This sort of thing – repurposing food – gives me a thrill of smug virtuousness almost as satisfying as when I wrap my children’s sandwiches in my right-on beeswax wraps.

It’s only partly about the environment and being smart with resources. It’s also (okay, mainly) about the fact that I’m a shocking Scrooge. If there’s a gene for stinginess, I inherited it. Although it’s not so much about not buying anything new (as the shopping bags hidden behind my door attest). It’s really mostly about not being able to throw things away.

In fact, I come from a long line of hoarders, and I’m nowhere near the worst of them. You could barely move in my Nanna’s house for the piles of magazines she kept, just in case she needed a recipe or a very important article contained therein.

But I shouldn’t point the finger without confessing my own foibles. The truth is, I have clothes in my cupboard that are so old they could vote. I make dusters out of those socks that lose their partners in the wash. 

My motto is ‘Those’ll last another term’, even when my kids’ toes are poking out of their school shoes. When I do crack and buy them new ones, I make them keep the old ones just in case they ever decide to help in the garden. We have approximately 30 pairs in a basket by the back door now.

But the biggest way my stinge-gene expresses itself is in relation to the pantry and the fridge. I can’t stand to see perfectly good, only slightly mouldy, food go to waste. It causes me actual pain to throw it away.

Over the years, I’ve come up with the usual alternatives to binning leftovers. Feed it to the chooks, put it in the dog’s bowl, dump it in the compost, make a weird-looking stew. Or, if I’m really stuck, put it in the freezer to be discovered in six months.

But the chooks have all been taken by foxes (I can’t talk about it), the dog’s getting fat, the compost bin has a hole in it and the freezer’s full.

I guess we’ll be eating a lot of strange stews for the next little while. Just like Nanna used to make.