Posts Tagged ‘food rescue’
I initially described this acorn squash as a leftover, but really it wasn’t, because it had never actually gotten as far as being cooked. It had simply sat in a bowl in the counter for three weeks, staring at me accusingly while I tried to avoid looking at it. That’s what you get for buying something you don’t often buy without having a specific plan for how you’re going to use it!
The other issue with the squash is that I had only bought one of them, which really wasn’t going to go far enough to feed four people in any recipe I already knew, so there it sat. I finally realised that it wasn’t actually going to leap onto the stove itself (although I suppose it might have, if I’d left it another couple weeks). So I turned, as always, to Chef Google. This simple recipe for apple acorn squash soup from BC Tree Fruits* took care of that squash, a few apples that weren’t quite as crisp as they once had been, and part of a huge bunch of parsley that seems to have no end. It also finished off the chicken stock I had in the freezer, which prompted me to make another batch of stock that in turn used up some not-so-crisp celery and more of that never-ending parsley. The crisper drawer is now in much better shape. Only nice fresh vegetables remain and I don’t have to feel a twinge of guilt or apprehension when I open the drawer. A fridge really isn’t any different than the rest of the house–if any part of it gets ridiculously cluttered, then it can become very difficult to concentrate at the task at hand (in this case, cooking).
Food waste really has become a huge issue for me over the past few years, and I’ll soon be starting a series on how to drastically cut down on the amount of food that gets thrown in the (compost, hopefully) bin. In the past it was quite common for me to have to chuck stuff out, but now it’s a pretty rare exception. It’s not that hard to change your habits–some menu planning, inventory-keeping, thoughtful grocery shopping, and liberal use of your good friend Google will all help to get your groceries into your stomach where they belong, rather than the landfill. An estimated 5% of food is thrown out of Canadian fridges–at least–on a regular basis. In Britain, it’s about 1/3rd and in the US, estimates are as high as 40%. I can’t see why Canada’s level of waste would be much different. Cutting back on this unnecessary waste is the easiest way to reduce our consumption and ease the demand for food production, not to mention reduce the significant methane gas emissions caused by decomposing organic matter in landfills while saving you some significant money on your food bills too.
As Alex Renton wrote in the Observer a few weeks ago, there would be no need for GM crops if supermarkets and consumers weren’t so wasteful. The first and easiest place to start is with a warming winter bowl of soup like the one above!
* Those are walnuts floating on the top. They weren’t about to go bad–I just thought they would taste good, and so they did. Next time I will candy them. Yum. It could easily be made into a vegetarian soup by substituting vegetable stock.
Posted: February 27th, 2009 under Action, Cooking, Fear of food, Food waste, Grocery stores, Leftovers, Recipes, composting, environment, food, food rescue, vegetarian. Tags: Action, carbon emissions, composting, Cooking, environment, food, food rescue, Food waste, grocery shopping, Leftovers, recipe, vegetarian
Comments: 1
After a couple of unpleasant experiences with having store-bought hamburger recalled because of possible E. coli contamination, I switched to buying free-range or naturally-raised meat. I was unhappy with the idea of animals being raised on factory farms, and was very pleased to find that the quality of meat produced more humanely was much closer to what I had enjoyed on our small family farm while growing up.
One consequence of this switch is that I now buy a lot fewer pre-cut chicken pieces, and generally get whole chickens instead. Although you can buy frozen chicken breasts from free-range farms, and they are certainly handy for quick meal, I find that their very convenience tends to make me a less thoughtful meat consumer. It is just too easy for me to pull them out of the freezer rather than take the time to think of a vegetarian alternative. We have become so accustomed in the west to casually consuming the most premium parts of an animal on a regular basis–bacon, ham, chicken breasts, steak–that we seem to forget that animals aren’t comprised solely of these parts. If, as in the old days, you only butchered one pig for your large family per year, you certainly wouldn’t be sitting down for bacon for breakfast and ham sandwiches for lunch every day. These things were a treat, not an everyday indulgence.
