The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.

Potato Skin Crisps and 4 Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste

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This month’s The Recipe Redux challenge is one that is near and dear to my heart (and actually a topic that you may have heard me talk about before):

In honor of Earth Day on April 22, we’re challenging ReDux members to show how they reduce food waste. Whatever you would normally toss, use it up. Share tips for reducing food waste in meal planning, prep or using up scraps.

There are so many reasons, from environmental to financial, why reducing food waste is a great goal and if I am being totally honest, it is an area that is still a work in progress for me. While I almost never let cooked food go to waste, I struggle with what to do with all of my vegetable scraps since I don’t have a yard big enough for a compost bin. Some of them I store in gallon-sized freezer bags to use when I make vegetable or chicken broth, but often times those bags (yes, there is more than one) reach capacity and so then I end up tossing peels, ends, and cores—and feeling guilty about it every time. Not very productive, I know.

So, if you are like me and throwing food away makes you crazy, here are some ways to at least start reducing food waste that have worked for me. And, please, please, please share your tips and tricks in the comments so we all can benefit!…

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Waffleritos: And How to Use Up the Food You Already Have in Your House

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I’ve got an awesome, super simple, extra flexible recipe for you guys this week! Waffleritos. Yup, you guessed it, a combination of waffles and burritos, and what could be better than that? But first, some practical tips on how to cook with what you’ve got. The inspiration for the recipe and this post comes from this month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux:

Spring Clean the Kitchen. Cook with at least 3 ingredients that are actually in your refrigerator or pantry right now. Try not to go to the store to buy anything new. Give tips on how to make a healthy dish out of whatever you have on-hand.

This topic is near and dear to my heart and is tied to one of the complaints I hear from people over and over again—that they struggle with food waste—vegetables go bad before they can use them all up, meat is forgotten and goes off, and they are reluctant to buy recipe-specific ingredients because they aren’t sure how they will use the remainders in other recipes. I have even spoken with people who have decided that they’d rather order out instead of grocery shop and cook because the food waste stresses them out so much. I am very sympathetic to this struggle as it is one that I experienced for years when I was first becoming comfortable with cooking. I vividly remember going into my produce drawer and finding slimy green things that made my stomach turn. I also remember struggling with what to do with leftover ingredients from new recipes I had tried (I used to avoid buying cabbage and bok choy at all costs for this reason). Over time, though, as I became more comfortable with cooking and improvising, I found this source of stress started to dissipate and I developed a couple of tricks that were really helpful in avoiding food waste….

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Surviving a Cold and Homemade Stock: It is easier than you think!

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Last week a cold invaded our house. My littlest one brought it home and generously shared it with the rest of us. While he can be quite dramatic about lots of things, the kid is usually very stoic when it comes to being sick, so I didn’t even really realize he had more than a runny nose and a cranky mood until his big brother got sick (and then I was wracked with guilt about how annoyed I had been at his attitude when really he had been feeling crummy—sigh, one more notch in the parenting mistakes column).

Considering it was the end of January, though, and we hadn’t had a cold or flu in the house yet this season, I really couldn’t complain, but just got focused on pulling out all the cold soothing techniques I could. This time ‘round the thing that was most appealing to everyone was broth-based soups. First it was chicken noodle, then it was vegetable noodle, and then there were some of us who just drank broth straight….

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Carrot Greens Pesto (or ways to reduce food waste)

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I come from a long line of food-shouldn’t-be-wasted-ers.  While I wasn’t raised in a
“clean plate club” household (thank goodness!), my family, and especially my mom, made sure that whatever was left was eaten as leftovers or used in another meal later in the week. The little bits of meat ended up in a pot pie or a pasta, the bones were used for stock, the stale bread became bread crumbs and croutons, all of those things that have become popular again were present all throughout my childhood. And for that I am so grateful.

But as I have gotten more and more into my own version of making the most of my food there were certain things I noticed that I was still throwing away and it bothered me. Beet greens, carrot greens, fennel fronds, to name a few. The beet greens were easy- sautéing them as I would kale or chard is delicious, especially as a warm salad with roasted beets and some feta! The fennel fronds have been a wonderful addition to my stocks. But carrot greens?…

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Sweet Potato-Bok Choy Soup

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I love bok choy. I really do. I love it in stir fry because it adds such a wonderful crunch and flavor. There is only one problem: unless I am making a stir fry to feed 10, I always have leftover bok choy and I just don’t know what to do with it. Now, as I have written about before, I hate wasting food, so I have tried it in salads and have never been crazy about it. I have tried braising it and that’s ok. But I really wanted to find a way to use my leftover bok choy that would be tasty and exciting. And I finally did! Sweet potato-bok choy soup….

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