Tag Archives: food waste

Past and future tofu

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I fell in love with the neighbourhood my first night there. I was in the new apartment, which was empty except for the blanket I was sitting on and a small lamp. It was early evening; I had settled down with a good book.

Bonnie Lee was still in our old place in Fukuoka, and I expected to have a quiet evening at home … but then the music started. It was traditional Japanese music, played on wood instruments, and drums, and it was coming from somewhere nearby.

Kosugi shrine

Kosugi shrine

And so I left the apartment, and followed the sound to our local shrine, which was teeming with people and activity. Food stalls lined the edges of the main open area, and in its centre, women clad in summer kimono danced the bon odori around a wooden scaffolding. As I worked my way through the crowd, I felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of a Bond film, minus the two guys chasing me.

Bon odori

Bon odori

It was a good place … and one that we would stay in for 10 years, the longest either of us has lived anywhere. The apartment was next to a park, which itself was next to a river. The city museum was a short walk away, as was the little centre around Shinmaruko station, with its restaurants and shops. It wasn’t long before we discovered the local tofu shop, which made fresh batches of all it’s products every morning, and only stayed open until the day’s stock was sold out. Everything they made was fresh and rich and somehow decadent … and all that soy-based goodness spoiled us for lesser goods.

Like the stuff we get in LA.

So, after more than a year of eating stale, somewhat bean-y tofu and soy milk, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and get ourselves a soy milk maker and some soy beans. I doubt that we’ll ever make anything that comes close to what we got at our little shop in Shinmaruko, but it is bound to be fresher than what we can get locally – and there are other reasons why this makes sense. One critical one is very dear to my heart: it will lead to less waste. We can make what we need when we need it – and the soy products we make will not need to be packaged in plastic or transported.

The day after I got back from my most recent trip, Bonnie Lee showed me how to make soy milk – nothing could be easier. You just need to soak the beans overnight, pop them in the soy milk maker with some water, push a button, wait while the machine heats the water and grinds and seeps the beans, then filter the product through cheese cloth. You can drink the milk as is, or add a coagulant and make tofu with it. And there’s a free bonus in every batch: the pulp that you filter out with the cheese cloth (called okara) is edible and versatile.

The soy milk we’ve been making is much lighter and more refreshing than the store-bought variety (which is thicker and often sweetened). It’s been very nice over our  home-made granola, and makes a great smoothie. As for the tofu and okara – I’ll save talking about what we’ve been doing with those for other posts.

In the meantime, if you’re curious you check out some of my shots of the old neighbourhood on flickr.

Rescued mushroom risotto

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A few months back, I wrote an entry on stone soup, which suggested that people freeze vegetable peels and bits that they would normally compost or throw away, and then use them to make stock. If you followed that advice, you will have noticed by now that you generate a fair amount of stock. We end up making about 8 cups of it a week.

This week, I found myself with about six cups of stock to use up, and was in the mood for something heartier than soup. We also had a few oyster and porcini mushrooms that were drying up in the vegetable crisper – all of which added up to the perfect excuse to make a white wine and mushroom risotto.

I started by rehydrating the mushrooms in white wine, which not only made the mushrooms nice and plump, but also gave me a rich-coloured mushroomy liquid to start the risotto with. (Bonus! That wouldn’t happen with fresh mushrooms.) That, plus a stone soup broth that had strong corn, beet and celery notes made for a dish with a complex palette of flavours and a creamy texture. Not bad, considering that the slightly shriveled mushrooms and stock ingredients were all things that would have ended up in the bin in many homes.

Of course, we ended up with more risotto than we could eat in one sitting – but the leftovers made for very good risotto cakes.

One thing I should mention is that making risotto the old-fashioned way takes time (about 45 minutes) and much that time is spent stirring. If you don’t have time for that, you can make it in a rice cooker with a lot less fuss (there are a few recipes on-line). I’ve tried that, and the result was quite good, though not as good.