In fact, I think the rise of factory farms over the past few decades is in large part due to the commoditisation of this premium meat. The vast majority of people can’t afford to eat top-quality cuts of humanely-produced meat every day, so a farming system emerged that could churn out huge quantities of meat at low prices. People became accustomed to to this cheap availability and grew to expect it. But unfortunately, this bargain at the grocery and fast-food till could only be achieved at
an appalling cost to animal welfare and the environment. Buying a whole chicken really helps me to remember that 1 chicken=1 breast, and I prize the breast meat much more highly on the much fewer occasions that I do eat it.
Furthermore…I also must admit that I really balk at the price of pre-packaged chicken breasts. When you can buy a whole chicken for $15 or less, it seems extravagant to spend $10 on a few little pieces. I’m just too cheap! Taking the time to cut up a whole chicken into pieces will save you a LOT of money, especially if you’re buying free-range or organic meat.
If you don’t know how to cut up a whole chicken, you can find simple illustrated instructions here. The other night I cut one up and used the breast meat for a lovely chicken balti. I gave the thigh pieces to a friend to use, and was then left with the scraps of the carcass, two drumsticks, and a couple of wings. These would be hard to divide up between four people for another meal, and trying to rescue the meat off the raw wings and neck is would be time-consuming and somewhat unappetising. I tend to think that if you’re too squeamish to handle meat in its original format, you probably shouldn’t be eating it in the first place–but I don’t have much desire to chow down on a recognisable chicken neck! So I decided to make chicken soup out of the remains instead, which would create at least two meals. Soup makes every part of the chicken palatable and very easy to deal with, and allows me not to waste a single bite of meat–an extremely important consideration if you want to reduce its considerable carbon impact.
The first step was to make the stock. I find that right after supper is a good time to make stock. That way it can simmer all evening and be all ready to go the next day with the least amount of effort and hanging around. This recipe looks long, but it really takes very little fuss. I will point out that you will only get really good results with a free-range bird. A factory-farmed chicken just will not make very tasty stock.
Easy peasy chicken stock
- 1 chicken carcass, either raw soon after cutting it up, or frozen if you didn’t have time to deal with it straight away (reserve the drumsticks, wings, and neck for the soup and cook separately so they don’t get overcooked–see below). You could also use the remains of a leftover roast chicken. I will sometimes put two in the pot at a time to intensify the flavour.
- 2 carrots, broken into a few pieces
- 2 celery sticks, including the leaves (make the celery organic if at all possible–conventionally grown celery is treated with about 29 chemicals and has no protective skin), snapped into a few pieces
- 2 parsnips, broken into a few pieces (if you have them)
- 1 onion, cut into quarters
- 8 whole peppercorns
- bay leaf
- fresh herbs for a bouquet garni (a bundle of fresh herbs tied with string)–because it is autumn, I had none on hand, so threw in some dried parsley (from the garden) instead
Throw the chicken carcass into the pot (frozen is ok), along with the vegetables and herbs. Cover with water (I pretty much fill my big Dutch oven–over 10 cups). If you’ve cleverly been saving the cooking water from your vegetables (except potatoes) and freezing it, use that. It will intensify the flavour of the stock even more!
Bring to a boil and then reduce to a very low simmer for 3-4 hours, occasionally skimming off any foam and removing any pieces of skin that come to the surface. At the end, strain it with your colander and then once more through a fine wire sieve.
You’re now left with the stock. Leave it at room temperature until cool (don’t put it in the fridge warm–that will reduce the overall temperature of the fridge and bad organisms could start to grow in the stock before it gets a chance to cool off. If it’s winter, you could set it outside with a tea towel over top of it to speed things along). Place it in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight. The fat will rise to the top and congeal–just lift it off and dispose of it.
