Upcycling the food scraps

Food waste in the United States is a problem. The Department of Agriculture estimates that 30 to 40 percent of the food supply eventually becomes waste.  Sometimes food is left unharvested in a farm field. Other times it spoils in a store or is thrown away by the consumer.  

I feel pretty good about our household composting routine, which involves composting at home in the warmer months and taking food waste to a local drop-off site in the colder months. But food cultivation requires inputs like land, water and energy for transportation. The most sustainable thing is to not waste at all. My family has work to do in this arena and I am striving to waste less food. Often this includes paying attention to what I have, processing things before they spoil, forgoing something tastier for leftovers and substituting ingredients in recipes for what I already have. I also am actively trying to find recipes to use items that would ordinarily go to the compost bin. Two examples are below.  

Orange peels

A panettone recipe I want to make in a few weeks calls for candied orange peels. In preparation, I  considered purchasing orange peels. But since I  cook a lot and know you can make a lot of things people usually buy from the store, I decided to google candied orange peel.  The recipes I found didn't seem difficult. My kid eats a lot of tangeries. I had to persuade him to save the peels, which might have been the hardest part of this project.  I also saved my own. After I had several saved in the refrigerator, I followed a recipe from Epicurious. I blanched the peels for a little less time than called for since I was using tangerines instead of navel oranges. I also halved the amount of syrup. I ended up with delicious candied orange peels that I had to put in the freezer before I ate them all. 

I also ended up with a jar full of orange-flavored sugar syrup, that I didn't know what to do with.  My kid asked what the jar of pee-colored water in the fridge was so I wasn't going to get him to drink a soda with the syrup.  A week or later I was making a limpa recipe that called for both honey and orange peel and I realized I could substitute the orange syrup for those two ingredients. Later,  I  substituted the orange sugar syrup for sugar in a pancake recipe so the jar is nearly gone.

Sushi ginger 

My family occasionally purchases grocery store sushi and does not eat all the pickled ginger (let's not talk about the non-recyclable plastic that it comes in). My spouse put unconsumed ginger in a couple containers in the fridge with no plans on what to do with it. The fridge was getting crowded and I thought "I need to do something with this ginger." So Google came to the rescue again. I found a recipe for salad dressing using pickled ginger.  I followed it loosely, not measuring. I blended toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, the pickled ginger and mirin and ended up with a lovely dressing that I used on roasted brussel sprouts. My son would not eat the sprouts but he did ask for some of the leftover dressing to use on other things.