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Introduction
Up to 40 percent of the food produced doesn’t get eaten. This is a waste of not only food but also all the resources it took to produce, process, and deliver that food.
Food and food systems have deep cultural roots, playing a major role in our lifestyles, celebrations, and livelihoods. My experiences interviewing and counseling people about what and how they eat offers me important insights into their “whys,” too. In some cases, food is a comfort, part of an identity, or simply a basic need. In other cases, diet is a form of medical therapy — in that dietary change can improve a medical condition or help manage a disease. In addition, changes in food choices are now made with the environment in mind. But for any of that to work, the individual must accept, and sustain, the change.
My philosophy about food and eating habits is one of reason. For dietary changes to have any impact — whether on your body, your budget, or the environment — those changes must be reasonable and doable. Extreme measures are rarely sustainable. Zero waste cooking can save you money and may even improve your nutrient intake. It also has a positive impact on the environment, reducing the overall methane emissions that result from the food waste that goes from your kitchen to landfills. This book aims to help you reduce your food waste, no matter what you eat.
About This Book
This book aims to help and encourage you to waste less food.
Many zero waste cooking books adopt the notion that to have a positive impact on the environment, you must focus almost entirely on eating more plants and removing animal products from the diet. This book doesn’t. The notion that everyone can (or wants to) adopt a vegetarian diet is simply unrealistic. Instead, this book encourages you to give more thought to what you eat, and what you throw away, while you begin to adopt a budget-friendly diet that balances your use of a variety of foods with less waste and less harm to the environment.
The goal of this book isn’t to shame you into overhauling your diet, tell you what to eat, or make you feel guilty about your food choices. Rather, my goal in writing this book is to share some facts about how food waste impacts the environment and why reducing food waste is important, help you understand where your food comes from, provide information on food safety and nutrition, and ultimately help you get started with zero waste cooking.
Reducing food waste is a big challenge for the whole world, so this book is here to help you keep things in perspective. Practice and progress, not perfection, is the expectation.
When I wrote the recipes in this book, I used easy-to-find ingredients and also tried to provide recipes in which you can easily swap in similar ingredients you have on hand that you need to use up (or that you prefer). In most cases, a similar ingredient will result in just as tasty and successful of a dish — especially if it leads to you wasting less food. As you read the recipes, keep these conventions in mind:
Oven temperatures are listed in degrees Fahrenheit.
A “pinch” of salt is assumed to be ⅛ teaspoon. “Salt to taste” suggests your judgement in how much you salt the food.
All eggs are large.
Flour used is all-purpose flour, but feel free to use gluten free, whole wheat, or any other replacement flour.
When fresh meat or vegetables are listed in a recipe, cooked can often be substituted.
Canned or frozen vegetables and fruits can replace fresh.
All milk is 1% fat, but whole, 2%, or nonfat milk can be used instead. Of course, if you don’t tolerate cow’s milk, feel free to use a milk alternative such as soy milk.
I created the recipes using plain nonfat Greek yogurt, light sour cream, and light cream cheese, but regular plain yogurt, regular fat sour cream, and regular cream cheese can be used as substitutes.
I recommend using freshly ground peppercorns from a peppermill, but regular ground pepper is also fine to use.
Dried herbs can be used in place of fresh. The small tomato icon indicates the recipe is vegetarian or contains no meat, but it may contain eggs or dairy.
To make the content more accessible, this book is divided into four parts. You don’t have to read from beginning to end but can turn to any part — or any chapter — at any time and reference back and forth as often as you need. I put a lot of heart and research into writing this book so, of course, I think every word is important, but some pieces of information aren’t essential, but are there to help you understand the overall food waste topic. These details appear in sidebars (shaded gray boxes), and you can feel free to skip them without missing any key zero waste cooking information.
Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
Foolish Assumptions
In writing this book, I made some assumptions about you:
You have an interest in cooking, saving money, staying healthy, and wasting less.
You want to be a good steward to the environment, and you feel overwhelmed with all the “stuff” in your life.
You have access to a kitchen, with a refrigerator-freezer, stove top, oven, and possibly a microwave, and have basic cooking tools.
You have basic cooking skills, you’re busy, and you aren’t interested in getting too fancy in the kitchen.
You want to reduce your food waste, do more with the ingredients you have on hand, and get more creative with recipes.
If this sounds like you, then you’re in the right place!
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, icons in the margins highlight certain types of valuable information that call out for your attention. Here are the icons you’ll encounter and a brief description of each.