Voila! You now have about 10 cups of delectable chicken stock a million times superior to anything you could buy in the store, and which cost virtually nothing to make. You can use it all for a big batch of soup, or freeze into smaller portions (some people use ice cube trays, but I like having 2-cup and 4-cup containers on hand). And don’t panic if it has solidified into a jelly-like consistency. That’s what real chicken stock is supposed to do! Note: this recipe contains no salt, so you will need to add salt when you cook with it.
I used the whole batch of stock to make this soup, which is mostly drawn from
this excellent Chatelaine recipe for a slow-cooker soup. The main difference is that instead of using a pack of chicken thighs or an entire chicken cut into pieces, I just used a few pieces (don’t forget the neck!). I thought that was plenty enough meat. I also only used one leek. They’re delicious, but very expensive, and there was no way I was buying three, as the recipe recommends! You could also economise and use an onion instead, but the leek does add a very nice flavour if you want to splurge.
A Frugal French Country Chicken Soup
- 10 cups homemade chicken stock (2L)
- leftover chicken pieces (drumsticks, wings, and neck)–about 1-1/2 cups cooked
- 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tsp dried tarragon (my neighbour gave me some from her garden)
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp white pepper (must be white!)
- 6 baby potatoes or an equivalent of larger ones (our garden)
- 4 carrots (our garden)
- 2 celery stalks (organic)
- 1 leek (Saskatoon Farmers’ Market)
- 6 mushrooms (not necessary but I had them left in the fridge)
- salt to taste
Gently simmer the chicken pieces in a few cups of water until the meat comes easily off the bones (about half an hour). Lift out the chicken and set aside to cool. Pour the 10 cups of stock into the soup pot and whisk in the Dijon mustard and herbs/seasonings. Separate the meat from the skin and bones, shred the meat and add to the pot. Cut the potatoes, carrots, and celery into thick chunky pieces and add to the pot. Chop off the tough dark-green tops of the leeks, then slice them in half (or quarters, depending its size). Rinse well. Slice thickly and add to the pot. If it looks like you need more liquid, add the chicken cooking water (leftover frozen vegetable cooking water would be great here too).
Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer until the vegetables are tender (about 15-20 minutes). Season to taste and serve with some wonderful bread and butter. Cover and refrigerate for 3 days, or freeze the leftovers for up to 3 months.
Serves 6 (or 3 twice)
Posted: November 7th, 2008 under Action, Cooking, Ethical food, Farming, Fear of food, Food waste, Leftovers, Recipes, environment, food, food rescue. Tags: Action, Cooking, environment, Ethical food, factory farming, food, food rescue, Food waste, Leftovers, meat, Recipes
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photo by naathas
I went through the fridge today and finally dealt with a weird assortment of things that had been lying there neglected for some time, including:
- a 1L container of partly-cooked pumpkin (about 1 week old)
- about 2 cups of buttermilk (waaaaay past its best-by date–but buttermilk can stay good for weeks. Just make sure it hasn’t permanently separated)
- 1/2 cup of half and half (expiring today)
- 2 links of garlic farmer sausage (1.5 weeks old–I’d bought it fresh at the farmers’ market, so I wasn’t worried about it)
- rather limp-at-the-end green onion (1.5 weeks old)
- some beets, complete with starting-to-wilt greens (1.5 weeks old)
First I took the pumpkin (we had roasted it and used half for soup last week before running out of ambition–a whole pumpkin can be rather overfacing all at once!) and cooked it for about another 10 minutes in the microwave because it was still rather hard. Then I puréed it, getting about 3 cups worth. The purée, along with the buttermilk, was just what I needed for these fabulous and fibre-rich pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (I stuck the other two portions of pumpkin in the freezer for future use):
A most virtuous pumpkin chocolate chip muffin
Dry ingredients (combine in a large bowl)
Wet ingredients (combine in a medium bowl)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup pumpkin purée
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup All Bran Buds cereal
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until just mixed. Bake at 400F for 20-25 minutes. Keep a close eye on them–I have found 400F to be a little hot for them in my oven and had good results at 375F today for 20 minutes only. You don’t want them to get dried out. My original recipe says that it makes 12, but I today got 12 large ones as well as a full pan of mini-muffins (based on 12, they are 210 calories each, with 6 grams of fat and 8 grams of fibre). I took the mini-muffins out at the 15-minute mark.
