizes, and I don't think my cooking will suffer from the loss of this one. No, it won't be replaced.

Zero Waste is a good thing to aim for - but if you can only stop something going straight to food waste by adding a lot of other ingredients perhaps you should reconsider

Having a variety of household gadgets may appear a good idea, and many items can be bought very cheaply - but that doesn't mean you should fill your drawers with bits of kits only used once in a blue moon. 

By the way, have you watched BakeOff? [no spoilers ahead] We haven't been following it very closely, but last Wednesday decided to watch Tuesday's semifinal on CatchUp. This was rather spoiled because in the advert break, there was a trailer for next week's final - showing the three finalists - so we knew who was going to get knocked out, even before we saw the Showstopper Round.

I was a little annoyed that some contestants made cube cakes in silicon moulds - which they then totally  destroyed by cutting them up in order to release the cakes. What an appalling waste!

I will not say much more about the semi finals, I don't want to give anything away. Some fans were clearly annoyed by the choice of departing contestant in the semifinals. "This is the biggest scandal in this country for sixty years!" [have they not heard of Profumo, or Tony Blair's Dodgy Dossier?] "I am never watching GBBO again"...and previously, when poor Peter mentioned he didn't like cheese, some people felt that was enough for someone to be disqualfied altogether. It's just a TV programme, folks!