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

[Jembru]

Thanks to John Oliver I'm now a bit paranoid about food waste. I've noticed JP and I waste a lot more than I imagined we did. It's often that I simply can't think of anything to do with the food item, especially if the recipe I'd bought it for is time consuming and I'm working back-to-back shifts.

Tonight I rescued a few remnants of peppers and mushrooms that weren't fit for salads, and made a nice quorn chili for me, and a prawn pasta bake for JP. I had to throw out some mixed salad leaves and a quarter bag of spinach that hadn't just gone rotten, it was turning to liquid (it was too late even to give to my mum's guinea pigs).

So that no more salad need die unnecessarily, I thought I'd start a thread where we can post what we have lying in the salad crisper, or in the back of our cupboards, that needs to be used up. So our more kitchen-savvy members might come up with ideas.

So my food items this time are;

Half a good sized beetroot (still in very good shape). I usually roast it, but I don't like all my other veg turning red, so I don't use much, meaning it often ends up in the bin.

Cos lettuce, starting to brown in places so probably too bitter for salad, but maybe there's something I can do?

Thanks in advance.

[B. de Corbin]

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

Slice and boil the beet root, then you can freeze it, or put it in a jar with vinegar and eat it later, or put it on a sammi, or cut it up and put it in salad.

P.S. Save the beet boil water. When it cools, drink it - it's full of vitamins, and it will make you poop red the next day. A great party trick.

If you cut out the big central vein in the lettuce (romaine, to us in the US), the rest won't be bitter.

[thalassa]

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

YOU NEED WORMS!!

[B. de Corbin]

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

YOU NEED WORMS!!

One can only hope that you are referring to earth worms, not intestinal parasites...

[Jembru]

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

Slice and boil the beet root, then you can freeze it, or put it in a jar with vinegar and eat it later, or put it on a sammi, or cut it up and put it in salad.

P.S. Save the beet boil water. When it cools, drink it - it's full of vitamins, and it will make you poop red the next day. A great party trick.

If you cut out the big central vein in the lettuce (romaine, to us in the US), the rest won't be bitter.

Wow.. that's a really good tip about the beetroot water! I actually do something similar with rice water; I don't over rinse my rice, because apparently the stuff you wash off is actually full of vitamins, but the water I do rinse with, I keep to one side and wash my face with it. I'm a ginger so look better with pale skin, and they use rice water as a natural skin-whitener in East Asia.

I'll get that beetroot boiled up at once!

Also, great tip about the lettuce too. I assume that works for any lettuce, right? And finally I understand why I can rarely find romaine lettuce when a recipe calls for it!

YOU NEED WORMS!!

I don't have much of a garden (just a few plants in pots), so composting was never much of an option for me. I never thought to just keep worms for the sake of it though. I even had a worm farm as a kid, so this could be a fun project. It might make up for my disappointment at not being able to find stick insects (I had them as a kid, so I know they're easy to breed, and yet can't find anyone who has them and could spare a few little eggs for me ).

Thanks for the awesome tips. Ill be sure to return next time something is on it's last legs!

[Willow]

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

I'm going to offer up a few limes to this list of food needing a purpose.

This is actually an awesome idea for a thread. My live-in is freakishly wasteful (I think she buys things just for the sake of having them clutter up the house). Anyway, she buys food, uses about 1/10th of it and waits for the rest of it to rot into oblivion and thus require a fridge decontamination before she mentions that she has food in the fridge we can eat ourselves. And generally these things rarely constitute a dish in themselves with any of the recipes I've ever come across or used.

So yes, limes. About 3 of them.
Also, this thing I can only assume is a turnip?

[B. de Corbin]

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

Limes: squeeze out the juice, put it in a ziplock bag, and freeze it.

Turnip: boil, chop, and freeze. Defrost when you have other stuff together to make soup or stew. Or hollow it out and make a jack-o-lantern.

[thalassa]

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

So yes, limes. About 3 of them.
Also, this thing I can only assume is a turnip?

I cut up limes and freeze the wedges, then add them to ice water. Or to iced mint or green tea...or iced mint and green tea. Or beer.

As for turnips....I don't do those.



Also--I freeze spinach, kale, parsley, etc that is about to go bad (assuming I've not eaten it all up) and use it in smoothies (parley makes an awesome green smoothie), mashed potatoes (colcannon), or rice.

[Willow]

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

Hmm thanks! ^^

[Hawkfeathers]

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

Rinse & dry a whole lemon. Wrap in plastic wrap, then foil. Freeze. With a small cheese grater, grate some onto whatever you want it for, while still frozen, then put it back in the freezer, and you can do this repeatedly through the whole lemon, peel/fruit/seeds/it's all good. I'm single and this is perfect for me for when I cook a piece of fish, etc. I've been on the same lemon for a couple of months now.