Afternoon snack out of the way, I used up the rest of the (shall we say mature?) ingredients in a hearty soup for supper. I combined two different recipes (here and here) to approximate a favourite restaurant dish of mine:
At-home Summa Borscht (because you can’t go to Taunte Maria’s every day)
- 3 cups of 1/2-inch cubed potatoes
- about 4 cups of water (if you had a ham stock or a bone to throw in, that would work well)
- 2 links farmer sausage, casings removed
- 1/2 cup green onion, chopped
- dill to taste (1/4 cup of fresh dill is best, but I used the last of the dried stuff from the garden because that was what I had on hand)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup half-and-half
- 1 cup chopped beet greens
- salt to taste
Put the potatoes in a large saucepan with the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender. While they are cooking, cook the farmer sausage in a frying pan (break it up with a spoon, but keep it fairly chunky). When the potatoes are ready, stir in the sausage, the green onions, dill, beet greens, and buttermilk. Bring it back to a simmer (until the beet greens are tender–you don’t want them to turn to sludge). Season to taste–depending on the saltiness of the sausage, you may not need to add any salt at all. Stir in the half and half before serving with some lovely bread & butter (and don’t forget the dill pickles!).
Cleaning out the fridge=good food. Go see what you can rescue before it’s too late!
Posted: October 28th, 2008 under Cooking, Ethical food, Fear of food, Food waste, Health, Leftovers, Recipes, food, food rescue. Tags: chocolate, Cooking, Ethical food, fair trade, Fear of food, food rescue, Food waste, Health, Leftovers, Recipes
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I once read a recipe that suggested using your leftover jack-o-lantern to make pumpkin soup. Well…maybe if you hadn’t already put a lit candle in it for hours on end! I don’t personally think that the wax and soot build-up would be particularly tasty or healthy*, so I toss our old jack-o-lanterns onto the compost pile to decompose. It can be quite amusing to watch them cheerfully moulder away over the next few months (their high water content also helps balance the dry leaves already on the pile). But wouldn’t it be nice for them to have one more blaze of post-Halloween glory before heading off to that great pumpkin patch in the sky?
On Saturday 1 November, bring your old jack-o-lanterns to the Peace Flame in Rotary Park to help create a beautiful pumpkin-lit trail for everyone to enjoy (tealights will be provided). The pumpkins will be hauled away for composting afterward, keeping them out of both the landfill and your guilty conscience–so they definitely won’t come back to haunt you. Nothing scary about that!
The First Annual Pumpkins in the Park Festival
When: Saturday 1 November 2008, 6:30-8:30pm
Where: Rotary Park, Saskatoon, SK (Google Maps)
For more information: call Reta Derksen at 653-2783
Sponsored by the Nutana Community Association
* If you do want to cook a jack-o-lantern after Halloween, you should really draw on the pumpkin rather than actually cutting right into it. Check out these tips on how to cook them and how to put the ‘green’ into Halloween.
Posted: October 22nd, 2008 under Action, Community, Event, Food waste, Leftovers, Local food ideas, Saskatoon, environment, food, food rescue. Tags: Action, Community, composting, Event, food, food rescue, Food waste, Leftovers
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When you really want sour cream, there isn’t a whole lot that you can satisfactorily substitute for it–somehow I just don’t want to put plain yoghurt on a burrito or a baked potato. But while it does last for ages in the fridge, I rarely seem to be able use it all up in time simply by plunking it on as a condiment. It’s one of those things that can easily get pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten about.
My neighbour gave me some perishable food items before she went on holiday a few weeks ago, including a partly-filled tub of sour cream. It only reached its best before date yesterday and was still looking fine, but I couldn’t see the point in putting it back into her fridge as a welcome home gift. Magically, the tub contained precisely 1/2 a cup of sour cream, and I also had small amount of rhubarb on hand that wasn’t really enough to make anything else. And as she was the one who gave me this incredible muffin recipe in the first place, it seemed only fair that she should find a few of them waiting for her upon her return.
