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Posts with tag wasted food

Wasted Food offers composting tips from Brian Rosa

Posted Oct 7th 2008 2:31PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Farming, Food News

It was while I was in high school that my family started a compost pile. My parents had composted religiously during the early, idealistic years of their marriage (they even kept chickens for a brief time), but as they moved from Santa Cruz to Chicago to Los Angeles to Portland, composting (and livestock) fell by the wayside. When we restarted the family composting program, we all had a lot to learn about what could go into the sink-side bucket and what items were still trash.

If you've been thinking about starting your own compost pile, but don't know how to go about it, Jonathan at Wasted Food has got the poop on backyard composting, via an interview with Brian Rosa, North Carolina's composting guru. They talk bins verses piles, composting with worms and how to ensure that your compost pile is the most successful one on the block.

Fall is a terrific time to start a compost pile or bin, as you can add all the leaves and bits of organic material that you clean out of your yard to the mound. If you make the time to turn it regularly over the winter, you'll have amazingly nutritious soil for your spring and summer vegetable garden.

Colleges are starting to move away from cafeteria trays

Posted Sep 1st 2008 10:00AM by Shayna Glick
Filed under: Trends, On the Blogs

Three stacks of lunch trays with a clock on the wall behind them.

(Click the photo to see the Worst Cafeteria Food Ever)

When you were going through school, did you ever think about the cafeteria trays? Trays have been a hot topic in university cafeterias recently. Many colleges and universities have been going trayless over the past couple of years. In fact, several of them started their 'no tray' policy on Earth Day this year.

There are two main arguments for going trayless: it leads to less food waste by students as well as less water waste in cleaning the trays. According to CNN, colleges in drought-stricken states are more concerned about the water waste. Fifty to 60% percent of colleges served by Aramark are getting rid of trays, and in a study conducted by the comapny food waste was reduced by 25% to 30% when trays were taken out of the picture.

Wasted Food has been covering this trend for quite some time, and has seen a lot of the backlash to the new trayless movement. I can understand the inconvenience the students face in all of this, but I personally think that finding ways to prevent waste trumps any individual complaints. What's your take on the trayless movement?

Gallery: Worst cafeteria foods ever!

Some good tips on storing bread

Posted Aug 11th 2008 5:00PM by Shayna Glick
Filed under: On the Blogs, Bakeries, Bread

Image of a retro style, white bread box.

If you like bread, chances are that you'd like to stay away from those national brands with lots of preservatives. I know I prefer the artisanal loaves that are free from shelf-extending additives. My problem is that I don't go through bread fast enough and it invariably gets moldy if I get good quality bread. I generally turn to freezing it, and throwing frozen slices into the toaster when I want to eat them.

Wasted Food has posted this article about storing and keeping bread fresher, longer. It's a question and answer session with Paul LaDuca of Zingerman's, a Michigan bakery that does a lot of mail order. He recommends a bread box, and keeping your loaves in a paper bag. According to LaDuca, a plastic bag just draws the moisture from the crumb into the crust, making it soggy.

I was aware of most of these tips, but I have to admit I hadn't thought of using my oven as a bread box. What are your favorite bread storage tips?

The Today Show reports on America's wasted food

Posted Jun 24th 2008 1:00PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Television/Film, On the Blogs, Food News

I grew up in a household where we embraced leftovers, composted actively and had a dog with an iron-clad stomach, so very little food went to waste. As I got older and started living on my own, I realized what a feat of meal planning and conservation my mother had been pulling off all those years, as I found myself tossing heads of lettuce, moldy cheese and sour milk at the end of each week. I worked to change my habits, learning how much food I needed for each given week, working hard to use up my leftovers and buying an indoor composter to ensure that my vegetal waste didn't go into the landfills.

As food and fuel prices rise, more and more people are becoming concerned with the amount of food that we waste. This morning the Today Show aired a segment on food waste and in it they interviewed journalist and blogger Jonathan Bloom. Bloom runs the website Wasted Food and is currently writing a book about the amount of uneaten food that gets sent to landfills each day.

The segment is interesting and is an excellent primer for those people who are new to the idea of food conservation. They suggest that more frequent trips to the supermarket, in which you buy less, is one of the answers to preventing food waste. While I think that's a good idea, I wish they had stressed tactics like shopping at farmers markets (the food is fresher, so it stays good longer, giving you more time in which to use it) and using your freezer (if you make a large meal, halve it and freeze a portion for another time).

Freegans race to make the best meal out of dumpster pickings

Posted Jun 23rd 2008 12:32PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Television/Film, Food News

My younger sister has gone through a number of different food phases. During elementary school, she was a queen of junk food. As she got older, she started leaning more and more towards healthier foods, becoming a vegetarian and then a vegan. She was a vegan for a number of years, until her rock and roll lifestyle (she's a musician who is nearly always on the road) started to make that diet impossible. Quality vegan food wasn't always easy to find, and was often prohibitively expensive when she could find it. That was the point at which she started calling herself a freegan, stating that she'd eat just about anything, as long as it was free.

These days she's found a happy medium, eating poultry and fish along side her vegetables and grains, but no red meat or pork. However, she still embraces the freegan lifestyle, often going dumpster diving with friends in Austin. She would fit right in with the new internet show that is being produced in the UK. Called Ready, Steady, Skip (skip being the British word for dumpster), the show challenges two teams to dig through trash bins, looking for quality foods that have been discarded. They then have to go home and create full meals out of their finds. The team who produces the best eats wins the game.

Right now only the trailer is available, but the first full episode is scheduled to be available in July.

[via Treehugger]

The Kitchn offers tips on how to not waste food

Posted Apr 2nd 2008 9:02AM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Vegetables, Fruit, On the Blogs

It's hard not to waste food occasionally. You make a pot of chili and the leftovers get shoved to the back of the fridge, only to be discovered when they've grown a fuzzy green coat of putrid fur. Or you spend good money on some fancy mini-cucumbers, just to forget them in the bottom of your crisper drawer.

Wasted food happens, but you can take steps to minimize what gets thrown out. The Kitchn is currently hosting a Kitchn Cure, in which they are helping people get their kitchens clean and ready for Spring. They've posted a list of Tricks and Tips on how to avoid wasting food. One useful suggestion they offer is to keep a small whiteboard on your fridge to write down the fresh produce and leftovers you've got stashed away in there, so that you won't forget what you've got to nosh on.

Conserve your food resources by making stock

Posted Dec 20th 2007 8:01AM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Vegetables, Poultry, Recipes, On the Blogs

Have you guys discovered the blog Wasted Food yet? I ran across it about a month ago and it's become of the sites I look forward to seeing pop up in my reader with a new post. It's not always a happy site, in that it is devoted to raising awareness about the amount of food that we, as Americans, waste. But it is always interesting, well-written and helps me look at food from fresh perspectives.

Earlier this week, Jonathan wrote a post about how he made a pot of stock with some leftover chicken bones and a few aging veggies. He decided to make stock because it was one more way in which he could walk his talk and attempt to reduce the amount of waste in his personal food cycle. I thought it was interesting, because I rarely think about making stock as a way to reduce wasted food. I make stock because it tastes good and has the power to improve the taste of nearly everything you add it to. It was nice to be reminded that I was doing something right each time I turn the remains of a roasted chicken into a pot of stock or chicken soup.

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Wasted Food offers composting tips from Brian Rosa

Colleges are starting to move away from cafeteria trays

Some good tips on storing bread

The Today Show reports on America's wasted food

Freegans race to make the best meal out of dumpster pickings

The Kitchn offers tips on how to not waste food

Conserve your food resources by making stock

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