[Tylluan Penry]

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

Turnips/swedes. Great roasted in with roast potatoes and sprinkled with herbs and sea salt. Carrots are good like that too.

Bread - makes stuffing, bread cake, bread pudding.

Milk that's gone off - curd cheese. Add a bit of salt to it and hang up in a muslin bag until all the liquid has dripped out (yes, I really do this!) and then add fresh chopped chives.
My son-in-law makes panaar like this but adds lemon juice instead of salt.

[Rae'ya]

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

Limes... lime curd! Though curd is not exactly a beginners recipe. Also... margaritas! Or anything Thai. Or Mexican. I would basically kill for a surplus of fresh limes... four of my favourite food groups use limes... citrus desserts, margaritas, Thai and Mexican. Yum yum yum.

Turnips are only really good for soup. If it's actually a swede (aka routabaga) then boiled and mashed as a substitute for mashed potato is good. As a general rule turnips have white flesh while swedes have yellow flesh. I think you can also roast em up for neeps and tatties but we'll have to confirm that with someone Irish!

Beetroot doesn't last long in this house. Roast it in a different pan was the first thing I thought of! Mum boils, slices then preserves her extra beets in vinegar for year-round access to salad and burger ready beetroot.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and Cos lettuce... feed it to your ducks? That's what would happen in my house. Jemima and Baby Duck would appreciate it FAR more than anyone else under my roof!

[anunitu]

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

In all this,we see Russia destroying food.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015...sanctions.html

And this happening while locusts are in southern Russia.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/europe...locust-swarms/

I think Putin may have slipped off the freaking toast completely.

[Jembru]

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

I just thought I'd swing by with an update of how all this food waste avoidance is going (with some requests at the end).

I'm still sometimes leaving it too long to use up fresh produce, especially with salad, but I'm much more conscious of what I throw out, and it really encourages me to use everything up. I buy bags of mixed leaves now, rather than various whole lettuces. It costs a little more, but if half my lettuces would just end up in the bin, I'd just be throwing money away anyway. Yet these bags of leaves don't seem to last as long, so I'm still finding that they're going mushy before I've finished the bag. The guilt kills me each time too.

Today I had 2 near misses (and one ends in quite a gross story, yet illustrates how much this food waste issue has touched me). I eat kiwifruit before bed because it's apparently good for sleep (actually, as this guy explains, it most likely isn't anything specific to just kiwifruit, but as one of my favourite varieties of fruit, and the fact I need to eat them for the omega I figured why not), and the one I picked out this morning felt a bit squishy and looked past its best. I don't like dry kiwis, so it ended up staying on my bedside cabinet, uneaten. When I got up tonight, I went to throw it in the bin, but just as I was about to let go, my conscience told me to at least cut it open. I did so, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it! Tasted just fine too.

Then an hour later, I needed to make my evening meal. I had some ready mixed stir-fry vegetables that were about a week past their sell-by, so I thought I'd use that up. It was starting to go bad; you know, that smell of onion as its starting to turn to mush. Some of the carrots were a bit dry and pale, and the leaves of the bean spouts were definitely on the browner side of green. Still, I thought I'd get it cooked and see how it turns out. I threw the rest in the bin, figuring it won't last another night.

It turned out to be one of the tastiest stir fries I've made in a while! So, erm.. this is when it gets gross... I decided to take the bag out of the bin >.<" It was sealed though! I rinsed the bag under the hot tap and then carefully cut it open so the contents didn't touch the outside, then transferred the smelly, slightly gooey mixture to a fresh bag! Don't judge me!!

Anyway, does anyone know what I can do with satsumas that are dry inside? Sometimes the local shop sells pretty poor quality ones that are dry from the day you get them home. JP especially won't eat them like this, and I prefer not to. Is there anything they're good for at this point?

Also, is there anything fancy I can do with runner beans besides just chopping and boiling or roasting them? I got a huge bag out of my dad's garden and JP won't eat them in case he's allergic (garden peas make his tongue and lips swell so he's nervous of any green legume). I make roast veg maybe twice a week, but as I'm the only one who'll eat it, I've still got loads left and they'll go off soon. I'd especially like to try making them into something I can snack on if that's possible?

[faye_cat]

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

Jembru, I don't have any recipes, but have you considered getting a sealer? We have something similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/Seal-a-Meal-FS...ler+food+saver and we use it all the time. It takes a bit of prep time, but we'll go to the grocery store and then come back and prep the food. For the lettuce, we'll wash it, sometimes premix items like cheese or what not, and then seal it and put it in the fridge. We'll also prep apples (wash and cut) and seal. We'll freeze the meats in this bag and not the store packaging, because it always seemed to go bad if we did.