Jenny’s rhubarb streusel muffins
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 1-1/3 cup flour
- 1 cup diced rhubarb
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Topping: Blend 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup chopped nuts, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp butter (melted)
In a small bowl, blend cream, oil, and egg. Set aside. In another bowl, mix flour, rhubarb, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Stir wet ingredients into dry until just moistened. Drop into muffin cups and top with topping. Bake at 350F for 25-30 minutes.
Posted: August 21st, 2008 under Action, Cooking, Food waste, Local food ideas, Recipes, food rescue. Tags: Action, Cooking, food rescue, Food waste, Leftovers, Local food ideas, recipe
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It’s still cool, I’m still feeling sick, and I still had a couple pounds of those old carrots to use up, so I summoned my remaining strength and threw a few things into the soup pot for lunch. Ginger has long been used by the Chinese to treat colds and flu (its strong yang properties are good for sore throats, congestion, and sinus pain, apparently). Indian Ayurvedic medicine also recommends curry dishes to alleviate the same symptoms. I can’t swear to their medicinal properties, but I know that a soup made with these aromatic spices always makes me feel better!
I used Premala’s madras curry powder, which is produced here in Saskatoon–it is a nicely balanced blend of spices and not too hot for little ones to enjoy too. You can find their spices, sauces (I highly recommend the cilantro hot sauce), chutneys, and spicy peanut spread at a number of grocery stores throughout the city, and they also have a stall at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market.
Curry carrot ginger soup
- 1Tb butter and 1Tb olive oil
- 2 small onions (about 3/4s of a cup), chopped
- 1 clove garlic (I only had one remaining clove; you could always use more), chopped
- a knob of fresh ginger (mine was a little wizened on one end but still had good moisture inside), peeled and grated
- 1Tb curry powder
- salt and pepper to taste
- 2lbs of carrots, chopped into 1-inch pieces
- 4 cups of vegetable or chicken stock (I used chicken on the advice of Jewish grandmothers everywhere)
- 2Tb fresh lemon juice
- 2Tb lemon basil (optional: I just happened to grow some this year and thought it would be a nice addition)
- 1 cup of milk (optional: if your soup is a bit thick or you like it a bit creamier, you could add some milk at the end)
- garnish: fresh chives and dill
Melt the butter with the olive oil in the pot and add the onions, garlic, ginger, and curry powder. Cook on a gentle heat until the onions are softened (about 5 minutes–don’t let them brown). Add the carrots and stock, bring to a boil, and simmer until carrots are tender (about 15-20 minutes). Add the lemon juice and lemon basil, then whiz the soup with a handblender or in a regular blender. Add salt and pepper to taste, and milk if desired. Serve with chopped chives and dill.
Serves 4
Posted: August 12th, 2008 under Cooking, Fear of food, Food waste, Health, Local food, Local food ideas, Recipes, food, food rescue, vegetarian. Tags: Cooking, food, food rescue, Local food, Local food ideas, Recipes, vegetarian
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On a cool-ish day like today, when three-quarters of our household has been felled by a rotten cold, it seemed like a good time to make something warm and comforting to eat for supper. Somehow a salad just doesn’t seem that appealing when you’re nursing sore throats! (Cold cucumber slices might be the exception.)
My crisper drawers are filled to bursting with vegetables at the moment, some of which have been there for quite some time. Normally I am much better about keeping track of what’s in there and not buying anything unnecessary, but a combination of events have left me with me with double quantities of rather aged vegetables: first, I was away for a couple days last week, and then my neighbour left for 2 weeks, generously gifting me with the perishable contents of her fridge. We’ve been harvesting daily from two garden plots, and yet I was still unable to resist buying not just one, but TWO bags of new baby carrots* the other day, despite already having a nearly full bag of old crop carrots languishing in the fridge. This plethora of carrots had further managed to hide a truly elderly bag of celery from sight, and I also had a bag of beet stems which I had somehow not yet found a use for, despite pulling them out to look at them every day for two weeks.