Mushroom risotto

Rescued mushroom risotto, served with faux meat balls & salad

Rescued mushroom risotto (serves 6)

Ingredients

  • ½ cup dried mushrooms
  • 1 cup dry white wine
  • 6 cups stone soup (or other) stock
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • ½ large onion, sliced thin
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1½ cups Arborio rice
  • ¼ cup grated parmesan
  • Salt and pepper to taste

 Directions

  • Cover mushrooms in wine, and allow to reconstitute. This can take up to 30 minutes, depending on how dry the mushrooms were to begin with.
  • While the mushrooms are reconstituting, heat your stock in a deep skillet, and keep it warm over medium low heat.
  • When the mushrooms are reconstituted, set the liquid aside for later use. Sauté the mushrooms in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil until they are tender – then set those aside for later use.
  • Heat 1 tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium heat, then toss in the sliced onion and crushed garlic, and sauté until the onion is translucent.
  • Add in the Arborio rice, and sauté for an additional 2 minutes.
  • Add in the liquid from the mushrooms, and stir until it the liquid absorbed.
  • Add in the warm soup stock, one ladleful at a time, and stir until the liquid is absorbed. When you’ve used up about ¾ of the stock, add in the mushrooms, and keep going. After each ladleful is absorbed, you should taste the risotto. When the the rice is al dente, and the sauce is creamy, it will be done. You may need a little less stock than indicated, or a little more. If you need more, and have run out, just use water that has been boiled and is still warm.
  • When the risotto is done, stir in one tablespoon of butter, the parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste.
  • Serve immediately.
Fun facts
Amount of shriveled mushrooms saved from landfill per six portions of rescued mushroom risotto. 1/4 cup
Approximate volume of shriveled mushrooms that could be saved from landfill every year if everyone in the US had 4 servings of rescued mushroom risotto a year. 12,000 cubic meters
Approximate volume of the Tower of Pisa. 10,000 cubic meters

A pig with a problem

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The video below is the tale of a wee, sad pig with a nasty addiction, along with some of his reflections on life and food waste … the product of me spending way too much time on long flights and alone in hotel rooms, I suspect.

Warning: in addition to being a gripping yarn, the video is plug for the 222 million tons blog & our iPad meal planning app … though, after this entry, we’ll return to our regular programming: things to do with stone soup broth & veg that is on it’s way out, vermicompost updates, etc.

222 million tons: the App

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The idea behind 222 million tons has always been to spark conversation and change – and to do that by sharing tips, tools, and resources that help people waste less food and eat well. So far, that’s only been through this blog, but as of last week, we have an iPad App in iTunes.

The App is a publishing platform for weekly menus and shopping lists. The recipes all work for a single person (though through the miracle of technology, they can be scaled), and use up all the fresh ingredients on the shopping lists.

The idea was Bonnie Lee’s, and emerged out of her frustration over the amount of food she was wasting when she first moved from Tokyo to Los Angeles. She was overwhelmed by the quantities that food was sold in, and had no idea how a single person could use it all before it spoiled. In Japan, there are home economics magazines that help people save money by providing weekly shopping lists and recipes, but she couldn’t find anything like that in L.A. – and all the recipes she could find served 6 to 12 people. Bonnie Lee doesn’t like leftovers … so she issued me a challenge, which led to this App, built by our friends & partners at bluejava: Glenn & Makiko.

The first collection of recipes is called Bright & Bold, and was written by me (more on that another day), but my hope is that the 222 millions tons App will become a platform on which a large community of home cooks shares recipes – and if anyone reading this is interested in becoming part of that community, let me know via the comments below, or through any of the community platforms listed on my Gravatar profile.

The key to reducing food waste at home is planning – and as I wrote Bright & Bold, I came to appreciate the challenge of planning whole weeks for a single person with both variety and zero waste. So, if you don’t have time to plan meals, but hate waste and like to eat well … well, now there’s an App that can help.

Tainted soup and green pineapple

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It’s rare that I eat something and wish that I had thrown it away instead.

