I've had a hard time explaining to people exactly what I'm doing with No Scrap Left Behind.
Most of us try not to throw out good food but will do it whenever it's necessary. When I said I don't waste food, they often say, "I don't either." But that just isn't true. When I tell people the average American throws out 15 pounds a month -- which would add up to 60 pounds for my family of four -- they scoff because there's no way they throw out that much food each month. Because they don't understand the weight of food or how much gets tossed, I told people I only threw out 2-5 pounds a month and they weren't impressed. It sounds like more food than it is. (My cube weighs 3 pounds.) Then I started telling people I only threw out as much food as I could fit in my hands, but even that was too broad. I can hold a lot of potatoes, for instance, and I can hold a whole watermelon, but I can't hold very much rice. in my hands. Did it count if I put it in a bowl? How big a bowl are we talking about? Finally, it occurred to me; I should just show people how much I throw out! The idea came to me via Trash is for Tossers. The woman who runs that blog lives in an apartment with no room for a compost bin, so she puts all her compost in her freezer until she can take it to a facility. Brilliant! I started keeping my own compost in the freezer so I wouldn't have to run out to the backyard five times a day. Now, I keep my food waste and my compost in two separate containers in the freezer. Just as a reminder: food counts as waste and not compost if it fails the Hungry Kid Test. The Hungry Kid Test helps me decide which foods I have to eat and what I can throw away. If I would put the food in the garbage right in front of a hungry child, it's compost. If I would give it to the kid, it's food and I cannot waste it. Banana peels and apple cores are technically edible, but they pass the Hungry Kid Test, so they go in the compost container. A quarter of a hamburger, on the other hand, fails the test and would go in the waste container. From now on, I'm going to post monthly photos of the food my family wastes, and I'm going to share with you the lessons I learned that will help me to avoid the same mistakes in the future. Lessons I learned this month: - Don't assume you know how long restaurant leftovers will last. - Don't leave the cap off your milk because flies can get in. - Keep clips on all your bags so your kids don't get into the cupboard and spill lentils all over the floor. - Keep the floor clean so you can spill things without covering them in dog hair. - Read the instructions carefully before making popcorn from scratch for the first time. - When you turn a burner from high to simmer, make sure you're adjusting the right burner.
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Figuring our how much food to buy for big events is a big pain. You don't know how many people are going to come, you don't know how much they're going to eat, and you don't know which foods they are going to pass by and which foods they're going to scramble to get. I'm the Young Women's President at my church, which means my counselors and I plan all the lessons and activities for the teenage girls. We host a fundraiser every year for a week-long summer camp, and this year, our fundraiser was a taco bar. We also did an auction. Members of our congregation brought items and services for people to bid on. But you're more interested in food, so back to the tacos... Other anti-food waste advocates will tell you to only serve as much food as you think people will eat, but, come on. No one is going to do that. We're all going to buy way too much, and then we're going to fret that it still might not be enough and buy more. There's no point in fighting against human nature. Instead, my philosophy is to plan ahead of time what you're going to do with the inevitable leftovers. (I should point out that the attendees did throw out food that was on their plates. Rule #6 of Living Food Waste-Free is guests can throw out their own leftovers. All the food that remains in my jurisdiction, however, is my responsibility -- or, in this case, it was our responsibility.) When I throw birthday parties, I only serve food my family is willing and able to finish by ourselves. On my daughter's 5th birthday we had chips and nacho cheese, and probably only two people ate some. I had invited twenty-five kids, and even though we were satisfied with the seven that came, I still felt like I had to buy enough for twenty-five kids and their parents and a possible sibling tag-along...just in case. That meant one of those huge cans of nacho cheese from Sam's Club and two of their big bags of chips. You can toast stale tortilla chips and I think you can freeze nacho cheese, but I had purposefully served food my family loves and we ate all the chips and all the cheese before kitchen hacks were necessary. It was delicious and I have no regrets. Fundraising events are a little trickier than birthday parties. You can't just take home food that was bought with church money. I had to come up with a meal I could serve that people would