To make things short, I had a lot of veggies that wouldn`t even win second prize in a beauty contest, and they weren’t about to get any prettier. But as any restaurant chef (or your grandmother) knows, after you clean out the fridge, it’s time to put soup and stew on the menu–slow-cooking brings new life to sad sack vegetables. There’s no need to be scared of them and you don’t have to throw them out just because they’re not at their peak anymore. After all, you wouldn’t chuck away an entire apple just because it has a little bruise–you just cut around the bad spot and eat the rest, right?
I gave my last-ditch stew some extra summery zing with fresh green beans from the garden and lovely earthy new potatoes. And I have to say that it was absolutely delicious. Now, I just need to tackle that 20lb case of ripe peaches and that huge bag of rhubarb…**
11th Hour Stew (aka It`s Now or Never)
- 1.5 pound package of stewing beef (Benlock Farms, via the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market)
- 2 small-ish onions (old crop, so one was going a little dodgy on the outside–just peel off the offending layer/s), chopped
- 4 carrots (which needed a good shave to get rid of those white hairs, frankly), sliced into rounds
- 3 stalks of celery (what I could safely rescue from that limp old bag), chopped
- a big fistful of beet stems (well-picked over to get rid of the dodgy ones), chopped
- one clove of garlic lurking in the butter compartment, chopped
- a half-bag of last year’s frozen fresh tomatoes (about 2 cups) which I had discovered in the freezer and which was starting to form ice crystals since I robbed half of it for something else last month
- half a dozen mushrooms (the last of a bag), chopped
- a nice big handful of green beans, broken into bite-sized pieces
- 6 small/medium new potatoes, quartered
- a bottle of Paddock Wood Vienna Red beer (any beer will do, as light or dark according to your taste)–or use water or vegetable/beef stock
Brown the beef in a bit of oil in your big stewing pot, throwing in the onions and garlic partway through. Then add all the vegetables (apart from the beans and potatoes), the frozen tomatoes, and the beer. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and slowly simmer for an hour and a half, adding water if need be. Twenty minutes or so before you’re ready to eat, add the potatoes. When the potatoes are tender, throw in the green beans for five minutes or so while you’re setting the table. They should still have some bite; don’t cook them to within an inch of their life.
Serves 4 with bread, butter, and dill pickles–you’ll have leftovers for 2 that you could serve over egg noodles–go grab some at the farmers’ market!
* Sovereign Colony’s new crop of carrots are now available at the 8th St Sobeys! These are the most delicious carrots you can buy at a big chain grocery store, and they`re grown just down the road in Rosetown. Keep an eye out for their potatoes, which should be arriving at Sobeys soon too.
** Tomorrow! I`ll do it all tomorrow! August`s bounty has a habit of turning me into Scarlett O`Hara.
Posted: August 12th, 2008 under Action, Cooking, Fear of food, Food waste, Grocery stores, Local food, Local food ideas, Menu, Recipes, food, food rescue, gardening. Tags: Fear of food, food, food rescue, gardening, Grocery stores, Local food, Menu, recipe
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photo: spinach soup–it’s all the rage with the preschool set (today, at any rate)
As I mentioned last week, we’ve been doing some thinning out at the community garden plot. Some of the spinach had gotten quite large and was starting to bolt, so we stripped it, stuffed it into a couple of bags, and stuck it in the fridge. Then I got busy and it sat there for a week. Or was that nearly two? Oops!
I tentatively stuck my nose in the bags yesterday and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared. Greens picked from the garden will last way longer than those you buy from the store because they haven’t taken a week or longer to get to you (incidentally, your risk of getting sick from home-grown greens is also way smaller than commercially-grown greens, although you still need to take sensible precautions while growing and preparing them). You wouldn’t want to make a salad out of the leaves in my fridge at this point–the leaves were rather mature to be eaten raw, some of it was wilting a bit (ok, a few of them were wilting a lot), and there were some yellow/damaged leaves which needed to be culled. It didn’t look real pretty, but overall it was still perfectly edible–a perfect candidate for soup.
