Broccoli Rising, Reading More, and Wasting Less
“The Waste Land”
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
I have a weird love of T S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” coupled with a horror of waste. So it’s oddly fitting that today kicks off National Food Waste Prevention Week.
Most of us are so used to having regular access to food, we’ve become blind to the privilege of it, the sacredness of it. As a result, we waste a staggering amount of food in this country— close to 600 pounds per person even as 44 million of us — our neighbors, friends, family — go hungry. The majority of wasted food is perishable items like fresh produce. Instead of going to the people who need it, it goes into landfill which pumps out greenhouse gases. This is no April Fool’s joke. This is a cycle that’s insane and unsustainable.
My mother was a repeat offender. An otherwise do-the-right-thing person, she bought the same food every week — bananas, eggs, bag o’ greens, frozen waffles, tomatoes — even though much of the previous week’s haul was usually still sitting in her fridge. So she’d throw it out. She wasn’t just throwing away perfectly good food, she was throwing away the money she spent on it, and the natural and human resources that went into producing it. Not nice, Mom. Don’t let this happen to you.
12 Ways to Reduce Food Waste
Do a quick kitchen inventory before you go food shopping.
Make a shopping list. This may seem anal and geeky, but it’s the only way I can remember what I need.
Embrace imperfect produce — better yet, eat it. Slightly wilted greens, smooshy tomatoes, and slightly bruised produce of all kinds make perfect additions to dips, juices, soups and stir-fries.
Sites like Imperfect Foods , Hungry Harvest and Misfits Market deliver slightly flawed foods right to your door.
If you can’t eat it now, parcel it out and freeze it for later.
Ferment the season’s vegetables now to enjoy later.
Compost produce scraps. Don’t have your own compost bin? Most communities have compost hubs.
Store perishables so they don’t perish too quickly.
Leftovers are your friends. Make a big pot of red beans and rice on Monday, a New Orleans tradition, and enjoy it all week long. This easy Thai curry helps you clean out the fridge and even shows you how to grow new vegetables from scraps — no waste!
Educate yourself on reducing food waste at home, at work, in our schools and our communities with a whole week’s worth of free webinars.
Local initiatives and nonprofits like Food Rescue US take unused food from restaurants, markets, events and caterers and deliver it to the people who need it in shelters and other community sites. Volunteer and be part of the rescue.
I could go on. In fact, I will. My Zoom video will show you how to make reducing food waste easy and delicious. Details coming soon. Stay tuned.
This is not only Food Waste Awareness Week, it’s a stellar week of authors at Books and Books, Miami’s favorite indie bookshop. If you’re in the 305, you don’t want to miss
April 3 Margot Livesey
April 5 Amor Towles
April 6 Michael Ondaatje
April 7 Annabelle Tometich
A hard act to follow? Yes and no.
April offers events everyone can enjoy wherever you live including a big celestial event and important literacy happenings.
April 7 National Library Week begins
April 8 Solar Eclipse Don’t miss it, especially if you’re anywhere on its path. Next eclipse won’t come around till 2044.
Not to be eclipsed, April 8 is also National Right to Read Day
April 9 Eid el fitr- Ramadan ends
April 15 Tax deadline, when my husband and CPAs across this land cross the finish line. File now, do your accountant a favor.
April 18 Ground Zero — a special zero-waste cooking class free for Broccoli Confidential subscribers. Stay tuned for details and Zoom link.
April 22 Earth Day, and Passover begins at sundown.
April 25 New Orleans Jazz Festival through May 3
Clean out the Fridge Manchurian Fried Rice
I don’t waste fresh vegetables, I use them. Sometimes I get overzealous.
Last week, I’d made a lovely dal for dinner, but it needed friends, accompaniment. However, I’d done such a good job cleaning out the fridge, I didn’t have much to work with. No.okra for bindi, no eggplant for baingan bharta, no cauliflower and potatoes for aloo gobi, not enough spinach for a vegan sag paneer. I had two carrots, some sagging celery, an onion and a red pepper. I felt practically naked.
I had two choices — be desperate or be creative. Desperation sucks, and fortunately, what I did have in the refrigerator was leftover rice. Fried rice is a genius way to bring new life to leftover rice, bling up tired vegetables, and do good for your body too.
I like a high vegetable to rice ratio, so I added all the odd bits and bobs of produce on hand, give everything a quick sauté, then added the rice. Freshly cooked rice is moist and fluffy, but it makes for soggy fried rice. Rice that’s cooked and cooled — whether homemade or leftover from last night’s takeout — produces superior fried rice. The grains stay drier, distinct, firm, and offer more good for your gut fiber. The geeky term is retrogradation.
Rather than adding classic soy and ginger, I made a little Manchurian sauce, a tangy Indo-Chinese combination of tomato, ginger, chile and garlic. It gave an edge to basic fried rice and paired nicely with the dal. #Somethingfromalmostnothing.
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