Reviving tips

Some foods, that you might have earmarked for the bin, can be revived and given a new lease of life. Read on and please tell us your ideas too.

• Keeping mushrooms fresher for longer

  Submitted by Malcolm Brown, Norwich

  If you buy large punnets of mushrooms to take advantage of the lower unit costs you can keep them fresher longer by covering them with a tea towel folded into layers and tucking it quite tightly inside the punnet, like a snug blanket. Then keep the mushrooms in the bottom of the fridge and don`t forget to tuck the rest back in every time you take some out. Also don`t forget to re-use the punnets to store other veg.

• Carrots for a Caribbean Juice

  Submitted by Zena Leech-Calton - Resident Chef cookeryclub.co.uk, Norwich - Cookeryclub

  Juice your carrots with a touch of ginger and mix with ginger ale, lemonade, lime or coconut milk for an exotic, refreshing, zingy, nutritionally packed juice.

• Use Reuseable plastic containers

  Submitted by Liz Teather, Welwyn, Welwyn

  Use plastic reuseable tubs or short on space and want to use a plastic bag - use the one your bread comes in. Tip out the crumbs and away you go! In fact I haven't bought plastic bags into the house for well over a year, but always seem to have a glut of them from packaging on other items - instead of throwing them away reuse them.

• Don't waste wine!

  Submitted by Amanda, London

  Rather than let the end of a bottle of wine hang around only to go sour, pour into a small container or clean yogurt pot and freeze. Use in stews, casseroles or gravies - no need to defrost - put straight into the cooking.

• Fresh and crisp fruit and veg

  Submitted by Jenna, Hartlepool

  In your fruit and veg draw put tin foil in the bottom with the shinny side up. Keeps fruit and veg fresher for longer.

• Cucumbers can last longer

  Submitted by Anne Harris, cambridge

  Put the stalk end of a cucumber in a small container of water and stand in the fridge door. They last much longer like this. Also they'll keep well this way out of the fridge if you are pushed for fridge space.

• Leftover roast

  Submitted by Elizabeth Pratt, Romsey, Hampshire

  If you haven't got time to make a shepherd's pie from your leftover roast, whiz the meat with an onion in the food processor and pour into a freezer bag for later. It is then quick and easy to cook the prepared meat mixture from frozen to make a shepherd's pie or rissoles.

• Lion pasta sauce or lion soup

  Submitted by Lell Picken, Consett co.Durham

  I make pasta sauces and soups from the vegatables that are "lion" about in the fridge! Peppers, celery, carrots, tomatoes that are too soft to go in a salad. It's never the same twice. I also do the same thing with fruit and make crumbles.

• Leftover pesto

  Submitted by Sarah, Romford

  Never waste pesto again! Mix left over pesto with butter, freeze in individual portions. Use the pesto butter on steak, chicken, lamb etc. Mix some garlic into it as well for a great tasting butter and spread on a toasted baguette.

• Keeping food longer

  Submitted by P Smith, Northampton

  I use a Fresh Pod in my salad drawers and fruit bowl. It absorbs the gases form the ripening fruit and veg and helps them last much longer.