Complete Use of Food

In my post about this pantry challenge on my weight loss blog, I mentioned that I hate food waste and therefore use various methods of food preservation to get every bit of edible content out of the food that I have. These various methods of food preservation include canning, drying, and freezing. Long time readers may remember the story I tell in that post about first juicing, then dehydrating, and finally grinding up pomegranate seeds, followed by making liqueur with the chunky bits sifted out. (See the linked post for links to those particular stories if I've piqued your interest.)

Why am I so obsessive about this sort of crazy attempt to squeeze more food out of what most people would throw in the compost pile? There are a number of reasons.

1. It's fun and it tastes good. I've always liked making food from scratch. For instance, one of the first condiments I learned to make myself was vanilla extract. It just fascinated me years (decades!) ago that I could produce something so heavenly in my own kitchen. Of course it helped that I grew up with a good example. My father gardened, as did my grandfather during his time living with my family, so my mother regularly canned and froze foods. When I left home for college and had to settle for storebought ketchup and grape jelly, I realized just how good I'd had it at home! Once I took up canning as an adult, I realized just how good I could have it again.

2. Making complete use of food saves money. This goes beyond just eating your leftovers and using a rubber spatula to scrape the last bit of muffin batter into the pan. This means rinsing out the pressure cooker after you've dumped out the cooked and mashed potatoes to get the last bits, saving the water for soup. If no soup is planned in the next few days, the rinse water can be frozen with similar water from rinsing other pans continually added to the container. (Just make sure the flavors will blend.) This means chopping up and using the celery leaves as well as the stalks, stripping the carrot leaves off the stems and using them, finely chopped, in a stiryfry, grating the lemon's rind before juicing and drying it for zest, and salvaging damaged or aging produce. I've written about these concepts before when I've discussed avoiding food waste.

3. Using it all saves resources. A lot of resources go into growing our food, even in our own gardens. Time, human energy, oil energy (to run gas-powered garden or farm machinery), seeds, water, soil amendments, fertilizers, and, if it's not grown in your own garden, transportation. Honor the use of those resources by fully using the harvest. I know most of my readers would not dream of wasting food, but perhaps you actually do waste more than you realize by simply not realizing some of what you have IS food. Making your own vegetable stock is just the beginning. With the vast resources of the internet now at our fingertips, it's incredibly easy to do a quick search on whether there is a way to make something out of a produce part usually thrown away, such as grapefruit pith or watermelon rind and seeds. Seek (using a search engine) and ye shall find!

4. Learning this useful skill may save us in the end. As anyone who's read much about the last Depression era knows, many people had to practice extremely frugal cooking skills to get by. If meat was available, tiny portions were stretched to feed the family, using it as a flavoring more than the centerpiece of the meal. Gardens then and during the second World War provided people with fresh produce they might not have had otherwise and food preservation through canning and pickling was essential. My guess, too, is that vegetables previously peeled, such as potatoes and carrots, may not have been simply to get every last bit of food out of them. By practicing frugal food skills now, we may just be learning those skills needed in the future if the economy continues to go downhill.


How does all this relate to my current pantry challenge? Well, because I can't just go shopping any time I want, and I'm trying to limit the produce I buy to what I absolutely need, I've got to be more frugal and creative with what I have on hand.

Luckily, I've still got a few items of food that I've previously canned, things like jelly, fruit syrup, and pickled vegetables. These can be used to enhance and flavor my dishes, and the fruit syrups can even be the base of quick dressings and sauces. (See my note on salad dressing in yesterday's post.) I still remember years ago trying to empty out the refrigerator before a big move. I had frozen eggrolls but no sweet and sour sauce. After looking up recipes in my cookbooks, I made an acceptable one out of what I had on hand: apricot jam, ketchup, and a little vinegar.

It also means using the produce that I get from my own garden, the place where I volunteer, and the farmers market appropriately, making sure there is no waste. I'm not always as good about this as I should be but this month's challenge is getting me back on track. While our garden at home did not fare well during this very hot summer, the pepper plants cranked out peppers at a good clip, albeit somewhat smaller than they should be. A few weeks ago, I harvested a good portion of them, intending to make a really tasty escabeche. I never made it because I wasn't sure if I could do it oil-free and the peppers, not being used up quickly enough, began to develop some brown spots.

Yesterday I looked at them and decided I had to salvage what was left. Suddenly an old memory surfaced, one of shaving bits off a frozen block of jalapenos as needed from the family freezer. I don't recall whether my dad froze the jalapenos whole, in water, or maybe blended up in water, but it seems like it was a solid block. Since the peppers I have are hotter than my sweetie enjoys, I haven't been putting much in the food I make for our dinners. However, if they were frozen, I could just use some to accent my food or make a hot spicy lunch for myself.

I carefully cut away the bad spots and seeded the peppers. I figured out that if I cut a little higher on the stem, I wouldn't waste the "collar," that rounded top part of a pepper where it attaches to the stem. (The little pile of minced pepper on the right is from the collars of the peppers in the bowl; not a lot of food but every bit counts.)

I minced the peppers so they would be ready to use straight from the freezer. Here they are, all ready to go. 'Course as soon as I finished that, I headed out to the garden to harvest the next batch of red peppers...

The founder of the Tucson CSA used to mention occasionally that he uses minced hot peppers in place of black pepper. I plan to try that with some foods and also use these frozen peppers in some of my kimchi recipes that call for dried red pepper. Alternately, I could put some of the red peppers I just harvested into the dehydrator. There is something very satisfying about using red chile powder made from peppers you have grown, dried, and then ground yourself.


What unusual parts of your produce have you used or preserved?