But it happens.

In fact, I spent much of last week wishing I had thrown away a particular bowl of soup – specifically the one that I ate in Sentral Station in Kuala Lumpur, and which led to a fever, chills, a few nights’ worth of lost sleep, and general gastrointestinal grief. Needless to say, my desire to write about food suffered.

But the experience did remind of a striking photo series by Klaus Pichler that I ran across several months ago. The project was inspired by the same UN study that inspired 222 million tons; it is called One Third (one third being the estimated ratio of all food products wasted worldwide), and was done as a way to draw attention to the issue of food waste.

The food in the photos shares one thing with my tainted soup: it’s well past it’s due date –yet it’s beautifully photographed. If you’re curious, you can click on the moldy pineapple below to see the full series.

Moldy green pineapple

PINEAPPLE
Place of production: Guayaquil, Ecuador
Cultivation method: Outdoor plantation
Time of harvest: All- season
Transporting distance: 10.666 km (linear distance)
Means of transportation: Aircraft, truck
Carbon footprint (total) per kg: 11,94 kg
Water requirement (total) per kg: 360 l
Price: 2,10 € / kg

Dry vegetable curry with cauliflower leaves & stems

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One way to minimize waste is to have a few go-to recipes for the unused odds and bits that accumulate in the vegetable crisper. One of mine is dry vegetable curry. It’s a quick and tasty way to cook up whatever vegetables you have on hand.

This past the weekend I made some roasted cauliflower florets, which meant that I had a cauliflower stem and some cauliflower leaves to use up – and those made up the bulk of my most recent dry curry. I also threw in a couple of carrots, mushrooms, and plum tomatoes, as well as a few green beans and part of an onion.

In case you’ve spent your life blithely throwing away cauliflower stems and leaves, let me just point out a few things:

  • Cauliflower stems and leaves are food.
  • My most recent cauliflower weighed about 2 lbs 9 oz, and of that 9 ounces was made up of stem and leaves. That’s 22% of the cauliflower. If you’ve spent your life throwing these parts away (and if we use that 22% as an average), then for every 9 cauliflowers you’ve ever bought, you’ve thrown away 2 cauliflowers worth of perfectly usable food that you paid for. You probably don’t do this with donuts. Or socks.
  • Cauliflower stems may be less pretty than florets, but they taste similar, and are very tender. I usually just cut the big central stem in half, then cut those halves into slices.
  • Cauliflower leaves are very tender and thin at the tips, and cook up like any leafy green. Near the base, the leaves are more like cabbage, but more watery (which balances hot spices nicely) and not as tough.

I served this week’s dry curry with some turmeric rice and watermelon rind chutney (which we’re close to running out of). Easy. Tasty.

Dry vegetable curry (for 1)

Dry vegetable curry

Ingredients

  • Enough oil to grease your skillet
  • 1 cup mixed chopped vegetables
  • 1 tsp crushed garlic
  • 1 tsp grated ginger
  • 1 Tbsp tamarind paste (or 1 tsp lemon juice)
  • 1 tsp cider vinegar
  • ¾ tsp dry curry mix (see below)

Dry curry mix (these days)

  • 2 parts cumin
  • 2 parts paprika
  • 2 parts turmeric
  • 2 parts mustard powder
  • 1 part garam masala
  • 1 part cayenne pepper (or to taste)
  • 1 part cinnamon
  • 1 part brown sugar
  • 1 part salt (or to taste)

Directions

Sauté the vegetables over medium heat in oil until just shy of desired tenderness. OK, this is vague, but the timing depends on the vegetables you use, the size you cut them, and how tender you like them. Also, you’ll want to add things that take longer to cook a little earlier. I like my vegetables crunchy, so this step usually takes me 4 or 5 minutes.

Add in the garlic and ginger, and sauté for an additional 30 seconds.

Add in the tamarind paste (or lemon), vinegar, and dry curry spice mix, and stir until vegetables are coated.

Serve.

