Hey, foodies.
This month I want to talk about food storage, and ways to reduce food waste. Here's a number that surprised me when I first came across it: the average New Zealand household throws away around $1,364 worth of food every single year (Rabobank/KiwiHarvest, 2025).
The thing that gets me as a dietitian is that most of that waste isn't happening because people don't care, it's because people don't know. Does this sound familiar: buying a whole bag of bok choi for a recipe, using one head, leaving the rest in the fridge until you realise it has gotten sad and slimy? That's most likely not on purpose, it's probably because you aren't aware of how to store bok choi to prolong it's freshness, and you also don't know what other uses it has.
As I mentioned, this month I want to talk about something practical: how to store food properly, how a bit of ingredient prep goes a long way, and how food prep can save your weeknights & save you money.
Why We Waste So Much
The biggest culprits are food going off before it can be finished, and forgetting about food in the fridge or pantry before it's too late. Which makes sense since most of us aren't deliberately throwing food away. We're just disorganised, or we don't know how long things actually last, or we bought a whole cabbage for one recipe and had no idea what to do with the rest of it.
Storage Basics That Most People Get Wrong
Not everything should go in the fridge. Not everything should stay on the bench. Getting this right is the simplest way to make your groceries last longer.
In the fridge: The crisper drawer exists for a reason: it runs at a slightly higher humidity than the rest of your fridge, making it ideal for root vegetables like carrots and beetroot (which can last two to four weeks in there) and other fresh vegetables like broccoli and courgette (five to seven days) (European Wilderness Society, 2025). Keep your fridge at around 4°C as any warmer than this can cause food to spoil faster than it needs to.
On the bench: Kūmara, pumpkin, potatoes, onions, and garlic all prefer a cool, dry, dark spot, not the fridge. Cold temperatures can affect the texture and flavour of these vegetables, so a pantry shelf or a basket away from direct sunlight is ideal.
The ethylene problem: Some fruits, such as apples, bananas, pears, avocados, release ethylene gas as they ripen, which accelerates the ripening (and spoiling) of everything around them. Keep these separate from your other produce, especially your leafy greens and herbs.
Herbs: Treat fresh herbs like flowers. Trim the stems and stand them in a small glass of water in the fridge, or wrap them in a damp paper towel in an airtight container. This can extend their life by several days, which is significant when a bunch of coriander costs $6 and you only needed a handful.
The Case for a Little Ingredient Prep
I'm not going to tell you to spend your Sunday batch cooking twelve meals. That's not realistic for most people, it's not what this blog is about, and most importantly it is NOT what I do. But a small amount of ingredient prep (washing and chopping vegetables, cooking a batch of grains, portioning out proteins) makes a real difference to how often you actually cook through the week.
Research has found that meal planning skills are significantly associated with cooking more evening meals at home (Trofholz et al., 2022), and ingredient prep is essentially meal planning made physical since you're removing friction from the moment you open the fridge at 5:30pm and have to decide what to cook.
Here's what's worth doing when you get home from the supermarket:
- Wash and dry your leafy greens straight away and store them in a container with a piece of paper towel to absorb moisture
- Peel and chop your carrots, celery, and other hard vegetables so they're ready to grab. My favourite method is to store matchstick sized pieces in a container of water (change the water at least once per week). I am not joking when I say my celery has been in the fridge for over a month and it is still perfect to use.
- Portion your ingredients so that your dinners are as organised as possible. If you are using 500g of mince over 2 meals, you will be more likely to cook if the mince is already portioned for you.
What to Do With the Stuff You're Not Sure About
The freezer is so underused by most households. Freezing food is one of the most effective ways to extend the life of fresh produce, and for vegetables especially, blanching them first (a quick 2-3 minutes in boiling water, then into ice water) preserves both texture and nutrients before freezing (Utah State University Extension, 2025).
Got half a tin of coconut milk? Freeze it in an ice cube tray. Leftover fresh ginger? Freeze the whole piece and grate it from frozen. Half a cabbage with no plan? That's where having a solid recipe base helps: Dinner Date members, this is exactly the kind of ingredient that shows up in the weekly recipes so nothing gets wasted.
New Zealand's yearly food waste produces 409,234 tonnes of carbon emissions, the equivalent of needing to take 150,453 cars off the road for a year to offset it, so storing food well isn't just good for your grocery budget, it's also saving the planet (Love Food Hate Waste NZ, 2025).
A Simple System to Start With
You don't need to overhaul your whole kitchen. Try this for one week:
When you unpack your groceries, spend ten minutes washing, chopping, and storing everything properly rather than putting it straight in the fridge as-is. Move older produce to the front so it gets used first. Pick one vegetable you'd normally waste and find a recipe that uses it up before it turns. That's it. One week of small habit changes and you'll notice the difference in how much actually gets eaten.
The Dinner Date Takeaway
Most food waste isn't about carelessness, it's about not having a plan. When you know what you're cooking each week, you buy what you need, store it properly, and actually use it. That's exactly what Dinner Date is designed for: five recipes, one shopping list, nothing left over that you don't know what to do with.
If you want your weekly dinners sorted from $5 a week, subscribe to Dinner Date and let me take the planning off your plate.
Best,
Gabrielle x
References
Rabobank/KiwiHarvest. (2025). New Zealand food waste survey 2025. Rabobank New Zealand. https://www.rabobank.co.nz/community/food-waste
Trofholz, A. C., Loth, K. A., Neumark-Sztainer, D., & Berge, J. M. (2022). Family characteristics associated with preparing and eating more family evening meals at home. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 122(1), 121–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2021.07.002
Love Food Hate Waste NZ. (2025). What we waste. https://lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz/food-waste/what-we-waste/
European Wilderness Society. (2025). Sustainable food storage tips to save money and the planet. https://wilderness-society.org/sustainable-food-storage-tips-to-save-money-and-the-planet/
Utah State University Extension. (2025). Reducing food waste at home. https://extension.usu.edu/nutrition/research/reducing-food-waste-at-home