The next time you contemplate throwing a stale loaf to the sparrows, scraping onion skins into the compost or discarding your woody broccoli stalks down the gurgler, think again.
You may be about to throw out perfectly good inspiration and ingredients for a delicious meal.
Last weekend I was privileged to be on the receiving end of several divine dishes created by Ti Kouka Cafe’s head chef, Sheperd Elliott. The cafe’s philosophy is to use local, sustainable and organic produce wherever possible however on this special foodie occasion, all main ingredients were from food scraps otherwise destined for the rubbish bin in any typical household. Inspirational eating.
All Taste, No Waste
Why? This was a brilliant exercise to rethink some bad foodie habits we all may have fallen into over time. This awakening was a reminder that way too often we discard perfectly good food. Perhaps thoughtlessness is to blame. Why would you want to keep onion skins anyway, right? After tasting home-made Onion Salt (infused roasted skins with rock salt) I certainly won’t be throwing out mine any time soon.
With a little know-how and time, anything is possible.
Take a taste journey with me. My All Taste, No Waste lunch consisted of:
- Aged bread crackers
- Re-heated bread
- Roasted spiced cauliflower stalk dip
- Smoked Hoki & avocado spread
- Pickled eggs
- Quick pickled fennel, carrot and daikon
- Kim chi
- Seaweed
- Onion skin salt
- Sprouted barley paste
- Broccoli stalk salad with chipotle and preserved lemon
- Bread and butter pudding
Delicious…and all otherwise deemed for landfill!
Food Wastage in New Zealand
I was shocked to learn that the average New Zealand household throws out $560 worth of food each year, 79kg in weight. To put things into perspective that equates to 122,547 tonnes of food annually. That’s enough to feed 262,917 people and if you are struggling to comprehend what that number means, it’s double the population of Dunedin, each year. $872 million a year is spent on food that will be thrown away uneaten in New Zealand alone! Scary statistics.
I’ve been proud of my own ‘waste not, want not’ philosophy but was I REALLY doing my all? I wondered. So many New Zealand families are living week by week and struggling even with assistance, were are THEY doing their all? I wondered.
How do we change habits of a lifetime? One meal at a time.
Where do you start?
Personally I think it comes down to values. In a throw-away society we may have lost connection with some very simple things. If something breaks we buy a new one. I have found that by growing vegetables from seed you value each and every crop that is successfully harvested. You learn to enjoy every last morsel because you know the journey it has taken, the love and care it has required to bring it from garden to plate.
Food Saving Tips
Shep, from Ti Kouka has many food saving tips. These seemed very sensible and do-able:
- buy the whole animal (or fish) not just a cut
- use everything right down to boiling the frame for stock
- make things from scratch
- a little goes a long way
- buy seasonal produce from farmers markets (or grow your own)
- cook and bake at home
Keep your teapot warm. Grow vegetables. Talk. Be grateful.