like and have a plan for the leftovers without putting church money in my own pocket. For the fundraiser, we expected about seventy people. I ended up buying seventeen pounds of ground beef, two pounds of black beans, two pounds of rice, among many other things. Around forty-five people showed up. So, we had a lot of leftovers. By the way, I want to brag that all the food for the fundraiser fit in my refrigerator. Step 2 of my Waste-Free Kitchen Program is not to buy too much food. If your fridge is so crammed with stuff that you can't see the back, you can't possibly eat it all before it goes bad. My small fridge was sparse enough to easily slide in enough food to feed seventy people! What I did: I gave away taco soup. We donated portions of it to church members who we thought needed a free meal for one reason or another. Another scrap saved! Actually, a LOT of scraps saved! Taco soup was perfect because we didn't know how much of each food we'd have left, and you don't need exact measurements to make it. All I did was get two big pans and dump in all the taco meat, black beans, tomatoes, salsa, corn, and black beans and add water until it was soupy. We separated the remaining cheese, sour cream, and corn tortillas into Ziplocs and small containers and put the soup into reused plastic containers. I love keeping old plastic containers because they're perfect for giving away food like this. I only use CLEAR containers for my own leftovers -- that is a firm rule in my house! I hate opening up a cool whip container only to find rotten potatoes and chorizo inside that I had forgotten about. I keep the non-clear containers so I can give away food without stressing about the loss of my precious Tupperware. I am really proud of what we did that day, not just because we raised money for camp and then donated food, but because I was able to be a good example to the young women. They did all the cooking for this event, so they earned the money themselves. I had them put all the compost in a bowl for me to take home and the recyclables in a pile. Making the soup taught them to be responsible with food, and donating it taught them to think of other people and their needs. It was a really good day.
We all make food purchases that were perhaps unwise. Maybe we didn't like what we bought, or didn't use as much as we thought we would, or never even opened it because our cooking aspirations didn't match up with reality.
So, I hosted a party where people brought all the unexpired but unwanted food from their kitchens to swap out for food they'll actually eat. Here's what they brought: I’ve been going around different websites to discover other methods of reducing food waste. Many of the ideas are good, but quite often I run into things I doubt the writer has actually tried. Every time I see a recipe for potato peels and apple cores, I shake my head because that isn’t food; that’s garbage.
It occurred to me that I should be specific on this blog about what I feel comfortable throwing away versus what I do not. Here’s the standard that I follow, and it goes back to when I was inspired to start this blog: Studies show that the average American family wastes enough food to feed an additional family member. As soon as I heard that, I unintentionally imagined the fifth member of my family who could have survived on the food I was throwing away. In my mind, he is a small child from Africa – I call him my African Ghost Baby. Every time I chucked rotting food in the garbage, my Ghost Baby would be there, frowning at me. After years of feeling guilty and ashamed while my African Ghost Baby watched me, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I would no longer throw away things that my imaginary family member would have eaten. So that’s my standard: if a hungry child would eat it, I don’t throw it away. I feel fine taking the onions and pickles off my hamburger, but I do not feel fine wasting a quarter of the hamburger. If I let food go bad that a hungry child would have eaten, I have been irresponsible with my resources. What inspires you not to waste food?
One day, I was inspired to make chicken stock out of the carcass of a rotisserie chicken and wilting vegetables (more on that plus the recipe later). I was amazed at what I could do with food that I usually throw away.
It made me wonder; could I come up with creative ways to use all the food I usually throw away? This discovery came at an interesting time in my life, and it probably wasn’t a coincidence. I’ve recently been somewhat consumed by the stories of famine victims in Africa. It’s always bothered me that people are going hungry, but when I became a mom, feeding my family became not only a responsibility, but a biological urge. I can’t fathom hearing my child cry for food and not having anything to give. |
I will never waste food againI've been tired of throwing out food for years - not to mention tired of our huge grocery bill! I decided to make a change and vowed never to waste food again. In this blog, I'll show you how I do it. RECIPESArchives
January 2020
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