EXCLUSIVE: Krissy Marsh wants Australians to stop being embarrassed about asking for a doggy bag.
The Real Housewives of Sydney star and Double Bay local has teamed up with TikTok Australia for its new Leave No Crumbs campaign, fronting research that shows more than half of Australians bin unused food at least once a fortnight, with four in ten doing it every week.
One in five 18 to 24-year-olds admitted they’re too embarrassed to eat leftovers in public, according to the research. Marsh isn’t one of them.
“I don’t do it quietly, I’m loud about it!” Marsh tells immy.com.au. “I’ll always be the first to ask. If you’ve paid for a beautiful meal, leaving half of it on the plate isn’t classy, it’s wasteful.”
She points to a recent dinner at Mimi’s, where she asked staff to pack up leftover tomatoes rather than let them go to waste. “It’s not embarrassing. I think it’s one of the biggest compliments you can give the chef, and you get a second meal when you get home.”
It’s a philosophy Marsh has lived by since she came back from Italy at 25, more than three decades ago now. “I understood what real food tastes like and the importance of not wasting it,” she says. “This hasn’t been an overnight thing.”
The habit shows up every week at Marsh’s house, where Tuesday Night Dinner has become something of an institution. The tradition started when her eldest son, Billy, left school and she wanted to keep him connected to his schoolmates.
“As each of my children has left school, they’ve taken turns hosting their friends,” she says. With three children, each gets to host every third Tuesday. The Tuesday slot has its own history too: it was the one night Marsh had help in the kitchen while her husband was living in China.
No one leaves a Tuesday Night Dinner empty-handed. “That’s the rule,” Marsh says. “Everyone takes lunch for the next day.”
For TikTok’s Leave No Crumbs campaign, Marsh put together a Tuesday menu built almost entirely from things that would otherwise hit the bin: prawn shells frozen and turned into stock, stale gluten free bread (Marsh is coeliac) blitzed into breadcrumbs for chicken schnitzel, and softening tomatoes turned into bruschetta.
Her other weapon against waste is the weekly fridge audit. “Before I shop each week, I go through everything, move the older bits to the front and plan meals around what I need to use first,” she says. “Half the time, we’re not throwing food out because it’s bad. We’re throwing it out because we forgot it was there.”
Research for the campaign found 28 per cent of Australians admit to doing exactly that, and that tomatoes are the most wasted vegetable in the country. Marsh’s fix: overripe tomatoes go straight into bruschetta or pasta sauce, and overripe bananas into smoothies and banana bread.
Marsh’s TikTok career is a recent chapter, and one she credits to her daughter, Milana. “She convinced me to give it a go, and I’m so glad she did,” Marsh says. The account has since taken her well beyond the Housewives fanbase. “I’m stopped by everyone from older women to young people, and I’ve even been recognised in the United States and Singapore.”
I too find myself following Marsh’s advice. I now throw vinegar in the washing machine with my towels to stop any nasty smells.
She’s still learning from her followers, too. A TikTok creator recently taught her to blitz and dry out celery tops rather than throw them in with her daily celery juice. “I use celery salt in so much of my cooking now, so it’s perfect,” she says. “What a fantastic way to use the celery tops.”
Marsh’s TikTok fame comes hot on the heels of her run on The Traitors Australia season three, where she made the final three as a Faithful before being banished at the last hurdle. She later told The Australian Women’s Weekly she “never questioned her for one second”, after learning her close friend and fellow Faithful, Keira, had been plotting her exit for days. Kirby ultimately walked away with the $206,000 prize pot.
It’s not Marsh’s first foray into food. She released The Real Krissy Marsh Cookbook, with proceeds going to Ronald McDonald House, and isn’t ruling out a second. “Cookbooks are a lot of work, but another one is definitely not off the cards,” she says.
Her bigger ambition is television. “I’d also love to have my own TV show. That’s always been on the agenda. I love the idea of a talk show, and combining it with Tuesday Night Dinner would be fantastic. Can you imagine how chaotic that would be?”
For now, Marsh is happy spreading the leftovers gospel one container at a time. “Throwing food out is throwing money away,” she says. “My kids are all working now, and they’re not going to buy a $20 sandwich when last night’s dinner is sitting in the fridge.”
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