I blanch and freeze most of what I can’t use in time (and you can quickly blanch small quantities of most things by getting them wet and microwaving for 30-60 seconds or so), but I also keep freezer bags full of scraps, peels, and mixed odds & ends for making stock. Empty one large freezer bag into a pot, along with an onion or two and whatever else you’ve got, plus a bay leaf & some peppercorns etc., cover with water, and simmer for a while, and you’ve got stock.  I save the stems & stuff from kale and collards, but broccoli is a little too strongly flavored for stock, unless you want to make broccoli soup or something.

Almost-bad, limp broccoli is pretty good in stuff like spaghetti sauce, and you can freeze that when it’s cooked. just cut off any brown or soft, yellow parts.

Worm composting is another good way to get rid of spoiled food, if your kitchen has a spot for it. It’s not stinky at all (compared to garbage). The worms also like coffee grounds and shredded documents.

All sounds great!

A while back I was at the Boqueria market in Barcelona, and they have a bean vendor who sells previously dried beans that have just been cooked in simple salty water. You then use them in whatever dish you are making, and they are the most tender tasty beans I’ve ever had. And they have two different kinds of white beans they sell cooked, the regular kind that are relatively straight and a more expensive curved one (like a comma shape) that they only cook on Fridays. YUM!!!

A quick overview of worm composting for apartment dwellers: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/downloads/pdf/materials/wormbin.pdf

@Physioprof: that does sound fabulous.

That sounds delicious. There’s a bean seller at our farmer’s market, and her stuff is really good. What I like especially is it’s fresh, so it doesn’t take long to cook.

You mean fresh beans off the plant, but not dried? Sounds amazing! Do you go to the Union Square famer’s market, or one in Brooklyn? We go to Union Square pretty regularly, and I’ve never seen anyone selling fresh beans.

Seconding freezing.  Aside from the above described, I also grate up zucchini and cook/puree squashes.  Then measure out the amount it takes to make a pumpkin pie or zucchini bread or whatever, and freeze in those quanitities, so that later baking is facilitated.

40%?  Holy freakin’ shit.

I’m not surprised at the 40% statistic, most Americans are very wasteful of food, although I would expect that’s changed since 2008, as food was on a general trend of getting cheaper before then.

My parents both had periods of nutritional uncertainty during their childhood(Depression/being in a concentration camp in Shanghai, China), as children we weren’t expected to clean our plate but we were suppose to finish any meat on the plate before we left the table.

My mother wouldn’t eat anything she didn’t like, even to be polite, and until the past few years I was the same way, although fortunately, occasions where I have to eat the “inedible” are few and far between.

I’ll sometimes have a bunch of fruit for a meal before they go bad, that’s what I call my Matter-eating Lad side coming to the rescue.

I try not to feel too bad about tossing it. Americans toss about 40% of food they buy, and we probably toss 5% at the most, and even then, I doubt it’s that much.

The food waste calculation:

It’s the difference between the U.S. food supply and what’s actually eaten, which was estimated by using a model of human metabolism and known body weights.

So “your” waste would include the stuff the grocery store throws out because it goes bad before someone buys it or gets passed over because it’s a bit bruised or dented or otherwise not as nice looking.  Also stuff restaurants throw out when they overestimate how many orders of a dish they’ll get.  And I’ll bet a whole bunch of other ways the food gets “lost” between the farm or plant and the checkout. 

It would be interesting to try and get a separate calculation of the amount thrown out after purchase.

I also try not to throw food out and feel a twinge of guilt when I do.  My father is in his nineties and he grew up very poor in Europe and was in a POW camp during WWII.  Throwing food away was a sin and rarely done.  (Of course, it fell on my mother to manage this and miraculously guess how much everyone was going to eat.)

They’re dried, but recently, so they reconstitute super-fast.

Coolio! Which NYC market has these?

We went apple picking and ended up with what seemed like a bushel or two of apples. Waaay too many. So I made applesauce out of them and then threw them into my big crock pot, leaving the lid off, for a day or two.  You can make the most incredible apple butter this way. I didn’t peel them at all although I did cut the cores out. I use the immersion blender at the end of the process to smoothe it out to butter consistency because I don’t have a food mill.  I’m on my second batch and I’m planning on adding calvados to this one.

aimai

Calvados, say 1/4th cup or so, is a good additive to apple pies and other such recipes, although I have to make do with Sauvignon blanc meself, the nearest outlet for the former being at least 30 miles away from where I live. 

Truly fresh apples! I miss them. I grew up/went to univ. in apple-growing areas, but now live far north of them…decently fresh apples get shipped in, but…not the same. I love where I live, but dream of farm-fresh apple cider, sometimes.

Calvados is lovely for cooking. Use it in any dessert that calls for a flavoured alcohol. It’s also delish with meat dishes.  I love it with duck and quail…you add it to brown stock/gravy just before serving and flame it! Especially good if you saute apple pieces in butter and put them on the meat/under the calvados-flavoured brown stock.