I made a very quick and easy cream of spinach soup for lunch from Joy of Cooking: All About Vegetarian Cooking (2 minutes of chopping, 8 minutes of stirring, 5 minutes of casual supervision/pureeing resulted in 2 meals’ worth of soup). The recipe isn’t available online so I won’t infringe copyright, but I would highly recommend any spinach soup recipe that features nutmeg. My nearly-3-year-old got up from her nap and immediately requested a second cup of it for her snack (I suspect the fact that her daddy grew it made it a big draw!).
I’m expecting another couple bags of soup-grade spinach to be lugged home today or tomorrow, so there will be plenty of opportunity for further experimentation. Chilled pea and spinach soup? Spinach and chickpea soup? It’s so satisfying making a delicious meal out of something that you might unthinkingly throw out just because it doesn’t look ‘perfect’, and the possibilities are really endless.
Posted: July 25th, 2008 under Action, Community gardens, Cooking, Fear of food, Food waste, Local food, Local food ideas, Recipes, food, food rescue, gardening, vegetarian. Tags: Action, community garden, Fear of food, food, food rescue, Food waste, gardening, Local food, Local food ideas, Recipes, vegetarian
Comments: 1
(photo: Egg yolks, the day after–and only one casualty)
We thinned out the voluminous swiss chard at the community garden yesterday, so for supper I made a Swiss chard and tomato frittata from the Moosewood gang. The only difference was that I cooked it till nearly done on the stovetop, then sprinkled it with parmesan cheese and put it under the broiler for a few minutes to finish rather than flipping it over. We had hot buttered whole wheat toast along with it.
I thought it was delicious, and my two preschoolers even ate it all up. I didn’t personally learn to love chard until I was an adult. In fact, when my sisters and I were kids, we used to try and herd the chickens towards the Swiss chard part of the garden, hoping they would peck it to pieces (sadly for us, this did not work). So I was impressed that the kids were so enthusiastic–but I suspect that serving rhubarb crisp with ice cream for dessert is a powerful incentive for cleaning one’s plate!
The only problem with frittatas is that they call for a lot of egg whites, which means you end up with leftover egg yolks. You certainly don’t want to have to throw them out. Despite the dire things you may have heard about cholesterol and eggs, egg yolks (and, in particular, yolks from free range hens) are a nutritional powerhouse. But what can you do with the leftovers?
What to do with leftover egg yolks
If you’re going to use them within the next day, you can place them very carefully (whole) in an airtight container (they will start to get hard on the outside within a day or so and won’t be good for much after that)
If you’ll use them within 2-3 days, place them very carefully (whole) in an airtight container and very carefully cover them with water. Gently pour off the water when you’re ready to use them. This will work best with good quality eggs with a resilient yolk (standard grocery store egg yolks tend to break if you even look at them funny).
You can also freeze them, but they should be used for baking or cooking rather than an omelette. You can freeze them individually in an ice cube tray (break up the yolk a bit, but don’t beat it) or else gently mix a larger number of yolks together. You must also stabilise them before freezing or they will become lumpy and unusable when they’re thawed out. To stabilise them, decide whether you will want to use them for a sweet or savoury dish in the future, and add a sprinkling of either sugar or salt to each yolk (or 1 tablespoon sugar/salt per 1 cup of yolks). Place in an airtight container and don’t forget to label it ’sweet’/’savoury’ and list the number of yolks. They should last for about a year–thaw them out in the fridge the day before you plan to use them.
(photo: So pretty! vanilla pudding with raspberries and mint)
I plan to use my six leftover frittata yolks for this delicious vanilla or chocolate pudding for dessert tonight. I’ll probably make 1.5 batches to use up all the yolks at once–it keeps for 3 days in the fridge, so I seriously doubt that leftovers will be a problem! The free-range eggs I buy will lend it a lovely buttery tint–it would also be a good time to try the rum raisin pudding variant.
