These are actual (greenhouse-grown) peppers bought at The Durham Farmer’s Market this past weekend. No photoshopping, I promise.

Despite their shar-pei appearance,  they were delicious. Proving once again that food doesn’t have to look perfect or homogeneous to taste great.

And now–these beauts are ready for their closeups:

Leave your answer as a comment. First correct answer gets a make-believe handshake. And a Twitter shout out.

Hint: The picture illustrates that fresh food doesn’t have to look uniform to taste great.

Now I’ll eat most things, but carrot tops? There are uses, but no runaway successes.

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Not to be outdone, the WSJ’s Juggle blog ran this helpful post on making the most of your CSA subscription.

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Restaurant customers have spoken–we want smaller portions. An NPD Group survey found that 57 percent of diners want to eat smaller portions in the coming year.

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Uh oh–looks like we may have a new global food waste “champion.” China tosses more trash per person than the U.S., and a larger portion of it (25% to 14%) is food.

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And just a head’s up: Monday on this very blog (and Sunday on the Wasted Food Facebook page) I’ll unveil the new paperback cover! It comes out in exactly one month!

The Wigg Party, a community group based in the neighborhoods around a bike route called The Wiggles The Wiggle, recently began rescuing foods from local growers by inquiring toward the end of farmer’s markets whether they had any food they planned to compost.

Similar efforts occur at farmer’s markets around the country. Where it gets a bit Bay Area funky is when the volunteers hold a Fresh Produce Free-For-All the next day to distribute their food to…anyone.

It’s a great idea and I love the name. I am curious about just who shows up to claim this free food at Hayes Valley Farm, an awesome, community-run urban farm carved from a former freeway exit.

There are some interesting discussions to be had on the intended and actual attendees of these free-for-alls. But we’ll save that for another time. No matter who ends up with this rescued food, the neat thing is that someone does.

(image courtesy of The Wigg Party)

After making a distinction between those two animals, the piece delves into a discussion of the noble practice of farmer’s market food rescue. Recovering unsold produce at the end of a market just makes so much sense. If there’s one group of people who hate to waste food, it’s the folks who put so much time and effort into growing it. Plus, fresh produce is hard to come by for soup kitchens and food banks. And fresh, local produce is even better.

Does anyone do this at your farmer’s market? If so, I’d love to hear how it works. If not, the opportunity is ripe for you to impact your community.

Speaking of which…is there anyone in the D.C. area with a large vehicle, some free time on Tuesday nights and a desire to help put good food to use? If so, see the end of the post for contact info.

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The EPA food waste calculator–out sometime in September, I think–will let businesses calculate how diverting food from their waste stream will save them dough. (Hat tip to Lean Path.)

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Even celebrity chefs are getting into the act in the UK, pitching in with recipes to help Britons avoid waste. Cool graphic, too.

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The good news: Many prisons in Tennessee are composting their food scraps, and often using the finished product to help grow their veggies.

The bad news: the state Solid Waste Disposal Control Board shot down oroposed landfill bans on yard waste by 2017 (which has been on the books for a decade here in ole North Carolina) and food waste by 2020. Hey, at least the topic is being discussed, thanks mostly to Bring Urban Recycling to Nashville Today (BURNT).

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Finally, here are some dumpster diving scare tactics, courtesy of Florida grocers. Publix spokeswoman Kim Jaeger on her store’s efficiency:

“In other words, you won’t find much in our Dumpsters.”

That’s a good one.

Many farmers’ markets have such services and for good reason. Some of the healthy, local goods on offer usually goes unsold at markets. Everyone can’t sell out of everything! That’s why collecting and ferrying these items to those in need is such a valuable service.

Yes, as the article mentions, most farmers’ compost their unsold produce. That’s great, but not as beneficial as feeding hungry people.

If you live near a farmers’ market–and you probably do–try to find out if a similar recovery program exists there. If not, starting something like the Carrboro Farmers’ Market Farmer Foodshare wouldn’t take too much time. Obviously it’s hard work, but it would bear fruit almost immediately.

Does your market already have such a service? Let me know…

As a result, I’ve been grocery shopping on a day-to-day basis. I have to say: it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. While shopping more frequently can mean more driving and gas consumption, I’m lucky that my grocery store is only a quarter-mile away (I often bike there).

Plus, there are some real benefits to shopping more often. You can really buy only what you need. If you know you’ll be back soon, there’s no reason to make speculative purchases you may not use.

Shopping daily enables you to find produce that’s perfectly ripe. There’s no gambling on whether an avocado will ripen in time (or at all). And plotting household banana demand against ripening speed is easier when you’re only planning for a day or two.

Finally, you can see what ingredients look the freshest or what you feel like eating that night and go from there. We usually don’t waste foods we’re really in the mood to eat.

On the downside, you can’t make anything that takes too much prep time and you might get sick of going to the store so often. In addition, it probably tales longer to plan one dinner every day than it does to plan five or seven at once.

This vaguely European method, what some call a “marketplace” approach, works best in urban settings where you can walk to the market. But many of us drive to get our food. That’s why you have to find the solution that works best for you. Consider where you live, your schedule and your food prep and consumption habits.

What shopping method works best for you? Any tips on how to reduce waste based on shopping strategy?

Farmers selling at Texas’ largest growers-only market have long donated unsold edibles to soup kitchens and composted the remains. Since last Saturday, though, shoppers can bring their household food waste to the market.

This makes sense for the same reason as farmer’s markets themselves–providing ecologically sound food solutions for urban dwellers lacking land to grow and/or compost their food.

So how did this come about? Last week I spoke with the Addie Broyles, the food writer at the Austin American-Statesman writing a piece on food waste. After reading my post about how folks can export their household scraps to the Union Square Green Market, which has collected compost since 1990(!), Broyles passed that tidbit along to Susan Leibrock at the Sustainable Food Center, which runs the Austin Farmer’s Market.

Fast forward two weeks and the market had set up a collection bin. Leibrock was unsure if customers would take them up on the offer, which was passed along through the farmer’s market newsletter. Sure enough, two shoppers came up to Leibrock early in the morning wondering where they could dump their plastic containers of food waste.

By the end of Saturday, Austin Farmer’s Market shoppers had filled a 55-gallon trash can with compost. That’s 55 gallons of food that otherwise would have gone to the landfill.