WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

When I was very young I treasured a beautiful and inventive book of black and white drawings of ancient railways in various states of cartoon dilapidation. If memory serves me right, which these days it does rarely, the book was called 'Heath Robinson's Railway Ribaldry' and on those dull, wet and otherwise empty afternoons that seem to be the endless lot of the only child, I spent happy hours pouring over its pages.

In due course I ceased to be an only child but not before one picture in particular had become deeply imprinted on my young brain. This showed an engine driver braving the displeasure of his passengers to halt his express for the purpose of retrieving an egg that just happened to have been left on the railway line.

The justification for this heinous offence against the railway timetable appeared in large letters at the bottom "Waste Not, Want Not" is the Driver's Motto."

Such sensible sentiments - the world would be a deal better off, I feel, if only we could be persuaded to adopt its precept en masse - are certainly not to be trifled with. Indeed they were drilled into me at every turn it by looming figures in authority. As I was then only four most authority figures seemed to loom, in particular my grandmother.

"What will the dustbin men say?" she used to entreat sternly when she noticed a few scrapings of unappetizing egg-white left behind in the shell of my boiled egg. She had a reason of course: this was the time of post-war austerity when eggs were rationed and treated as a precious resource. It was also the age before we taught hens the sensible feat of laying eggs in the winter months. If we wanted eggs in December they would come dubiously pickled in isinglass.

Quite what my grandmother would have made of the finding that apparently we throw away a quarter of all the food we purchase, I cannot think. She had never heard of the word sustainability and yet she begrudged throwing anything in the bin that could possibly be eaten, mended or used again in some way.

As a result I grew up believing that wasting anything was wrong and wasting food a kind of moral sin for which I would be found out (no doubt by those bogie dustbin men) and subjected to some long and humiliating chastisement.

I carry this mental baggage with me still almost sixty years later. I still hate throwing food away and go on wearing clothes far longer than practicality dictates. True, I have never quite reached the stage of turning my old carpets into hats - which is, so I learn, what we were urged to do in those austere times - but conjuring a decent meal from a few manky and improbable remnants left behind in the vegetable rack or refrigerator has become my speciality.

Last evening my skills in this useful compartment of human knowledge were again put to the test. I had purchased earlier in the day some splendid pork sausages made locally from free-range beasts that are actually allowed to wallow in the mud. But sausages demand accompaniment and accompaniment seemed in short supply.

For if Mother Hubbard's cupboard was not exactly bare, that was only because Mother Hubbard had been too lazy to clean it out. Indeed, it was a wonder that the contents had not walked out under their own steam in search of more congenial accommodation on the compost heap.

I counted one red onion of venerable vintage, one large courgette, going soft at one end, one large box of mushrooms, reduced for quick sale and bought a week ago with the optimistic idea of making soup; a half bottle of passata first opened goodness knows when, half a tub of cream ditto, and a small bowl of cooked rice of uncertain provenance.

Still, waste not, want not! Into a roasting dish went the sliced onion, courgette and some garlic. On these I laid the sausages, liberally sprinkled with olive oil, salt and a little tabasco, covered these with a deluge of mushrooms left whole, emptied the bottle of passata and the tub of cream over the mixture, dusted the whole liberally with oregano and added the rice as a species of improbable topping. Then into the hot oven it went for the best part of an hour.

Though I say it myself, this gastronomic cacophony turned out most remarkably well: the sausages lush, the vegetables wonderfully tasty. And though it might astonish the health and safety folk brimming with all those injunctions about sell by dates and what have you, we are still here to tell the tale.

Posted by Fennie Somerville