Fun facts
Annual per capita demand for cauliflower in the US 1.7 lbs
Total annual demand for cauliflower in the US 264,853 short tons
Unnecessary food waste created if no one in the US eats cauliflower stems & leaves (assuming they represent 22% of mass of cauliflowers) 58,267 short tons
Equivalent number of 2lb 9oz cauliflowers 45,476,682
Cargo mass of a Boeing 747-8F 295,800 lbs
Minimum number of Boeing 747-8Fs needed carry all that waste 394

Fuzz is for peaches

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One 20 hour flight later, I’m back in LA (for a little while anyway) – and one of the first things we did when I returned was head to the farmers’ market in Torrance. I figured a little sunshine and fresh food would help me forget my jet lag.

I was wrong.

We didn’t do much shopping in the end, though we did pick up some stunning Seascape and Chandler strawberries – two varieties that are bursting with flavor, especially when they’re perfectly ripe (as these were), and bright red all the way to the center.

Seascape & Chandler strawberries

Our Seascape & Chandler strawberries, begging to be devoured

It seems that whenever we get strawberries at the local supermarket, we find one or two in the middle that are covered with fuzz – and the rest of the batch isn’t far behind. That’s why I’ve gotten in the habit of soaking berries in a vinegar and water solution for a couple of minutes before putting them in the fridge (I use about 3 cups of water and 4 tablespoons of water). That kills the beasties that lead to fuzz (and waste), and the berries generally keep for a couple of weeks after that. (It helps that supermarket berries are inevitably underripe.)

None of the berries from the farmers’ market had any fuzz, but I soaked them in a vinegar solution anyway – just to be safe. I needn’t have bothered, as they only escaped being eaten for a couple of days. The few that weren’t eaten immediately, ended up in strawberry rhubarb crisp.

Strawberry rhubarb crisp (serves 2)

Ingredients

  • ½ cup cut strawberries
  • ½ cup cut rhubarb
  • 1 Tbsp +1 tsp brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • 1 Tbsp flour
  • 1 Tbsp rolled oats

Directions

Preheat your oven to 375℉, and grease a baking dish with butter or cooking spray (you can do the planet a favor and make your own cooking spray with oil and a spray bottle). You want the fruit to be about an inch to and inch and a half deep – for this quantity, a round dish with a 5¾ inch diameter did the trick.

Toss the cut strawberries and rhubarb with 1 teaspoon of the brown sugar, then place it in your greased baking dish.

Melt the butter and stir in the flour, rolled oats and remaining sugar – then crumble the mixture on top of the fruit.

Bake at 375℉ for 45 minutes, then enjoy while it’s still hot.

Food waste infographic

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The food waste infographic below was created by Door to Door Organics (a company that delivers organic vegetables). It highlights the fact that food waste isn’t just about wasting food; it’s about wasting the water, oil and land that went into producing that food. The sheer volume of that waste is staggering – and we can all do a little something about it: plan better.

You can see the original blog entry in which this was published by clicking on the image.

Carrot green falafel

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Well, I’m back in LA, and back in the kitchen. After a few weeks of great Indian, Malay, and Chinese food, I’ve been in the mood to play with an entirely different set of flavors. My most recent experiment was with falafel – and my one break with tradition was to use carrot greens rather than parsley. I only gave the ingredients a couple of quick pulses in the food processor, which made for a more interesting texture than you get with falafel mix – and of course the flavors were much fresher.

Carrot green falafel (serves 3)
Ingredients
  • 2 cups chickpeas (pre-soaked & cooked, or canned)
  • ½ red onion
  • ½ cup carrot greens
  • 1 serrano pepper, seeded
  • 2 tsp crushed garlic
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 6 Tbsp flour
  • ¾ tsp cumin
  • ¾ tsp salt
  • Olive oil for cooking
Directions

Chop the red onion, greens, serrano pepper and garlic coarsely. Put the chopped ingredients in a food processor with the chickpeas, and give them a few quick pulses. You should end up with a coarse mixture, and be able to make out specks of green, beige and red.

