Photo by Markus Spiske
Asparagus-pee, good. Asparagus-fridge, bad.
This all started with a conversation with M…
“The fridge is starting to smell” he said, to which I responded, “It’s okay if my pee smells like asparagus, but not my fridge.” His response? “That should be the first line of your next blog post.”
Alas, here we are.
How to use food scraps:
Immediately:
Whenever you chop your vegetables, instead of tossing the peels, stalks and stems, put them in a bag and store them in the freezer. This is a good practice to get into the habit of when trying to reduce food waste. What can you make with frozen vegetable scraps?
STOCK!
Instead of using the sodium-flavoured stock cubes you buy for .50 at the supermarket, you can make your own!
Get Inspired:
Vegetable soup stock
Put the stock into ice cube trays, and make your own stock cubes for ease
Make miso soup by adding a tablespoon miso paste to the stock
Make different combinations of stock
5 Creative Ways to Use Old Vegetables
Photo by Suresh Designer
Vegetable cream!
Need: add some coconut milk to make it even more creamy and awesome.
Some of my favorite are coconut carrot soup with ginger, classic tomato soup, cream of broccoli, creamy mushroom and wild rice soup, and of course green goddess soup with chard, spinach and whatever of other green goodness you have around.
Juice!
Need: add some apples or your other favorite fruits to the mix.
This is a great option because your veggies don’t need to be pretty to make juice. I’ve used this option for carrots, celery and spinach!
Salsa!
Need: add some extras like cilantro, lime juice, or jalapeños.
I recently had some tomatoes in the fridge that were beginning to wilt. I grabbed them, diced them up, added some mango (also on its way out), radish, red onion, cilantro and habanero peppers with agave and lime juice and made an amazing salsa! Since it’s more liquidy, it doesn’t matter if your tomatoes aren’t perfectly firm and plump.
Fried Rice!
Need: old rice!
The best fried rice is made with day-old rice. Don’t ask me why, it’s an Uncle Roger truth, and I trust his fried rice. I recently opted for fried rice when I saw that my fresh peas were turning brown. I added some carrots, green onion, and lots of soy sauce and fresh ginger. Since the rice is the star, you can get away with older veggies!
Hummus!
Need: old beetroot + chickpeas
See a beet, grind it up, for the rest of the day you’ll have good luck! Cooked beets come in packages of 3 or 4 in Spain, so when I saw one lonely beet in a Tupperware, I remembered that if I add chickpeas and tahini with lemon I’ve got a banging hummus. The result was magical!
I really am on a mission to reduce my food waste, and get over this BS idea that vegetables need to be pretty to be worthy of being on my plate! Hope this inspires you too!