If you are not a meat-eater, apple slices/pieces sauted gently with any light-flavoured oil, brown sugar/apple pie appropriate spices are great over top of sweet crepes, ice cream, puddings, or anything else you can think of. Don’t forget to add them to pancakes! They partner well with maple or birch syrup.

Also, for old-fashioned appley goodness: baked apples…slight over-ripeness is fine since baking will deal with wrinkling, loss of tartness and any past their prime apple issues beyond actual mould and rot. Traditional fillings include butter, raisins, brown sugar and apple pie spices. If you are feeling fancy, peel them and wrap them in a sweet dough before baking.

When I was a child, any neighbours with too many apples dried apple rings in the attic…those in places with warm humid fall weather may have to use an oven or a food-drier. Dried apple rings are great snacks on their own or added to yogourt, hot cereals.

Composting: where I live, we are blessed with a municipal composter paid for through the city tax base, with additional federal waste reduction funds…useful since local conditions are so dry/cold that individual composters often fail to generate enough heat/bacterial activity to actually work. Compost is collected every two weeks and the city unit is BIG, so meat products are allowed. Our dump/landfill site hosts it and it requires electric fences to keep out bears, wolves, coyotes, foxes, etc… They sell the resulting compost back to us for our gardens.  I think this is a great thing, but I also try to appreciate how it allows us (as a group) to reduce individual waste.

Let’s face it, if you are not a gardener, and have the kind of life/schedule that makes COOKING a major chore, composting is just…not…going to be a priority, even if you regret the waste you may be generating. I grew up in a composting/gardening household, but NEVER composted as an adult until I was lived in a city that basically gave me a green bin and a printed up schedule of compost delivery and told me what to do. If your housing situation doesn’t allow a garden, composting is hard/unreasonnable and the more fresh food you try to eat, the more you are likely to end up having to discard.

kusawa, here in Central CA we have green trash picked up weekly, it’s not suppose to have any meat or the like, and it’s used for mulch in the city parks.

We have somewhat poor soil here, so we use the grass clippings for mulching purposes, and we still manage to fill the green can weekly with tree branches and the like, sometimes we generate enough for two weeks in a single day of sawing and clipping with the orchard loppers.

For potatoes, you can wrap them in plastic wrap and nuke them in the microwave for 5-7 minutes per potato, and then they’ll keep in the fridge for a while, and you can heat them up without wrap very quickly the second time around, great for doing stuff ahead of time like the night before as well.

Amanda, if you have room for it, a small dehydrator is useful for dealing with apples and some of the other stuff you’re getting, we’re talking about 4 to 5 cubic feet in size, max, and it’s also good for drying herbs as long as you keep the temp at 95 degrees Fahrenheit when doing so.

They don’t cost that much, the last time I checked, you should be able to find one that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg there in NYC.

Doesn’t have much to add to the cooking conversation, but just has to gloat that being in central Washington fresh apples this time of year aren’t exactly a rarity There’s an orchard bordering the back part of my property even, and from late August to the frost in late October the warm weather makes for the most wonderful apple-smelling breeze.

That’s a depressing statistic (40% food waste).  I knew that Americans waste a lot of food, but I honestly had no idea it was that much.  Think how much fertilizer, water, fossil fuels, etc. go into that.

Neither my wife nor I grew up actually poor, but there wasn’t a lot to spare, either, and very little food got wasted in our households, an ethos we have tried to maintain in our adult lives, for all the obvious reasons.  Plus, even though we are pretty well off now (after years of not so much), and don’t mind spending on good food, we hate to waste money, too.

I think we’ll work even harder at not wasting food now.

I really love that the chickens have reduced our food waste significantly.  They get any fruit or vegetables that are starting to go bad and love it.  That lessens the amount of green food (grass or other cutting spring-fall and hay in winter) they need as well as making them less eager for straight cracked corn/wheat mix (aka scratch).  As a result, I no longer feel guilty if I buy a few too many fruits or vegetables.
Our power has been out since a bit before 8 last night.  We dug out from the snow this morning and the grill is clear now after the melting we’ve had today.  So it will be grilled pork chops, stir fry of everything I have fresh in the fridge (plus maybe something from the freezer), and yogurt (before it has a chance to go bad).  breakfast was left over cornbread and chili from last night, with the chili reheated over the kerosene heater and water boiled over the heater for tea. 
Downed trees are creating power outages across northern New England.  We hope to have power back by mid-week.

@DAGCM Our yard is “northern-style” it’s a cold desert here, so grass requires topsoil, then sod and continual care, energy I prefer to direct to flower boxes and my tiny raised bed lettuce plot during the very short summertime. We are allowed to put yard waste exceeding the green bin at the curb at set times spring and fall.  Those who have cuttings all summer can drop them off without charge.