Don’t fancy pudding? You could turn those yolks into a bernaise/hollandaise sauce, pasta carbonara, or some classic desserts (creme brûlée, zabaglione). This enthusiastic thread at the Chowhound forum has some more great ideas.
Posted: July 18th, 2008 under Action, Cooking, Food waste, Grocery stores, Health, Leftovers, Local food, Local food ideas, Recipes, food, food rescue, preserving. Tags: Action, community garden, Fear of food, food, food rescue, Food waste, gardening, Local food, Local food ideas, Recipes, vegetarian
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Twenty-four hours before I was expecting 9 people for a birthday brunch, I came down with a truly evil cold. An hour-and-a-half before the guests arrived, a city worker knocked on the door to tell us that they were turning off the water until mid-afternoon to repair a broken hydrant. This I could deal with.
But then I had a momentary brain freeze and loosened the angel food birthday cake from the pan before letting it cool entirely, and it instantly collapsed into a sad-looking heap about 2/3rds of its original height. I couldn’t serve it up to the birthday girls like that, and there wasn’t time to make another one. Time for birthday trifle!
Fallen Angel Trifle
Rip your misbegotten angel food cake into 1-inch chunks (or thereabouts) and toss into a large flat-bottomed glass bowl (or glass dishes). There, don’t you feel better? Now prepare the custard (a double batch from Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Puddings):
- 600mL mixture of milk and cream (I used about half of each)
- dash of vanilla extract (Slater calls for a vanilla pod, which I didn’t have)
- 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks
- 6Tbsp berry/caster sugar
Heat the milk and cream mixture (I used about half and half) with a dash of vanilla until it is steaming and just beginning to bubble. Watch it carefully so it doesn’t suddenly boil over! While the milk is heating, mix the eggs with the sugar in a heat-proof bowl. When the milk is ready, pour a little through a sieve into the egg mixture and whisk thoroughly. Pour the rest of the milk through the sieve into the egg mixture and whisk it thoroughly again.
Give your saucepan a quick wash (this is easier if, unlike me, you actually have running water at the time), pour the mixture back into the pan, and place it over a gentle heat for about 5 minutes, keeping a close eye on it and whisking periodically. When it is thickened, take it off the heat. If it starts to go lumpy or grainy, take it off the heat and whisk the devil out of it (Slater recommends placing the pot in an ice-cold bath while you whisk, which, again, is easier if you actually have water in your kitchen at the time).
Pour the custard over the cake. Place the thawed peach slices over the custard. Whip the remaining cream and spoon it over the top. Chill it in the fridge for an hour (or as long as you have).
(serves 9 easily)
I happened to have peaches in the freezer, but you could use pretty much any kind of fruit, fresh or frozen. It would be wonderful with fresh-picked berries in the summer. I topped it with some extra pineapple that I had bought for pineapple mimosas, which tasted delicious and looked pretty too. Then I started doing some reading into working and environmental conditions on many of the pineapple plantations in Costa Rica. It was distressing, to say the least. I’ll be doing a post on the ethical minefield of buying tropical fruit soon.
Ingredient sources: Dairyland (local), Rogers (Alberta), Sunview Acres (local), Robin Hood (not sure where cake mixes are made yet), BC fruit stand at Saskatoon Farmers’ Market
Posted: April 21st, 2008 under Ethical food, Farmers' markets, Food waste, Leftovers, Local food ideas, Recipes, food rescue. Tags: Ethical food, Farmers' markets, food rescue, Leftovers, Local food, meal rescue, Recipes
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I initially described this acorn squash as a leftover, but really it wasn’t, because it had never actually gotten as far as being cooked. It had simply sat in a bowl in the counter for three weeks, staring at me accusingly while I tried to avoid looking at it. That’s what you get for buying something you don’t often buy without having a specific plan for how you’re going to use it!
