Willful Waste

“Willful waste makes woeful want.” – 1721 saying.

$1600 a year.  Food waste costs the average American family $1500 each year, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service. That’s 40% – roughly 70 billion pounds – of all food in the USA. $166 billion – the retail value of preventable waste – is spent on food that is never eaten …

How much food is wasted in the UK? A cost hasn’t been applied, but a staggering 9.5 million tonnes of food is wasted each year. The mind boggles …

Olive: Tilly what most people don’t understand is the “sell by dates”, “best if used by dates” among other manufacturing labels. Even the U.K. has these statements the link below explains it. And, yes, I have family members if something passes that date they will throw it out. So sad.  https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/food-product-dating

Tilly: I do refer to this lower down.

Apart from the impact on family budgets, there are the knock-on effects to consider: GHG emissions, transport costs, energy, and packaging, 25% of all freshwater is used to produce food we never eat.

Olive had the vapours when she found out – she’s still on the chaise longue with her huge bottle of smelling salts.

Olive: Tilly are you sure it is smelling salts and not a bottle of wine?

Tilly: the wine comes after the smelling salts have revived you.

I have no idea how these figures are arrived at – I have visions of men in green gear and huge vans scouring the country’s dustbins (garbage), and restaurant and hotel dump bins, tossing the waste into the vans, returning to a research centre, and weighing it all! It’s pretty horrifying, however the total is calculated.

Olive: Now I would love to see that.

Some thoughts … might be teaching you to suck eggs, but think of them as gentle reminders!

• Check your fridge temperature. It should be 5 ͦC/41 ͦ Food will deteriorate quicker if it is warmer.
• Trust your nose and eyes and experience – the ‘Sell By’ date is not necessarily categorical.
• Wrap vegetable stems – broccoli, celery, asparagus, for instance – in damp kitchen paper to keep them fresh and crisp. Ditto herbs.
• Some foods are better not kept in the fridge. A cool, dark place is ideal for bread, bananas, pineapples, potatoes, and onions.
• Freeze stuff you can’t use, either as ready to use vegetables, or sauces, dips, soups … but you know this.
• Stick to your shopping list … says she who sees, wants and buys …
• Rediscover the art of rechauffé! Don’t think ‘leftovers’ – think creative rechauffé!
• (‘An extravagant cook will throw extra cooked food away. An unimaginative one will simply warm it up or serve it cold’. No idea where the quote came from – but apt.)

We all know the hacks about reviving stale bread – refresh in the oven mostly, but seriously stale bread will need wetting again. Or soak it in stock or milk and use it for savoury bread puddings, or lasagne-style dishes. There’s always breadcrumbs! And, of course, panzanella, that delicious salad.

Hard cheese freezes well, whether as a piece or grated.  Semi-skimmed and skimmed milk freezes well, as ice cubes for convenience, speed of thawing. Whole milk can be frozen but likely to separate and will need a good shake when thawed.

Over-ripe avocados freeze well as guacamole. Or dice it, freeze on a tray, then bag, to use in salsas.

Cooked rice – well, we all know about fried rice! Use it in stuffing’s, blitz it to thicken sauces, make fish cakes, rissoles, those yummy Italian rice balls, arancini; mix it with spring onions, pomegranate cils, herbs (especially, coriander, Olive!), garlic and use as a topping for fish or chicken or lamb or a vegetable pie.

Olive: I use it in scrambled eggs and of course mix it with canned red beans so good and very southern.

Too much pasta? Um, I have an aversion to pasta salads – and rice salads, for that matter – too many parties where they were a boring, economical dish. I tend to add it at the last minute to soups or stews so they don’t go to mush. They can also be blitzed to thicken sauces. Quickly sauteéd with some interesting and colourful extras will make for a tasty side dish.

Olive: a good dressing for pasta salad is a 1 2 3 recipe. 1 cup Mayo, 2 Tbsp white vinegar, 3 Tbsp sugar..mix well and stir into your pasta salad… so good.

Tilly: You enjoy it … I’l stick to leaving pasta and rice out of my salads.

The ubiquitous bubble and squeak can accommodate plenty of vegetables other than potato and cabbage! Especially if it is made crisp in the frying pan, flipped and the other side make crunchy too!

Olive: Folks, Bubble and Squeak is potatoes and cabbage fried together. It dates back to the mid 1700’s in England and was considered a peasant dish. Tilly should have mentioned that

Tilly: Tilly assumed everyone knew that …

Don’t waste the stems of broccoli, kale, Swiss chard, cauliflower – cut them into fingers and cook till tender in butter to serve as poor man’s asparagus. They contain on all the goodness of the florets and leaves – calcium, iron and zinc and the usual vitamins.

Ditto vegetable peelings – much of the goodness of vegetables lies just under the skin. Include the peelings in vegetable fritters: approx. 400g root vegetables, the peels (all washed and squeaky clean!), grate with an onion, chunk of cheese; mix in salt and pepper, garlic, herbs, an egg. Stir in some flour. Drop spoonsful into hot oil, flatten with the spoon. They will cook faster the thinner they are. Cook till crisp. Beetroot peel and carrot peel lend a tomato-ey colour. Tasty with a poached of fried egg on top. Can be a useful way to ‘hide’ vegetables from fussy eaters.

Olive: I agree especially with children who want to be picky eaters.

Other cooked vegetables can be mashed/pureed and frozen in ice cube trays and used as starters for sauces, gravies, soups. Too many or ‘tired’ herbs can be blitzed, including the stalks, with about 100ml olive oil, a couple of tablespoons of wine vinegar, the same of water, a pinch of sea salt and frozen as ice cubes to make a bright green ready-to-use oil. Excellent over hot cooked potatoes, for marinating meat, a salad dressing, over butter beans …

Mash strawberries to use later in ice creams and sauces. Raspberries freeze well whole, along with other berries that have less water than strawberries. Apples, pears, well you know what to do with them to use later!

Revive stale cakes or muffins with the juice from canned fruit, and warm in the oven. Or soak dried fruit in the juice. It can be used in marinades, salad dressings, or dilute with water to drink. Soak stale bread in the juice and use for puddings.

Not enough of any of the leftovers to make something out of nothing? Make stock from the bits. Add anything else in the fridge or veg rack that needs using.

Olive wanted me to include recipes from WWII … I found them boring and bland, which is not surprising given the limited ingredients and small choice of even home-grown veg, regardless of the inventiveness. But I did find a German-inspired recipe called ‘Klump’, which should please Olive. It’s packed with potatoes, bacon, pears and kale – a great way to use leftovers.

Olive: Tilly, I hate kale. If your food during that time was boring then blame Lord Woolton the “Ministry of Food”. Here is a piece of trivia for ya. Did you know that at the end of WW2 Americans and the British were at their healthiest. To learn about some of the recipes Tilly doesn’t like and about Lord Woolton, enjoy.

https://digital.nls.uk/ministry-of-food/archive/247518044  and some of those recipes really are not as bad as Tilly speaks of.

Tilly: They were at their healthiest because there was no/little junk food, and portion sizes were adhered to because of shortages and availability.

All that left to do is to remember what you froze and saved to use at a later date …

“Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors—it’s how you combine them that sets you apart.” ― Wolfgang Puck, Chef

Tilly and Olive