the Waste-Not Blog

White, all-purpose flour.  It's inexpensive, readily available, and foundational to a whole host of delicious foods. It's far from deeply nourishing, even with the trace amounts of nutrition the factory adds, but can a case be made for using more of it? I believe so, and I intend to make it. Think of the foods that you buy most frequently. Not raw ingredients, mind, but finished foods. What comes to mind? For many, item one on that list would have to be bread. This includes sliced bread, hotdog and hamburger rolls, and Italian bread for spaghetti nights. Speaking of spaghetti nights, pasta is easily a close second to bread as far as regularly purchased staples of Americans. Including macaroni and cheese, egg noodles for soup, and of course spaghetti, pasta is a crucial part of even the most frugal of American diets (not to mention special occasion stuffed pastas like ravioli, pierogies and tortellini). We can't forget biscuits or their close relatives, scones and American...

Spring has forgotten us, but the hens have not forgotten spring. We're getting between fourteen and twenty eggs every day, and even though we sell four dozen a week to our neighbors I just can't keep up. We're in the middle of moving (long story) so I'm not looking for new egg customers... what's a girl to do? Enter the ancient practices of egg preservation. There are many practices that have been used over the centuries to make the spring abundance last into the less generous times of year. early Americans packed eggs in salt (allegedly made them taste "salty") or sand (low rate of success, basically just helped shield them from temperature extremes) or isinglass (aka fish gelatin, obtained by boiling the swim bladders--if you try it let me know, but I'm not going to). In the Edwardian era of England they preserved them in a mixture of slaked lime and water (My main takeaway from the series "Edwardian Farm" is that the English of that er...

Ah, fat. Is there any sort of food surrounded by more controversy? Any that inspires such loyalty in its adherents, such dismal doggedness in its detractors, such cognitive dissonance in those who believe it to be unhealthy and regularly overindulge anyway? Is there any food around which so much conflicting science has arisen? Being a Nourishing Traditions kind of gal myself, I tend to view fats with much more friendliness than the general populations might--though the kind of fat matters very much. Unsaturated fats oxidize far too easily--in fact, they often come from the store pre-oxidized for your convenience--and as such border on poison in my mind. Butter is, of course, a superfood, and delicious in all the best ways, and needs to be consumed daily for physical and mental health. I make my own from our cow's raw milk, and it is absolutely heavenly.... but also a lot of work, and while not awfully perishable it isn't shelf stable. So what I'm getting around to here...

Why do you eat vegetables? A few of us will say it's because we like them, love them, can't get enough of them. And there are days when we even mean it! But what about the rest of the time, the rest of us? When there are so many delicious, easy foods to be had in the world, what gives vegetables the pride of place as the food everyone feels they ought to eat more of? Of course it's because they're healthy, right? Because they have fiber to help us digest. Because they have vitamins and minerals to supply our bodies' daily needs. Because for many of us, a meal of straight protein, fat and starch doesn't feel right--we instinctively know that while all those things are great and delicious, they need a little help along the way--an oar, as it were, to help them row their boat to Valhalla. A Charon to steer their ferry across the river Styx. I could go on. I won't. Instead, I'm here to tell you that while these vegetables you're eating do perform...

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...

Eating out. It used to be an obsession of mine, you know. If my husband and I were in the car together, and we drove by a restaurant within an hour or so of meal time, I would be on the verge of praying that he'd decide to stop and treat me. It wasn't that I didn't like cooking, I loved it! And it wasn't that I didn't have perfectly good food at home waiting to be cooked, either. For me, eating out was a novelty I hadn't experienced much growing up; while I was getting better at cooking, I wasn't yet to the point where I could say with confidence, "I could cook that better at home"; and meal prep, while fun, took mental energy that as a pregnant newlywed and then first time mom I didn't have much of to spare. These days, it's safe to say the novelty has worn off, and with it the youthful confidence that we can afford a dinner out has worn off a bit too. I am at a point where, in most cases, I could cook it better at home (at least w...

We have a few dozen chickens. This may seem excessive, but it really isn't: besides selling a few dozen each week to our neighbors, we like to be able to eat all the eggs we want. I see fresh, homegrown eggs as an incredible superfood, loaded to the brim with vitamins, minerals, protein and the very best kind of fats. You might think that, with all these dozens of eggs lying around, I might be less than stingy in making use of them. Nothing could be further from the truth! These eggs are squishy gold inside a calcitic shell. Every one of them is a precious gift, not to be wasted or squandered wantonly. Eggs are one of the most luxurious ingredients known to man; in ancient times they were much harder to come by, only available in quantity on a seasonal basis, and therefore highly prized. Their emulsifiers are a key component in homemade mayonnaise; their richness makes a cheesecake even more decadent; their proteins add structure to baked goods that would otherwise crumble and fa...

Hey, all! Today I'd like to examine the frugal breakfast enjoyed (tolerated?) by millions of Americans every day: oatmeal.  It's packed with vitamins and minerals, loaded with fiber, and relatively easy to prepare; it's filling and warming; and it's easy to amend with such pleasant additions as walnuts, shredded coconut, or even (my guilty pleasure) chocolate chips, to help keep the boredom at bay. There are dozens of "recipes" online now for overnight oatmeal that you don't have to cook, mix-ins to make your oatmeal resemble your favorite dessert (oatmeal brulee is a thing, y'all, I wish I was kidding), and oatmeal baked in a muffin tin. So with all these recipes to make the morning gruel more interesting, what could possibly possess me to think yet another oatmeal recipe is necessary? The answer lies where, you will find, it usually does: there's a less wasteful way. More specifically, there are three main ways in which oats could be used with ...