the Waste-Not Blog

A lot of parents treat picky eaters like a given. Memes about kids who eat nothing but cheerios and chicken nuggets abound, as do memes about animal crackers all over the house and kids who aren't hungry at dinner but want a gogurt twenty minutes later. "Oh, yeah, mine do that too." "Have you tried letting him put ketchup on it?" "Wow, your kid eats raisins? You're lucky, the only fruit my kid eats is Welch's Fruit Snacks." So when people meet my kids and see their eating habits, they are... incredulous. Because my kids eat literally everything. I've had to stop them from picking up the baby's... used... animal crackers off the floor ("But we like baby slime!"). So how did this happen? Did I starve them for weeks so even the most repulsive foods became desirable? Do I put ketchup on everything? Did I hire a voodoo practitioner to pull the stuffing out of a voodoo doll with my kid's name on it, to make their stomachs fee...

For us, the Waste-Not Plan is a blueprint to arrive at our ultimate goal of total independence in terms of food (for us and our animals), energy (at least in terms of heat and cooking, and using the grid only for luxuries that can easily be dispensed with) and money (we want to be able to have both me and Ben at home or at least working very minimally, so what land we have needs to at least pay for its own taxes and hopefully a bit extra). For others it might just be a matter of becoming progressively more self reliant: having enough food to know that a couple weeks without buying groceries won't reduce you to eating expired spaghetti-Os from the back of the cupboard, being able to pay down debt and add to a nest egg, reducing your carbon footprint and plugging your particular holes in the waste stream. That's why I call these "levels" instead of "steps," because even if you never get past "level one" or "level two," you're here. You...

With five hungry eaters in our family, lunch time can turn into a straight up emergency if I re-discover clocks around 11:40 AM. I don't spend enough on bread to permit us to eat sandwiches every day, and if the leftovers in the fridge are earmarked for dinner I'm in a real pinch. Beyond this, sometimes we just crave something that feels like snack food. Enter: nachos! I use the term in the loosest possible sense, as this recipe does not involve liquid orange pasteurized processed cheese food, with or without tiny pieces of something that resembles jalapeño. The main ingredient in the dip is salsa (I use the amazing fire-charred salsa that I can every summer), plus a meat component and a bean component, and then as much cheese as I feel I can spare (often a combination of grated aged cheese or perhaps mozzarella and my homemade labneh--though the labneh does beautifully by itself in a pinch). It's easy to make additions like pickled jalapeños or refried beans, and I almos...

Ever noticed that the bone-in cuts cost less in the grocery store? It makes sense. Removing bones increases the production cost of parts like chicken thighs and of course means extra inedible weight since no one eats the bones. If you have no plans for making use of bones then the boneless cuts might actually be a more economical choice, since they will involve much less waste. However, rather than choosing to switch to all boneless cuts in the future, I urge you to instead consider how you can get the maximum value out of those bone-in cuts of meat. Once we gnaw the meat off the bones, what's left is cartilage, sinew, and bone: all the important components for nourishing, tasty bone broth. Now, you may think of broth as something you do in large quantities: a few beef soup bones, or a whole turkey carcass in a giant pot, slowly simmering all night and all day. Those are very good ways to make broth and I highly recommend them. But even in small quantities--the bones from fou...