An alarming report from the World Watch Institute, an independent research organization with its eye on the environment, says that the amount of food we waste every year here in the U.S. weighs as much as 74 Golden Gate Bridges! Earlier research estimates that we toss out about 14 percent of the food we buy, or about $600 worth a year on average. That’s a lot of money being tossed into the garbage!
I’m shopping at my local farmer’s market now that it’s open again (find one near you at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website) and I’m hyper-aware that I want to eat all that fresh produce before it spoils.
So the mushy tomatoes get made into tomato sauce; I just chop the tomatoes and sauté them in olive oil with a little basil, sometimes some garlic—super fast and yummy too! The starting-to-shrivel strawberries and blueberries get blended into breakfast smoothies. The celery tops and flimsy stalks, the sad onions, and whitening baby carrots go into a pot of water where I boil them into stock, which I freeze until it gets colder and I feel like making soup.
What are your creative solutions for using up food before it goes bad?
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