waste free – Eat – Drink

Celery cut from the garden this morning, destined for tuna salad. Don’t let your celery liquefy!

Today is the first ever International Day of Food Loss and Waste Reduction. Let’s celebrate with a small guilt trip, followed by some waste reduction strategies!

The FAO estimates that 14% of food is wasted before it reaches consumers, such as during harvest, storage, and transportation.¹ However, their still resides a responsibility for all of us who eat to do our part to respect that which nourishes us.

When that head of celery wilts and rots in the bottom of the vegetable drawer, it is taking with it the soil, amendments, energy, and labor that went in to planting, growing, harvesting, and shipping it into your fridge. Quite a bit of the produce you consume (and most, if you are shopping small and local) is harvested by hand.² Additionally, you wasted your time and money procuring and storing it.

Likely you intrinsically already know this. It is not a surprise, but you shrug your shoulders at a $1.99 vegetable, now turning to sludge in your wastebasket. It’s the same as they used to say about cigarettes, you are setting your money on fire. And when this all adds up, it is the world that is left to burn under the weight of an eroding ozone layer.

What a nice guilt trip! Find consolation in this photo of my overstuffed compost tumbler:

Here are a few things I personally do at home to minimize our food waste (and ways I need to improve!):

I get overzealous about supporting local producers and buy Way. Too. Much. Food. Especially in these dwindling days of warmth when I know snow and greenhouse grown greens are all that remain on the horizon. To combat this, each week I am freezing, drying, or canning the bounty I schlepp home from the farmers market. However, one of the benefits of buying local foods is that because they are fresher, they last longer! As much as I pretend, this is not an excuse to buy more than I need.
Excessively purchased vegetables–here’s looking at you, bell peppers–are washed, cut up, blanched (sometimes), drained and portioned into food saver bags. I ❤ my vacuum sealer. This is how I ensure I have Michigan sweet corn to eat all winter long. This is also a good strategy for produce that is starting to get wilty or that I know won’t get used before it molds.

Trimmings headed for compost vs trimmings for stock. The beet ends could have gone either way, but some were starting to mold, so better safe than sorry.

Trimmings – whether from vegetables or meat, these bits get organized into plastic bags in the freezer door. When full, I dump a bag into a big stock pot (in the cold months) or the crock pot (in the hot months), top with cold water and simmer for hours up to overnight to make stock. This is either used as needed or frozen for later. Note: if I had a pressure canner, I would can this stock to free up more freezer space.
Compost. Sort of. Produce scraps that don’t go for stock (stems, especially nightshade; rotten bits; moldy, stinky, or slimy), egg shells, and paper bags are the most common items I try to compost. The compost piles are fenced to keep the dogs out, but I have learned that if I put even the most unrecognizable lettuce leaf in, the possums come swarming, then the dogs try to eat the possums… it’s a mess. That means kitchen waste must go in the compost tumbler. The stinky, heavy, unruly compost tumbler that probably should have been emptied years ago and a few times since. I want to be better at composting kitchen scraps (yard waste is easy, just throw it in a pile), but it is admittedly low on my radar. Maybe I should invest in backyard chickens…

They stopped collecting brush this year due to pandemic under-staffing. Likely my compost piles would have looked this way regardless.

For the Sustainable Food Systems class I am currently taking, one of the required texts was Waste Free Kitchen Handbook by Dana Gunders. It provides a nice overview of ways consumers (that’s you!) can combat waste at home. My favorite part is the “Directory” at the end of the book that describes the best way to eat, store, freeze, or use up different food items from produce to oils. I would love to lend this out to anyone interested, for yourself or someone you know.

A major step forward in reducing food loss and waste is critical to achieve the SDGs. FAO. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1238015/icode/. Published October 14, 2019.
Labor: US Fruits and Vegetables. Rural Migration News.
https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1596. Published January 2011.

In 2014, I attended the second 4-H auction of my life. The year previous, my friend Jen shared her secret to local, ethical, affordable meat that supported area youth. I signed up as a bidder with the hope of returning home the proud owner of a delicious pen of chickens. What had been, in years past, a category overflowing had dwindled to one family of three children raising chickens. I was quickly and devastatingly outbid by local businesses who were better able to financially support the kids. Admittedly, I was more interested in eating the fruits of their labor. I did manage to win a pen of rabbits which gave me the opportunity to learn how to breakdown an animal (thanks, YouTube).

But in 2014, I was determined to come home with a much larger prize to fill my new freezer. I don’t eat a lot of meat, especially not red meat, but I do have a taste for lamb.* This was my first time bidding in a live auction and I was ill-prepared for how stressful it would be! Every time I raised my paddle, my heart was pounding out of my chest, I was sweating, and I’m pretty sure I cried a little. I set a price cap and was outbid on my first three choices. On the fourth, I was also outbid, but the winner chose to only take the smaller of the two lambs (they are generally sold in pairs). At this point, as the second highest bidder, I was asked if I would like the larger lamb at the winning bid. I was so exhausted from bidding and had only planned on keeping one lamb, so I agreed. Jen was joyously congratulating me when I felt someone tapping on my left shoulder. I turned to see an elderly woman at my side, smiling at me with teary eyes. “Thank you,” she said. When I clearly looked confused she elaborated, “That was my grandson. Thank you so much for buying his lamb.” The unlikelihood was not lost on me, and this definitely felt fated.

With my goal met, Jen and I wandered off to find the lamb I had purchased. I took her photo, which has since been lost due to my poor digital management skills. Shown is the lamb I purchased this year. I cannot stress the importance of knowing where your food comes from, of teaching children where their food comes from, to begin to build an appreciation for the world we live in. With that appreciation comes gratitude.

That same year, I had taken a soap making class with the MI Folk School. As a person, I want to see and do everything at least once. When I had my lamb butchered, I asked for everything but the head. I specified all bones and fat trimmings. I had plans to make stock and to make soap.

Fast forward six years and with the purchase of another lamb looming in my future, I needed to make space in the freezer. The bottom drawer was completely full of a garbage bag of trimmings.

I worked through it in batches. Thawing, grinding, and cooking down the trimmings. I used the wet method of rendering the tallow. This meant adding enough water to submerge the particles. I used my giant crockpot, which I set in the mudroom as all the articles I read warned that this process would be stinky. This was the right choice. While it didn’t smell bad, it smelled a lot.

After the first rendering, which I left to cook overnight, I realized I had quite a bit of straining to do. The suet was still in chunks and I was aiming for a homogeneous product. After double straining, I let the mixture cool to separate the tallow from the liquid. This remaining liquid was brown and thick and per internet recommendations, I flushed it down the toilet. I was left with impure tallow that still smelled a bit meaty. Personally, I prefer my soap to not smell like food. I wet rendered the tallow a second time and created a creamy white, almost scent free product.

I felt so much gratitude at this step. I stood over my pot of tallow and cried, thanking this lamb and the little boy who raised her for giving me this opportunity. Not only for feeding me for the last few years, but now allowing me to create another tangible, necessary item and grow my skill set.

I might not have taken the head or hide, but I used as much of this animal as I could. I rendered, in total, just under 8 pounds of tallow, destined for soap and delicacies to be detailed soon.

*Not as big of an appetite as I had presumed; it took me almost six years to finish the whole lamb.

Tag: waste free

Waste Reduction

Tallow