Читать книгу Zero Waste Cooking For Dummies - Rosanne Rust - Страница 26

You already have this book in hand, so you likely have already given some thought to your food waste habits. Perhaps you know what you waste but aren’t sure how to change. Or maybe you know you can do better but aren’t sure exactly how much you waste or where to start. No worries. This book meets you wherever you are in your food waste journey. Maybe the topic just sparked your interest, and you want to learn what zero waste cooking is all about. Or maybe you’re already on a food waste journey and need more inspiration and tips to keep going. This book is here for you. Peruse from chapter to chapter and feel free to dog-ear it up!

This book isn’t going to guilt-trip you into literally wasting “zero” amounts of food or scraps. You don’t have to be a perfectionist. My hope is to send you upon a journey toward zero waste. Like the Tortoise, slow and steady wins the race. Every small amount of food diverted from landfills can help the environment — and certainly your pocketbook.

Wherever you are on this journey, wasting less food starts with better understanding about what you throw away and why. For example, one of the reasons you may discard foods is reliance on best-by dates marked on packages. Those dates do relate to peak quality, but they’re not food safety indicators. So, yes, you can still eat many foods past the best-by dates. Find out more about this in Chapter 4.

Walk over to your kitchen trash bin and take a look.

 Is it filled with vegetable peels and coffee grinds, or whole pieces of rotten fruit or leftover cooked food?

 Do you fill a kitchen garbage bag more than once a week? Or every day?

 Do you find that you habitually throw away certain food items due to expiration (produce, bread, dairy)?

Now peek inside your refrigerator.

 Are you storing food optimally?

 Are there containers shoved to the back?

 Is there fruit or spinach rotting in a drawer?

What about your pantry or wherever you keep dry goods?

 Are there boxes or cans that you’ve had a long time and haven’t used?

 Are the foods dry, clean, and well-sealed? Are the packages in good physical condition?

 Do you still stock snacks that are no longer your child’s favorites?

 Do you have enough rice and ramen to feed an army?

Depending on your answers, you may need to focus your efforts in one or more of the following areas:

 If your kitchen trash can is heavy with rotten bananas, Thursday’s uneaten leftovers, or moldy bread, then it’s time to coordinate a shopping list and meal plan and utilize your freezer. Head to Chapters 5, 6, and 7.

 If you found long-forgotten take-out leftovers pushed to the back of your fridge, then it’s time to evaluate take-out orders or consider a weekly fridge check. Find related tips in Chapter 21.

 If your produce drawer contains more slime than fruit, then an evaluation of storage habits is in order. Find storage guidelines in Chapter 5.If your household of two always ends up with a bag of 4 or 5 extra buns, consider individual buns from the bakery instead next time.

 If you’ve stockpiled more cereal in your pantry than you can eat in a year, then it could be time to mark that item off your grocery list and walk away from those tempting end cap sales.

A little planning goes a long way! Smart shopping, storage, and food prep not only reduces your food waste, but it saves you money and helps save our planet. Once you put some of the ideas in this book into practice, come back here and revisit these questions to see you far you’ve come.