It adds up, especially as ReFED also estimates that about a third of food in the United States every year gets trashed, squandering farming, processing and transit resources and belching potent greenhouse gases in landfills. Composting can lighten the landfill load, but the biggest solution we consumers can deploy is simple and mystifying all at once: We need to buy less food.
So, an Earth Month challenge: Next time you’re about to make a grocery run, stop. Open your cabinets. Scan your fridge. Poke around in your freezer. And while we’re at it, scrap your next I-don’t-have-time-to-cook delivery order for a spread of “this is what we had in the fridge.” For most of us, the food is there; we just need to eat it. Chances are, we can eat it and eat well, all while saving money and time.
But how do you work with what you have when you feel like you have nothing to work with? Here’s some guidance from my low-waste kitchen.
Find the food
No need to do an exhaustive inventory, but run through this list for help seeing the possibilities — and not the limitations — of delaying your next shopping run.
- Use your Get-Out-Of-Cooking-Free Card. Did you stock canned soup and premade meals for a rainy day? Today’s the day. Have loads of frozen leftovers? Defrost some frozen mystery blobs. But if there’s no ready-made container of minestrone in your freezer, then …
- Round up your plants. Scan for fruits and vegetables first because few of us eat enough of them and fresh ones go bad quickly. Prioritize any that are drooping or wrinkling (pitch slimy ones). Otherwise, how about leftovers, canned or frozen veggies, and even pickles or dried fruit?
- Find a protein. Eggs cook quickly and transform nearly anything into a meal. Dollops of Greek yogurt or cottage cheese have similar powers. Canned beans, with a few wrist flicks, can anchor a dinner. Maybe you have protein-heavy leftovers that aren’t quite a full meal, or quick-prep proteins such as lunch meat or frozen fish sticks.
- Identify starches and meal stretchers. Do you have rice, pasta, bread (maybe frozen and forgotten?) or that interesting grain you haven’t made yet? (Shout out to the farro in my cabinet! You’re up soon!) Cheese and nuts, of course, make everything better. And not-enough-for-a-meal pizza can be a side dish.
- Get saucy. Raid your jars and bottles, starting with the most neglected. Scan your spice rack. Tip: Mix mayo with herbs, and, if you’d like, thin with water, pickle juice or another liquid, for an instant sauce. Olive oil swirled with herbs and a sprinkle of sea salt always wins on bread.
- Assess. Are you looking at a charcuterie-style spread? A pasta dish of “everything we had in the fridge, sauteed and seasoned with that sauce we never use”? Sandwiches, maybe open-faced if you don’t have enough bread, maybe with green beans instead of greens (sounds weird, tastes delicious)? Last night’s takeout hulked up with some frozen veggies? Not quite-enough fish, veggies and rice topped with a handful of now-it’s-a-filling-meal pepitas?
Accept imperfection
When you’re improvising, inevitably some meals won’t be amazing. Still, you’ll use up food, save money and build your skills. I say that’s a win. Or, as Margaret Li and Irene Li, authors of “Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking,” like to say, “Eat the evidence and move on.”
Speaking of imperfection, remember: date labels, especially “best by” dates, are often based on peak quality, and sometimes foods that aren’t picture perfect are fine to eat. My website, EatOrToss, features science-based guidance to help sort through uncertainty.
Look for inspiration
An increasing number of low-waste books, websites and food social media influencers can assist. The Li sisters’ cookbook features whimsically titled recipes, such as Cream-of-Anything Soup and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Vegetable Paella.
In “The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z,” author Tamar Adler offers an encyclopedia of use-it-all inspiration. The entry for “fish, overcooked” gives a short recipe for a pasta dish; under “pizza crusts,” Adler suggests cubing them for a sausage bake. Her last chapter describes dips, drinks and dishes you can summon from the final bits clinging to jars of foods such as maple syrup, miso paste and mustard. Washington Post recipes editor Becky Krystal offered a guide to such kitchen clearout classics as soups, pastas and stir fries.
Shop more efficiently
Ideally, using what you have results in fewer trips to the store. But when you do go shopping, plan and make your list based on what you need to use up. Recently, inspired by a staggering collection of soy sauce packets and a bag of coconut flakes that tasted fine but whose best-by date shall remain undisclosed, I bought a block of tofu. We had coconut tofu for dinner, and I’m closer to using up that coconut and those packets.
Also try to stock a small stash of foods with meal-conjuring powers. This will look different for everyone, but for me that’s eggs because they go with everything, frozen vegetables because they’re healthful and don’t spoil, apples because they’re a fresh fruit that lasts in the fridge and beloved spice blends because they’re flavor shortcuts. I also usually have some frozen bread, keeping me a few toaster oven beeps away from a sandwich or, a supporting roll (sorry) for a salad.
Be realistic at the supermarket too. It’s easy to feel ambitious inside a store filled with bright produce and enticing packages, but if you only seriously cook one night a week, your haul should reflect that. And, if you notice your produce is routinely going bad before you can cook it, buy less and create a specific plan for using what you do buy. If your desire to avoid over-purchasing is bumping up against your goals of eating more fruits and vegetables, the freezer aisle can help you fill in the gaps.
Sales and buying in bulk can be great — as long as you use your purchases. “Buy two get one free” is only a deal if you’ll eat all three while they’re still fresh, which is not always easy for certain types of produce, such as lettuce. I once learned the hard way that a relatively low unit price on smoked fish dip only matters if your household eats the stuff by the pound.
Make it fun
Enlist kids, partners and roommates to make use-it-all cooking a fun, creative challenge. At our house, nights when we pull everything out of the fridge for a “buffet” are known as a “repast” or “scavenge,” depending on whether we’re feeling fancy or mischievous. Laura Kumin, my friend and a cookbook author, calls such dinners a “mitzvah meal.” If you’re serving kids, consider a muffin pan dinner, in which small quantities of whatever needs eating fill each cup. (Maybe this should be my next move for granola bars on the brink.)
Buying less food is liberating. It saves time in the store, time unloading, time throwing away and time hauling to the curb. It also, of course, saves money and can help cultivate kitchen clarity. When your fridge’s shelves are more clear and your mind is freed from the blinding glare of everything you could ever want at the supermarket, you start to see things. A bundle of parsley, raisins and lemon juice zing together in a fast and bright salad. English muffins embrace new identities in sandwiches. The whole-grain mustard a houseguest left behind transforms into an unexpected sauce. A pour of pickle juice is the shot of acid, flavor and moisture that a bland, dry dish needs.
Of course, I’m sharing what I’ve found works for me and others, but I don’t know your kitchen and your habits. Maybe you’re a precision meal planner and never need a clear-the-fridge night; maybe you expertly deploy an “eat me first box” and it has been all you needed to use up stragglers before they go slimy or fuzzy. If you’ve solved your personal food waste puzzle, or even if you simply have a great waste-fighting recipe you’re itching to share, tell me — tell everyone — because there are literally millions of pounds of food stranded in our homes.
We really, truly, just need to eat it.
Rachael Jackson is a D.C.-based writer and the founder of EatOrToss.com. Reach her at rachael@eatortoss.com.
