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On the weekend I used up the leftover orzo I found neatly packaged up in the freezer. I made a pasta salad with it, based on this recipe, only without the ham (I'm still working on cutting back on my meat intake!): Ham, Corn and Capsicum pasta.

I'm glad it didn't go to waste. I originally cooked it to go with a brussel sprouts and bacon dish, and seriously mis-judged my quantities! I ended up with enough for two serves for dinner, two serves packed away for lunches to take to work, and these two serves just stuck in the freezer because I'd run out of patience with it!

Most people don't really know what a 'serve' of any given food actually looks like. Obviously, I'm one of them! So instead of throwing out the excess food when we go too far, why not learn how to prevent over-cooking in the first place?

The Perfect Portions calculator at the Love Food, Hate Waste website can help us figure out how much food we should be cooking. I'm going to use it until I can get the hang of judging a serving size by looking at it.

Another useful resource is the Australian government's guide to Daily Servings - it's got a great chart showing what a serve is for all sorts of food.