Ending Food Waste
I very sadly threw out a whole stalk of celery last week. It was a completely wasted purchase. Frankly, I had forgotten about it, and it had gotten buried in the vegetable drawer under some squashes. When I found it, it wasn’t salvageable.
Do you sometimes throw out vegetables, too? Or maybe fruit? At times, I’ve bought gorgeous fruit, only to find it later, after it had grown fuzzy because I had forgotten about it. Statistics show that I am not alone (According to the EPA, in 2010, about 34 million pounds of food was thrown out in the United States!).
I’ve been trying to cut back on food waste, and regularly go through the fridge. I still may not use every fruit while it is perfect, but I have become pretty good at finding ways to use the less-than-perfect produce I sometimes find in the fridge.
When I have fruit (and even some vegetables) that’s past its prime, but not spoiled yet, I try very hard to turn them into something delicious. You know the kind: the ones that are a little wrinkled, or have a couple of bruised spots (just enough that the kids look at them and shake their heads)… Instead of letting them rot, I have begun to bake muffins! (Lots of muffins.) Just remove the bruised spots before you get started. (I even mix them up. One of my kids’ favorites was the time I mixed mashed ripe bananas with mashed ripe plum. Oddly, they insisted there was honey in those muffins!)
Any Kind of Muffin
Some other ideas for past prime produce (please, cut away any obviously not-good parts before you make these recipes):
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About Ester Silber-Schachter
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About jamie geller
Jamie Geller is a bestselling author of the wildly successful QUICK & KOSHER cookbook...
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Great ideas, I always freeze bananas and other fruits before they get real bad so I can use them in muffins or smoothies.
Thanks Tamar! Great idea to freeze them, especially on a busy day!
Great idea! I have just such a pear I put in the fridge today not knowing what else to do with it, and not wanting to throw it out! I think I’ll trim it and put it in the freezer to make muffins later in the week – thanks!
Em – let me know how they come out, please!
Nice article. I recently had to savage lettuce and cucumbers that were inadvertently put in the freezer instead of the fridge. The defrosted lettuce was great instead of spinach in a spinach potato soup, and the cucumbers went well in a large vegetable soup (along with pumpkin, zucchinis, potatoes, carrots, onions etc) though their raw texture was not really appealing, the soups were great and I felt better that I didn’t throw them out.
Brigitte, that is a really great idea! I have some cucumbers that froze in my vegetable bin (the fridge is acting up again), so I need to figure out what do with them. Thanks for the idea.
Great ideas. I used some wrinkled apples to make apple kugel. It tasted fine. Don’t tell my guests! We’re all trying to watch our budgets and throwing stuff away really hurts.
Wish we could have tried it… and I’m sure your guests would never have known! (I have definitely served food to you made of less than perfect produce!)
What really gets to me is that my kids beg for certain fruits (usually not begging for specific veggies, or any at all) and then when I buy them, they no longer want them and refuse to eat them… But you gave some nice ideas, Ester!
So sad about the fruits… you don’t have kids begging for “bapiya” (broccoli) like my oldest used to?
Happy to give more suggestions – Just let me know what you need to use up!
We still serve “bapiya.” So much more character than broccoli
[and he chose it in lieu of cake!!!].
Excellent apple kugel recipe! We enjoy the good ideas for saving food and eating healthy.Also the muffing were a success. Thanks a lot!!
Thanks Batzion! So glad you tried out my recipes!
Wasting food is not nice – you can make soups, pies, omelettes, smoochies, etc, according to what you have.