How to shop your pantry to reduce food waste

Do you ever buy groceries only to realize you already have some of those food items in your pantry at home?

Food advocate Puneeta Chhitwal-Varma recommended shopping your pantry before spending money on more groceries to reduce food waste. She reveals these tips in her new ebook How to Shop Your Pantry and featured two of the recipes on Morning Live today.

One of the recipes that Chhitwal-Varma shared was a turmeric mac and cheese topped with crunchy oats.

“What I do with this to give it that pantry twist is that I use canned, evaporated milk because that’s another ingredient that people said they have tons of and they didn’t know what to do with it,” she said.

To make the crunchy oat topping, Chhitwal-Varma said to roast unflavoured, instant oatmeal in olive oil, red chili pepper and garlic salt until it is crunchy.

Another recipe that she shared was Mujaddarah, which is a combination of rice and brown lentils.

She was inspired to create this recipe after living in Dubai for many years. The traditional recipe includes white rice, but Chhitwal-Varma uses brown rice and wheat berries to up the mood-boosting benefits of the dish.

To purchase the ebook, visit mapleandmarigold.com/shop-your-pantry/. To sign up for her newsletter to hear about her next live cook-along that will feature a recipe from this ebook, visit mapleandmarigold.com/better-food-movement-community/.