love food
hello!
Hi greenthumbs! It’s dirtgirl here!
This month we’re celebrating FOOD!
We’re going to learn how to recycle our food scraps to help our planet! And I’m sharing some clever ways to make your food last longer, so it doesn’t go to waste.
In our Love Food Club, you’ll find clever recipes to make delicious meals with leftover food. And on the blog for kids, you can grow a rainbow garden!
For something to do inside, there are fun video clips to watch and some dirtgirl colouring in. And you can even learn how to make natural dyes with food scraps. Then it’s time to sing along to a song with Costa the garden gnome!
So are you ready to get grubby? Let’s go!
fabulous food
Food is fabulous! You can grow it, cook it and eat it! But did you know that you can also recycle it?!
Food scraps are full of wonderful ‘nutrients’. If we recycle our food scraps the nutrients end up back in our soil, which helps keep our planet healthy.
Recycling keeps the nutrients from our food scraps out of landfill and puts them back into our farms and gardens to help grow more … FOOD!
It’s a fabulous food cycle!
watch
Watch this video to start your adventure. It goes for about 5 minutes.
dirtgirl’s top tips
Food takes a lot of energy to grow and make, and to get it from the farm to the shops to your house! So we don’t want to waste it! There are lots of things that your family can do to look after your food and stop it from going to waste. Here are my top tips!
discover
food and organics recycling
You can recycle your food scraps by putting them in a compost or worm farm.
You can also recycle your food scraps by putting them in your kerbside food and organics bin (if you have one). It’s usually the one with the bright green lid. Your food scraps and organics will get collected and turned into beautiful compost!
What are ‘organics’? They are things like grass clippings, leaves and mighty good stuff from your garden that was once alive. Organics will rot and break down. And you can help by handling them with care and choosing to recycle them.
kerbside collection
Some Councils collect food and garden organics. And some collect garden organics only (and not foods scraps). Some don’t collect any food scraps or garden organics at all (that’s where your compost or worm farm is a powerful solution!).
Check with your grown-ups to find out what the go is at your place. If they’re not sure, put on your nature detective hat and investigate it together. The Recycling Near You website or your local Council is a good place to start.
break it down!
colour in
Here’s something to print and colour in.
“green and leafy, come and get us. wash and eat some lovely lettuce!”
— dirtgirl
sing
Now it’s time to sing a song with Costa the garden gnome!
make
Have you ever tried to make natural dyes from food scraps? Beetroot scraps make a bright pink colour! Here are some ideas from Homestead Lady.
discover
handle with care
OzHarvest is an amazing food organisation. They rescue spare food from over 3,500 businesses across Australia and deliver it to charities to help feed people in need. So far they have saved more than 44 thousand tonnes of food from going to waste!
LOVE FOOD CLUB
In our Love Food Club, it’s a leftover makeover! Here are some yummy recipes to use up leftover food.
share waste
ShareWaste is a super cool website that links people who have food scraps with people who need them for their compost, worm farm or to feed to their chickens!
Let’s find out more from our favourite gnoming reporter. And of course, always choose to be safe if you have COVID-19 restrictions in your area.
a blog for kids
Find out how to grow a rainbow garden on my blog for kids.
good news
My discovery of the week is The Real Junk Food Project. This group of go-getters collects spare food from grocers, farmers and businesses.
They turn the food into delicious meals to sell at ‘pay-as-you-feel’ cafes. This means that people can pay with money or by helping out with their time and skills.
What started as one cafe has grown into over 40 pay-as-you-feel cafes that together have served over 20,000 meals!
share
I love it when you share your adventures with us. Post any of your videos, photos or drawings to social media and tag them #dirtgirlworld #getgrubby. Send me a letter to dirtgirl@dirtgirlworld.com (under 3MB, our mailbox is tiny!).
Or snail mail me at dirtgirl at dirtgirlworld C/O Whiporie PO, NSW AUSTRALIA 2469.
Let me know if you are happy for me to share them online or if they are for my eyes only. We understand if you have family privacy rules and we will always respect that!
bye
Bye greenthumbs. We’ll see you next time!
Happy cooking and composting!
