And now it's time for my lecture on your leftovers.

Byline: Hilarie Stelfox

THIS WEEK we have been mostly living on sandwiches. And smoked salmon.

Which might sound quite nice. It's certainly saved on the washing up, cooking and pan-scrubbing.

But I reached the point, about Wednesday, when I'd had enough.

The problem is that we bought a surfeit of food for my mum's 80th birthday party last weekend and were left with stashes of sandwiches and other goodies, such as M&S sausage rolls, tortilla chips, houmous and marshmallows.

There's also a bowl of congealed chocolate, from the chocolate fountain, tucked away at the back of the fridge.

Being good citizens we've taken on board the Government's advice about being thrifty and not throwing food away. Leftovers are us.

Another food-related problem has reared its head at much the same time.

We also have an allotment surplus.

The sugarsnap peas, pak choi, lettuce and strawberries have all gone into hyperdrive because of the warm, damp weather.

We've been having some interesting meals.

Inspired by the new Chinese cookery series on BBC 2, fronted by a perky Oriental with a cut-glass English accent, I have been doing a lot of stir fries, with sandwiches for starters and strawberry chocolate fondue for afters.

Stir fries are a bit like soup; great for using up bits of stray vegetables from the fridge.

The Girl is always a bit suspicious of stir fries and wants to know EXACTLY what I'm using.

On Thursday I tried slipping in a few sliced radishes; she picked every piece out and left them round the edge of her plate.

"Radishes are not nice stir-fried," she explained. "Don't do them again." "The Prime Minister says we shouldn't waste food," I replied. "I bet he doesn't leave radishes." Of course, much as we want to sneer about Mr Brown telling us to eat up our greens, turn leftovers into tasty meals, only buy what we need and recycle stale bread as bread-and-butter pudding, there's no doubt that as a nation we are becoming fatter and more wasteful.

(There has also been a lot of sneering about the banquet enjoyed by the representations of the G8 nations AFTER they'd been discussing world food shortages. I wonder if they were served the leftovers the next day?) As I see it modern life has removed us in the affluent West from the daily struggle to put food on our plates. Food, while going up in price, is still remarkably cheap, given that much of it has been grown somewhere else in the world.

At the moment I'm reading a book about the Middle Ages, a time when those who didn't grow food or own land simply starved to death. I suspect that only the exceedingly rich had a weight problem.

Amazingly that situation still exists in developing nations.

But not here. Our way of life sustains even those who do no work and never have done. There is no struggle, no toiling in the fields, to acquire a bag of potatoes or a loaf of bread, a bar of chocolate or a crate of Stella.

Perhaps that could be the answer to solving the problem of disaffected inner city louts; get them toiling for their food.

But in the meantime Government ministers are blaming supermarkets for their BOGOFs (buy one get one free offers) for the food waste and fatness problems.

But, as usual, we only have ourselves to blame if we buy too much, eat too much and throw too much away.

I'd like to say that the Stelfoxes don't waste food, but that wouldn't be strictly true. As a nation we throw away an estimated pounds 8 a week in uneaten food per household. In fact, an inventory of our fridge prior to the stocking up with smoked salmon, sausage rolls and tortilla dips, revealed several jars of condiments well past their use-by dates, yoghurts on the cusp of becoming cottage cheese and a packet of fresh pasta that is no longer fresh.

All of it worth considerably more than pounds 8.

Interestingly, we rarely waste the stuff we grow ourselves because there has been a personal cost in terms of toiling and broken fingernails.

I blame cookery programmes for our waste. That's why we have jars of things in our fridge that my great-grandmother had never heard of, such as tapenade, pesto and Thai fish sauce; all destined to be used once, possibly twice, and then stored until disposed of several weeks later.

If we are to take Gordon Brown's advice seriously and stop wasting food we must re-assess our eating habits. We must chant the mantra of 'fresh, seasonal produce; fresh seasonal produce.' And take a shopping list, with a menu plan attached. And never go shopping when hungry.

Thriftiness was considered a virtue by my mother's generation and it may just become one again.

CAPTION(S):

ANY LEFTOVERS?: Dining at the G8 summit are (from right) are President George W. Bush, Laureen Harper, wife of Canadian premier Stephen Harper, Gordon Brown and Japanese PM Yasuo Fukuda; WHAT A WASTE: Good food should at least be recycled