Reduce Food Waste

Since adopting a whole food plant-based lifestyle about a year ago, I have released (wordplay - I didn't lose the weight, I’m not looking to find it again!) nearly 40 pounds, eliminated a few prescribed medications and even found a new respect for the food I chose to eat and the waste I make preparing my meals. I’m trying to reduce my waste, and my waist!

Though I shop more often, I do have to shop smarter as our economy changes and the prices continually rise. I have plentiful fresh fruits and vegetables on hand and learned to use more of them in exciting meals. By growing the green habit of wasting less food, I’m actually saving time and money. Discover new places to shop beside the big-box grocery store, like the local farmers market or ethnic market, for a terrific variety of mushrooms, spice and grain/legumes.

Food is a resource, an investment to be respected. Use what you have spent money on, put more in your mouth and less in the trashcan. Common ideas found in my following book selections include:

• Save scraps, cut off less, and use more of each vegetable. Freeze an assortment of veggies for broth or smoothies. If there is a surplus, just freeze it rather than let it rot or spoil.
• Invest and explore vegetables and spices to change up your menu. Explore a new spice each week and vary your vegetables!
• Use mason jars to store dry goods and leftovers in the refrigerator. Clear glass allows you to quickly see what is inside the door. Use less plastic bags, wrap and containers. Use glass and reduce your garbage to the curb.
• Buy less food that comes in boxes or plastic; it ends up in the recycling bucket, and usually is full of salt and preservatives.
• Wash your food carefully, soak in vinegar or salt to clean off bugs and chemicals.
• Save the water you boil corn or eggs in and use it to water your plants with a bit of extra nutrition!
• Grow a garden, and save gas for car trips to the market.
• Try fruit in savory dishes, and use vegetables in sweet dishes (like an overnight veggie oatmeal for breakfast).
• Slice and incorporate broccoli, mushroom and cauliflower stalks.
• Invest in a microplaner and zest citrus before squeezing to enhance flavors.
• Make the freezer your friend and store your abundance wisely in freezer-proof materials.
• Make skin scrubs out of coffee grinds.
• Save eggshells - clean, dry, grind and use as houseplant fertilizer.

Challenge yourself to expand your cooking skills with inspiration and creativity from this collection of books found at the Mercer County Library System. It’s not just what you eat, it’s how you store and prepare it. Start cooking, explore flavors, and reduce your garbage output. Your body will love you even more than it already does!

101 Ways to Go Zero Wasteby Kathryn Kellogg

We all know how important it is to reduce our environmental footprint, but it can be daunting to know where to begin. Enter Kathryn Kellogg, who can fit all her trash from the past two years into a 16-ounce mason jar. How? She starts by saying "no" to straws and grocery bags, and "yes" to a reusable water bottle and compostable dish scrubbers. In 101 Ways to Go Zero Waste, Kellogg shares these tips and more, along with DIY recipes for beauty and home; advice for responsible consumption and making better choices for home goods, fashion, and the office; and even secrets for how to go waste free at the airport. "It's not about perfection," she says. "It's about making better choices." This is a practical, friendly blueprint of realistic lifestyle changes for anyone who wants to reduce their waste.

Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook: A Guide to Eating Well and Saving Money by Wasting Less Foodby Dana Gunders

Did you know that the average American throws away around $30 each month in the form of uneaten food? It's time to reduce the kitchen waste you produce, and save money. This book will show you how, via smart suggestions, checklists, recipes, and your very own kitchen waste audit. Dana Gunders dispels the illusion that addressing food-waste issues requires tons of your time and money. By showing how to shop smarter, portion more accurately, and simply use a refrigerator properly, Gunders gives the simple tools to produce less waste and eat more consciously.

No-Waste Save-the-Planet Vegan Cookbook: 100 Plant-Based Recipes and 100 Kitchen-Tested Tips for Waste-Free Meatless Cookingby Celine Steen

Hundreds of studies have shown that plant-based foods have a dramatically lower negative impact on the environment than animal-based foods. Vegans, who eat plant-based foods only, know this and are proud of it. By now, omnivores also have heard that this is another reason, aside from ample health benefits, for eating plant-based meals more often. Joni Newman celebrates the most earth-friendly, and most utterly delicious, ways readers can shop, cook, and eat plant-based foods, covering such matters as how to eat local produce whenever possible; how to save, store, and cook the parts of plants that one might be throwing out now; and how to buy and store food with zero non-recyclable, non-biodegradable packaging.

Scraps, Wilt + Weeds: Turning Wasted Food into Plentyby Mads Refslund

Scraps, Wilt, and Weeds features 100 recipes by Mads Refslund, one of the initial partners at Noma, the world-renowned Danish restaurant, using local ingredients in a sustainable, no-waste fashion. Using scraps from vegetables, fruits and animal proteins--food that would normally go to waste--Refslund creates beautiful and accessible recipes for the home cook without sacrificing anything to flavor. He uses 100% of the ingredient or as close as possible, including potato peels, cauliflower stems, or fish skins, but also ingredients that are passed over as too young, like green strawberries, or too old, like stale bread, wrinkly potatoes or bolted herbs.

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen: The New Green Basics Wayby Kate Heyhoe

Choosing local, organic foods benefits your health and the planet's. But how you cook is as important as what you cook: cooking itself is an under-reported yet substantial greenhouse gas creator. Now, Kate Heyhoe shows you how to think like an environmentalist in the kitchen. Without changing your politics or completely disrupting your routine, you can reduce your impact on the planet by rethinking how you cook, shop, and consume food. Using your favorite recipes, you can bake, broil, and grill in greener ways, saving fossil fuels and shrinking your "cookprint."

Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Mealsby Lindsay-Jean Hard

top throwing away your food scraps and start enjoying them on your table! A collection of 80 surprising, creative, delicious recipes for anyone who wants to cook smart, sustainable, and impressive meals out of unused bits of produce, cheese rinds, stale bread, and other oft-discarded foods.

Go Gently: Actionable Steps to Nurture Yourself and the Planetby Bonnie Wright

Go Gently is a guide for sustainability at home that offers simple, tangible steps toward reducing our environmental impact by looking at what we consume and the waste we create, as well as how to take action for environmental change. The title reflects Bonnie Wright's belief that the best way to change our planet and ourselves is through a gentle approach, rather than a judgmental one. This is a book of do's rather than don'ts. It's also an invitation to Wright's followers to join her on this journey to sustainability.

- by Marcia, Lawrence Headquarters Branch