Put the mixture in a bowl, and add the baking powder, flour, cumin and salt. Mix all the ingredients evenly using your hands (because it’s more fun), and form the resulting paste into (about) nine small patties.

Fill a deep skillet with about one eighth of an inch of oil, and place the skillet over medium heat. Toss a small speck of falafel mixture into the oil; when bubbles start to form around it, the oil is ready.

Fry the falafel patties for about two minutes on each side, until they are golden brown. I served mine with flat bread, tomatoes and tahini sauce (a quick mix of tahini paste, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, chopped carrot greens and garlic – everything to taste).

Fun facts
Carrot greens per serving 4 tsp
Carrot greens we could save from landfill if every one of the roughly 1.2 billion people in developed regions had one servicing of carrot green falafel about 24,000 cubic meters
Approximate volume of the great pyramid of Giza 2,500,000 cubic meters
The amount of time it would take to save that volume of carrot greens from landfill if everyone in developed nations ate carrot green falafel twice a month 4 years and 4 months

Food waste in Singapore

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According to the UN study quoted in the first entry on this blog, consumers in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia throw away an average of 13 to 24 pounds of food a year – which, compared to the 210 to 250 pounds of food the average North American or European consumer throws away each year, is amazing.

As I was in Singapore in March, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do a little research into food waste there. The first thing I wanted to figure out was if Singapore, with the (by far) highest GDP per capita in Southeast Asia, was typical for the region when it comes to food waste. I wasn’t able to find any rigorous studies on household food waste per capita. What I did find was a two-week study of 150 families that found that the average household food waste per consumer was about 7 pounds a year. Given the methodology, my suspicion is that that estimate is a little low – but probably the right order of magnitude, so very much in line with the rest of Southeast Asia. And one thing is certain: with total food waste (commercial and household) coming in at 570 million kilograms per year (or 248 pounds per person), there’s no question that household food waste is significantly lower than in the US, Canada or Europe.

So how to people manage to waste so much less? I had a few conversations with locals and expats in Singapore to try to tease that out.

South Indian curry

One big reason has to do with transportation. Owning a car in Singapore is expensive. There is a registration fee of 1000 SGD – except the first time a car is registered, when that fee is 150% of the car’s value. There is an import duty of 41% on cars. There are road taxes, and extra fees if you drive your car on busy roads during rush hour (tallied automatically, thanks to transponders installed in all cars). And those are just the big ticket items. The good news is that there is a great, reasonably priced, countrywide metro and bus system, and most people (for obvious reasons) use that for daily travel. So what does that have to do with food waste? Well, a lot. For one thing, it means that food markets have sprouted pretty much in walking distance of everywhere. People tend to go to local stores, and the fact that they have to lug whatever they buy home in 90 degree humid weather encourages them to buy only what they need for the next day or two – something that naturally leads to better planning and less waste.

Typical hawker center

Another factor keeping household waste low is hawker centers. These open air eateries are everywhere, and house multiple food stalls featuring good, cheap fare. You can eat well for less than 5 Singapore dollars (less than the cost of cooking at home) – and most people I asked said that they ate dinner out at least three times a week. That certainly reduces food waste in homes – but what about restaurant waste? I suspect that is small relative to restaurants in the US. The hawker portions are smaller than those in US restaurants, and so a lot less gets left on plates – and each hawker stall makes a limited number of dishes with a limited number of ingredients, and keeps only a small amount of inventory on hand, which reduces waste due to spoilage.

Nothing earth shattering here, but it does suggest a couple of good practices that anyone can implement to reduce food waste, no matter where they live:

  1. Only buy what you need – plan!
  2. Finish what you buy – avoid leftovers or eat them.

Those things are easier said than done in an environment that makes it easy to waste (the US, for example, has 5 times more cars per capita than Singapore, cheap groceries and huge restaurant portions) – but they can make a huge difference (less than 25 pounds of wasted food vs. more than 200 pounds of wasted food).