The meat-allowing municipal composter is a great thing…only works because much of the household waste from a community of 26,000 is going to the same spot with professionals watching over it…it gets so hot meat is easily “digested” . Lots of people hunt here, so the amount of meat-related waste per household gets pretty high in the fall, when people are butchering and prepping their meat in their yards.  Most of the schools compost and I know the bigger government offices are doing it. It’s far from perfect. Businesses, including restaurants are not obligated and many of them have standing arrangements to put unsorted waste in dumpsters, I expect public pressure/city by-law will be required to change this…it will mean additional labour for them, but they are the source of a big percentage of food waste entering our landfill and most people here are aware of that.

Our compost/garbage pick-up scheme is only a few years old. Sadly, we are starting to see conflict with bears. The bins (unlike older municipal garbage cans) are NOT bear-proof, but they are big, so people with smaller houses/in apartments often leave them outside all the time.  Bears have noticed this and a few have been killed in neighbourhoods near greenbelts when they started visiting bins on a nightly basis. The city is not responsible for bear management/public education about living with bears and I’m pretty sure the Territorial Conservation Officers hate the bins. The bins provide ample opportunity for people to inadvertently “lure” bears into situations where the Officers are likely to get called in and those situations often result in a dead bear. 

@TheRealistMom…sigh…I’m jealous. We get early McIntoshes, but I miss Cortlands, N. Spys and russets…not to mention the big jugs of unpasteurized cider at farmer’s markets. On the other hand, I ate moose and mountain goat last night and have bags of lingonberries (called “cranberries” here) in my freezer.

@helen w. h.  I hope your power comes back soon and that no-one got hurt from falling trees in your area! I grew up in the Maritimes…I miss the blizzards a bit…they are beautiful…but not the power outages or the ice storms, or shovelling all that heavy, wet snow.

Hope it’s helpful, Alex; there is tons of good info online if it’s not enough to go on. I keep mine in the basement because I can. It stays fairly cool most of the time in there despite hot NC summers. I made my bin out of three rubbermaid bins, the outer one is intact; I drilled holes all over the bottom and sides of the inner two, and sort of rotate them as they get filled. I put the resulting compost in the yard or potted plants, or give it to the neighbors who actually garden. I use shredded paper as the bedding, so it’s a great way to get really really rid of sensitive documents as well All you have to do with food waste is chop it roughly and toss it in, adding a handful of shredded paper once in a while.

(California has four seasons: Summer, Summer, Summer, and a sort of half-assed Fall-Spring hybrid).

I think the folks who live around Yosemite would beg to differ, as would any desert rat from Boron, CA.

Here in the southern San Joaquin Valley, we’ve had frost that devastated the citrus crops in 1998 and 1990:

On December 19, 1998, an arctic airmass began moving over Central California. The resulting cold air pool in the lowest levels of the atmosphere led to a devastating freeze to crops, especially citrus, in the Central and Southern San Joaquin Valley from December 20th through December 27th. Preliminary estimates of direct crop value loss are $555 million, with the total direct and indirect economic loss to the area estimated at $2.5 billion. The Central and Southern San Joaquin Valley counties account for $12 billion (Calendar Year 1997 gross value) of California’s agricultural industry. The largest percentage of area crop losses are from damage to lemons and oranges. Several other unharvested fruit and vegetable crops, including avocados and broccoli, also suffered widespread damage. Many other crops, such as olives, may have been affected. This 1998 freeze event was eerily reminiscent of the freeze during the exact same time period in December 1990. In fact the coldest morning was December 23rd in both years. The 1990 freeze event destroyed 90% of the citrus crop, virtually all of the unharvested crop at the time of the freeze, and killed some mature groves. In the 1998 freeze, extended intervals of sub 27o F temperatures (a temperature threshold for damage) did extensive harm in citrus growing areas from Kern County northward to Madera County in the Central Valley.

We have very thick radiation fogs that are unique to our part of the world in the winter, I’ve had a retired cop from urban New Jersey tell me one of the most frightening experiences in his life was driving through a winter evening’s fog here in the Valley.

We do have the times of the year when orange blossom smell is in the air, there’s nothing like a cool spring twilight when later the scent seems to herald the fall of night.

I’ve lived in St. Louis, where there is a ‘real winter’ with snow on the ground, I’ll take our somewhat frosty but mostly snow-free winters instead, thank you very much.

I cannot yet reliably wear long pants without being utterly miserable

It gets down into the upper 40s at night now, perhaps you need to become a superhero with the title Captain Night Pants, that’s the ticket, yeah!

kusawa, thank you for the good wishes.  Still no power though.  The tree is even still not completely off the main arterial road (RT 110 in northern MA, closed since early Saturday), but at least the utility company trucks have been there.
I ended up steaming aspearagus with onions in a foil packet and butternut squash with lemon juice in another.  We ate those as they finished up along with boneless pork chop and provelone sandwiches.  We have snow in the fridge to keep the temp down, so I’m hoping not to lose much, and now nothing much is left that can’t go to the chickens.

Was still out midafternon, but back on by 9 pm fir us.  There are still 500K+ in the area (MA & NH) without though.

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