Food Waste Recipes
By: JG
After all the information about many possible ways to reduce food waste and reduce your carbon footprint, there is one other way you can utilize your food to optimize it (and will save you trips to the grocery store).
There are multiple websites that can help you find recipes with ingredients or produce you have left. By using up, or consuming, the food that you would otherwise throw away or leave to expire, you can reduce the amount of waste, learn some new amazing recipes and help the environment.
For an easy way to look for recipes and new dishes to try, there is an app called Kitche. In the app, you can log the produce you have and it will then give you recipe results based on those ingredients. It can also keep track of the food you get if you scan the grocery store receipt, and then send reminders about the produce you have at home. It can save you time and money that would otherwise be wasted or left unused.
Uses for Food Scraps
Don’t dispose of your food scraps! Instead of throwing away some parts of your produce, you can use them to enhance your dishes and give a new twist to your recipes. For example, lemon peels can be zested and used for desserts, stale bread (as long as it is not expired) can be turned into small squares as croutons for salads, unused greens can be turned into pasta sauces, such as pesto.
Stale bread as croutons (Image from Food Network)
Pickling
Moreover, as a great way to make your produce last longer, pickling can be great for maintaining vegetables. Just make sure to research how each vegetable is best preserved. For instance, carrots should be peeled and cut into spears and on the other hand, cherry tomatoes are best pickled as a whole.
The basics to create your brine is to mix equal parts of vinegar and water. Any vinegar will work as long as it is not concentrated, such as malt vinegar. If you would like to add flavor to the brine, you can add fresh herbs or garlic to the mix. The most flavorful ones are dill, rosemary or thyme.
If you are choosing to do so, make sure you divide the herbs and/or the garlic into each container before putting your produce in. Then after boiling the brine, pour it over the vegetables or fruits. The produce will last you around two months refrigerated.
Homemade pickled vegetables (tasty yummies)
Of course, these are only optional tips and suggestions but tiny changes start adding up. It would really start to cause an impact in decreasing the amount of food wasted globally if we all took part in improving or switching our household behaviors.
Edited by: AC
