What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

[thalassa]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

You can also plant sweet potatoes. Unlike regular potatoes, (being an entirely different plant) the greens are edible.

So are carrot greens (make a great addition to salad), green onion tops, and celery leaves...all of which can be grown from the trimmings.


I'm in the process of trying to grow some date palms from date palm seeds again...my last batch (and they were a year old!!) got dumped by zee catz. You can grow avacado, lemon (and other citrus), and ginger (from the root), along with a bunch of other table scraps.

[Rae'ya]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

I'm on my tablet so no multiquotes 'cos it's too hard...

Danie... I store lettuce and salad greens in plastic with no trouble. But it's those Tupperware FridgeMates with the ridged bottoms and the dual breathing holes... keeps 'em out of the condenstion and lets 'em breath. They seem happy enough and last ages. (Though I mostly buy salad greenss for the ducks, not us!)

Guinea pigs and rabbits... dark gourmet type lettuce is fine, as is rocket and raddichio. Iceberg lettuce is NOT. But I generally tell people that while it's okay, don't rely on them as greens and mix it up with carrot and celery tops, kale, spinach, mustard greens, the outer leaves of broccoli and cauli and dandelions etc. To much of any one green is not great.

Potatoes... I thought that ANY green was bad, because it's not just the green bit that's got the toxic stuff in it. Torey and I only buy potatoes when we need them (and almost never buy a bag), but I always chuck them the minute I see green.

[Jembru]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Dannie: thanks for the link. I'll definitely do this next time I find a potato that has fallen behind the rice and grown legs. You're right that I should just do as much as I can and accept that some food has to go in the bin. I had to throw out a sandwich thin this morning because it had gone moldy.

Rae'ya: I'm glad my mum's book can be trusted. It's pretty comprehensive and covers everything from basic care to common ailments. It seems to have been compiled by professional breeders rather than vets though. So it's a relief to be reassured! You've no idea how precious these lil' cavies are to my mum (actually I'm sure you have every idea having met many 'Jem's mums' yourself).

My mum has a purpose made porcelain barrel on her bench to keep potatoes in. It's like a giant cookie jar. Can you tell I have my mum on the brain at the moment?

[thalassa]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

The dose makes the poison.

In the case of potatoes, they make solanine, which is a natural insectacide. The greener and deeper the green, the more solanine (solanine is coupled with cloraphyll production. Sure, you can ingest enough to make you ill, and even to kill you...but that takes a whole lotta tater.

Green potatoes are ok if only the skin is green and you peel the skin off. If the whole potatoe is green, don't eat it. If the flesh is green under the skin, you should probably bin it, but as long as you cut off all the green (and a bit beyond), you will probably be fine. One experiment showed something like 16 oz of the equivelent of green potato for a 100 lb person to make them ill.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

When I was young, this is one of the things we did with stale bread - it was lovely!

http://familystoriesphotographsandmemories.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/family-recipe-friday-nans-stale-bread.html

We also used to put broken up stale bread in a dish, pour some boiling milk on it, and maybe a bit of sugar if we were lucky. And that was lovely too.

I've never yet had a rabbit that tolerated lettuce - dandelions, yes. But wild rabbits won't touch dandelions!

[DanieMarie]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

I love that recipe! I'll have to use it. I've made bread pudding before, but that looks nicer.

For anyone who uses rocket, it works cooked in some situations. So do radicchio and endives. Rocket tastes good on pizza, and although it wilts when it bakes, it holds its flavour. Radicchio and endives can be sauteed.

[thalassa]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

I was sitting here going "WTF is rocket?"


Thanks to google, I know its ARUGULA!!

[Jembru]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Oh something else with a different name over there?

Yeah, I like rocket but if I can get them, I prefer to buy the living plants that keep for a few weeks or longer on your windowsill, because for some reason it can be too strong for me if I buy it bagged.

[DanieMarie]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

I was sitting here going "WTF is rocket?"


Thanks to google, I know its ARUGULA!!

I had to suppress the urge to call it "ruccola," which is what it's called in German. I only ever call it that, even when I speak English.

[Rae'ya]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Oh something else with a different name over there?

Yeah, I like rocket but if I can get them, I prefer to buy the living plants that keep for a few weeks or longer on your windowsill, because for some reason it can be too strong for me if I buy it bagged.

Hehe I should post a photo of mum's rocket plants... she let them go to seed this year and they got so tall they've fallen over and are completely unrecognisable!

Which brings me back to the thing about mixed salad greens... lettuce is super easy to grow, and if you eat lots of salad you just pick off a few leaves as you need them. Provided you don't plant too many you'll have a constant supply of fresh lettuce with almost no wastage. And if you plant gourmet types, when the plants mature and get bitter, they can go to the ducks (erm, I mean guinea pigs lol).

We're staying with my parents while our house is being built and even though it's the end of winter mum's garden has harvestable lettuce, spinach, kale, raddichio, rubarb, asparagus, sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley and oregano. With four of us in the house plus two greedy ducks, having that garden is a fantadtic way to save money and reduce food wastage. I don't have to buy greens for the ducks, and we harvest what we need while the rest of the lettuce head sits in the ground keeping beautifully fresh for weeks.

Having a pet that eats greens and veg scraps as part of their healthy diet also reduces wastage... ducks, chooks, GPs and rabbits are great for that. As are worms! Worm farms can be set up in a tiny space and will use up lots of scraps and past-it veg (even the slimy ones). And compost is never waste! I think we need to consider not just reducing waste, but actually finding alternatives to chucking it in the bin.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Absolutely - there are so many things we can do with all sorts of waste - even fabric and clothes. I hate throwing things out. Food especially, it goes against the grain.

I was frantically composting everything until about a year or two ago when my compost bins were taken over by bumble bees nesting in there. Nowadays I tend to leave them be as much as I can and just let the bees get on with it.

[Jembru]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

I was frantically composting everything until about a year or two ago when my compost bins were taken over by bumble bees nesting in there. Nowadays I tend to leave them be as much as I can and just let the bees get on with it.

They moved into my sister's shed and now she's obsessed with them. She's learnt to identify several species (more or less, some look pretty similar), and my mum made her little bee boxes that she can use to pick them up when she finds them on the pavement and release them somewhere where they can't be stood on!

Back on topic; tonight I made my first stir-fry with the browning leaves, dried out leeks and wrinkled up ends of bell peppers I had at the bottom of the salad drawer. I bought some toasted sesame seed oil the other night, so I used a dash of that to fry in. Served it up with some couscous that I flavoured with lemon and some of the coriander I have growing on the windowsill. Yummy yummy!

[kalynraye]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Jem have you tried making pickles or jam yet? For all the cooking I can do and do do it saddens me to admit I don't seem to have a green thumb. Or at least I feel like I don't. I would love to have a small potted garden but I am also terrified I would kill it all.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Limp celery - where the crunch has gone - is brilliant as a steamed vegetable.

[DragonsFriend]

Re: What can I do with....? The food waste reduction thread.

Celery is always good in soups and salads. Limp or not the smell and taste adds dimensions to the meal.