Eat yourself thrifty: Cooking By Numbers

There’s been a lot in the press recently about the amount of food thrown away by households. Earlier this month a Cabinet Office report concluded that on average, a British family throws away £420 worth of food annually. That’s a whopping £8 every single week.  

The problem is, if you’re determined to eat everything in your fridge before it goes off, or if you’re gamely attempting to eke out the meagre contents of your storecupboard before the next payday rolls around, you’ll know that it’s easier said than done. The worldwide web, in my opinion, is of limited use; it may be stuffed full of mouthwatering recipes, but if your cupboard is becoming bare it can be difficult to find a recipe that doesn’t necessitate another trip to the shops.

However, there is one website that I cannot recommend enough. It’s a recipe database called Cooking By Numbers. The idea behind it is so ludicrously simple and sensible, it’s plain brilliant.

It works like this: the site lists fridge and storecupboard ingredients. You tick the ingredients you have. Cooking By Numbers then brings up lists of recipes for which you already have everything that you need.

Example: there’s sod all in my fridge right now, but Cooking By Numbers has kindly informed me that I have all the ingredients for dishes including Thai Soup, Italian Tomato Salad and Pasta with Garlic, Chilli and Basil Oil.

Genius.

Cooking By Numbers