I've always been pretty good with leftovers. I always make soup out of roast chicken remains and I have a passing understanding of how to transform bits of one meal into something fresh and interesting for the next. However, at the end of each week, I still find myself throwing out more uneaten food than I'd like. In general, I dislike the waste but more poignantly, I regret depriving the ingredients of their potential (especially when I toss animal products).
However, this week, inspired by this post about food waste at the Non-Consumer Advocate, I managed to avoid waste where I might have otherwise tossed. I made a big pot of chicken soup, using up an aging hunk of red cabbage (once cooked, it was impossible to tell that it was a bit wilted), several bits of half-used onion and most happily, a painfully stale six-inch chunk of seeded baguette. I broke the bread into bits, placed some of it into the bottom of the bowls and ladled the soup on top. The once-stale bread became silky and tender, adding a lovely texture and taste to the meal.
How do you avoid food waste in your kitchen?
1-22-2009 @11:26AM Patrick R said... I've had the same problem lately. I've started keeping a list of leftovers in the fridge on a note that I keep on the door. It's a handy reminder to use up stuff that might have been forgotten otherwise.
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1-22-2009 @6:53PM Foodista said... For one thing, I try to plan my meals, and buy only what I need. If there are any left overs, I try to make another meal out of it, and yes, I also try to make a list of any leftovers I may have inside the fridge :)
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1-22-2009 @11:47AM alisa said... my husband and I like to do something we've termed "Random Bag Night" where we use up odds and ends in the fridge, etc. It's a great way to be creative and less wasteful, both of which are good goals to have. I write about some of our experiments on my blog: theripetomato.wordpress.com Many times we end up making pasta, pizza or soup out of the leftovers. We also freeze a helluva lot of stuff - like unused fresh ginger, tomato paste, cooked meats, etc - all of which holds up reasonably well.
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1-22-2009 @1:04PM Dana said... Soup, stew, frittata, and pasta bakes are staples, as are various casseroles. If I have something that needs using ASAP, I've also been known to Google for help, like when I had two pounds of carrots and parsely root that had frozen solid when they were forgotten on the back porch during a cold snap, and I needed a recipe to use them before they thawed out. the resulting Carrot casserole (with added parsely root) turned out fabulous!
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1-22-2009 @1:05PM Ian said... Planning ahead. I make my list on Sunday for what I will eat all week for lunch and dinner. I buy just the ingredients I need to make those things. Sometimes, I make enough that I can freeze the extras. By Saturday my fridge is pretty empty.
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1-22-2009 @2:57PM Rt said... Bless you for giving ink to the common sense of conservation.
Pardon my brief rant about people who think it is important how far the food traveled to get to their house when 40% it is only going as far as the trashcan after that. It seems silly to me.
Keep up the good work Mar - it seems the young only listen to the young.
I like Pat's 'fridge door note idea. I even have a magnetic dry-erase board already there. Discipline, I must use discipline.
Freezing food is certainly a time honored tradition (too bad learning how to package food for freezing is no more popular than learning how to conserve it). Frozen food fit to eat a lot longer than the pundits would have you believe.
Along Dana's vein, perhaps people will discover the pleasure of changing an ingredient or two in a recipe they like only to create an even better recipe. In a different way, along the same line,perhaps one-pot cooking will come back in vogue.
All good ideas, my own meager contribution is I try to avoid buying on whim. Just because it looks good in the store doesn't mean I have an immediate use for it. This is what Ian was saying except I don't have the discipline to plan my meals a week in advance :)
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1-22-2009 @3:29PM Rt said... Sorry, I just read the original post (I dislike following links).
Talk about a blast from the past.
What was once practiced out of necessity is being learned again - out of necessity.
Again, my apologies - I had to chuckle. I think everything we've said is there (perhaps different words).
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1-22-2009 @9:06PM sanman said... Compost...
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1-23-2009 @11:42AM Tina said... Every time I use and onion, peel a carrot or cut off the ends of celery, I put that stuff in a ziplock bag in my freezer. When it gets full, I make soup stock. My boyfriend and I have only been spending $30/Week on groceries (http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com) and that has saved us enormously in terms of food going bad. We eat last night's dinner for lunch too or repurpose meals. A great idea is to put leftovers in calzones or on top of homemade pizza - http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/pizza-dough-and-what-you-can-do-with-it/.
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1-26-2009 @1:42PM David Millar said... I keep my vegetable scraps in the freezer for making into soup stock, as well as keeping bacon grease for keeping certain things from sticking, or when caramelizing onions, or when making Rice-a-Roni, or... the list goes on and on.
I'm a poor college student and I've sometimes had to struggle to afford food - so my big thing isn't so much being wasteful in my kitchen. It's when I see old produce and such at grocery stores marked down to prices in the 10 to 50 cent range that I want to rescue it and use it before it goes completely bad.
A couple of weeks ago I rescued some bags of carrots and shredded cabbage/broccoli mix that were marked down really low and made a delicious stir fry, then froze the rest for making soup later.
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2-01-2009 @6:34AM sam br said... To use up stale bread i make bread pudding. you soak the bread in water for half an hour, then squeeze it out and add to it melted marg, milk, egg, mixed spice and brown sugar, then bake it in the oven...mmm, delish!
soup is always a good one because you can't see what the food looked like before it was whizzed up! i've got some yellowing brocolli that i'm going to make into soup later on.
i know i said stale bread is good for bread pudding, but has anyone got any ideas of how to use up old seeded bagels? thanks
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