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waste less food

Jill Lightner. author of "Scraps, Peels and Stems" offers timely advice and recipes for how to waste less food and cut grocery costs, especially going into the holiday season. Photo by Joshua Huston

How to waste less food: 9 tips and tricks from an expert

Eco-friendly advice on how to shop and cook with a strategy.

I defrosted more pita bread than my kids wound up eating, and the leftovers were getting stale. Sound familiar?

ā€œSpread them on a sheet pan and toast them until they’re crispy ā€¦ and grind them up in your food processor into crumbs,ā€ says Seattle food journalist Jill Lightner.

An inch of leftover salad dressing lingering in the fridge?

ā€œIf it’s like an Italian vinaigrette, it’s an amazing marinade for any vegetable.ā€ Brush it on chicken thighs or burgers before grilling. Add it to soup.

Lightner should know. In her book “Scraps, Peels and Stems” (Skipstone Press) she offers good advice and recipes for how to waste less food, especially going into the holiday season. We need those skills; the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as much as 40 percent of Americaā€™s food,

Why bother fighting waste, when life is busy enough and Seattle offers curbside composting? In the small picture as well as the big one, cutting food waste saves money. It helps the environment. Ultimately, it helps battle hunger.

ā€œIt doesnā€™t mean you have to eat foods that you dislike, and it doesnā€™t mean you have to staple your kidsā€™ butts to the kitchen chair and say ā€˜You can’t get up until you finish your plate,ā€™ā€ she says.

Jill Lightnerā€™s top tips:

  • Foods arenā€™t necessarily spoiled just because theyā€™ve passed a ā€œsell byā€ date. Smells and visual cues are more useful (Is the milk curdled? Are the vegetables slimy?)
  • Buy smaller containers of milk (or shelf-stable boxes) so you donā€™t wind up pouring out the last pint in the gallon.
  • Instead of fresh seafood ā€” our most-wasted food category ā€” consider canned (itā€™s cheaper, too!) or frozen.
  • Frozen unseasoned vegetables are nutritious and last much longer than fresh.
  • Use up pantry odds and ends with flexible recipes like granola or muffins.
  • Instead of lettuce, which often rots before itā€™s eaten, make lettuce-free salads or use hardy greens like kale, where you can toss a sliced handful into your pasta or inside a quesadilla.
  • Make realistic meal plans. Better to order pizza on purpose one night than do it at the last minute and waste the ingredients for the dinner youā€™d planned.
  • Help kids track what theyā€™re not eating in their lunches, and change packing habits accordingly.
  • Buy a smaller Thanksgiving turkey: Grocery stores tell you to plan on at least a pound per person, but half of that will give you a feast ā€” and youā€™ll still have leftovers.

Here’s Lightner’s recipe for Use-It-Up Granola.

Seattle parent Rebekah Denn can confirm that the liquid in cans of beans makes a surprisingly good egg substitute in waffles.

This article was first published in November 2018.

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