What have they done to me?

They're ruining my good name, so they are

BLISS and DLL think it's hilarious. I don't. They've taken books out on my library ticket. I was reserving some books and saw that I was down for four loans, when I've only got one book out. On my ticket, there's...I don't know if I can say this...The War Diary of a Midwife (or something like that), Astrology, and The Alzheimers and Dementia Guide (no, it hasn't got a sonar bleep thingy so that you can remember where you put it). I'd rather have a criminal record than those on my library loans record. I feel sort of soiled.

Astrology is even worse than religion, and the misery memoir of a nurse (or whatever). I'll have to see if there's a way to erase them forever from the cyber-loan register.

Waste less food

£700. That's the value of the food the average family throws away every year. Here's my ways of reducing food waste:

• Juice it. Before fruit and veg goes bad, spin up the juice extractor and get some apple, satsuma and carrot juice down your neck. Don't bother with recipes or any formalities or quantities. If it's sitting still in the fridge or fruitbowl it's fair game and it'll be delicious, trust me. If it has beetroot in it, don't worry about the apparent blood in your urine the next day.

• Don't buy what the books tell you to. If a recipe calls for a teaspoon of something, don't buy a shedload of nearly off something just because Heston or Delia or Nigella or Jamie say you need it. You don't. Use what you already have, or something else that looks in good nick, and preferably something else that looks in good nick and you can earmark for near-future use.

• Make stock. Most stuff you throw away makes stock. Don't peel unless you have to. If you do, save the peelings in the container in the fridge, and make stock. Throw chopped tomatoes into some water and a stock cube and you've got some rubbish tomato soup. Throw them into home made stock and you've got something worth eating.

• Apparently many Indian restaurants (that's restaurants in India as opposed to curry houses over here) offer only two choices at any given sitting. Like one non-veggie and one veggie option. The more bases a restaurant tries to cover, the more they're chucking away, or the more is actually sub-standard or frozen rubbish. My heart sinks when I see those pub blackboards that take up several walls, filled with tiny writing, a menu hundreds of pages long. The food's never really good. Look at the traditional café lunch menu: liver and bacon, a roast, a pie, all served with the same vegetables. I like the set menu, plat du jour idea, I don't like agonising over what I'm going to eat, and I like to try new things. The shorter the menu, the less waste.

• One I fall down on: use up those leftovers. Curry, chilli, stews and casseroles all taste better for an overnight stay in the fridge.

• Don't tolerate fussy eaters, and ignore use-by dates, they're just a guide for the chronically queasy.