This past week, I gave a series of talks at Mario Batali’s restaurants in LA and Las Vegas. It was an interesting, eye-opening experience. I learned a fair amount about how restaurants view waste and, hopefully, the warm, professional staff learned a bit about the importance of reducing waste. The restaurant group is already on [...]
I’m on the road now, prepping for a couple of events in San Francisco (find details here). But I had to pass on this useful post communicating 17 Uses for Stale Bread. And you were planning to feed it to the birds!!
Wasted coffee. This topic could be its own book. In the meantime, it’s a post: The food waste experts at LeanPath have provided some helpful and potentially money-saving hints on both reducing the amount of excess coffee and what to do with the inevitable excess. While the tips are aimed at restaurants and institutional settings, mostly, [...]
Lost in my post-Christmas haze was National Leftovers Day in Australia. It makes plenty of sense, given the usual Christmas dinner abundance. And rest assured the Kiwis are onto the idea, too (in a Dec. 30 article I’m writing about on Dec. 29–a clear example of my soothsaying prowess). In the U.S., we have the Friday after Thanksgiving for the same [...]
Great news from Maine: In her Diner’s Journal blog, Julia Moskin wrote about a local grocer that finds a way to use up most of what it stocks. Oh, those frugal Mainers! Moskin’s reported details on Rosemont Markets, a kind of outtake from her piece on Portland’s food scene, seem so obvious in hindsight: When the local [...]
Today, I spoke with chef Liza Shaw of San Francisco’s A16. The Italian restaurant has a bit of a reputation for its Meatball Mondays, where they serve the uber-popular dish made from scraps and trimmings. A16 mostly uses prosciutto scraps saved throughout the week. No wonder they’re so good! I realized meatloaf, sausages and soups were good uses for [...]
The Eating Down the Fridge (and pantry and cupboard) experiment ended Sunday, but not without many a participant learning many a lesson. There were some nice insights in this wrap-up post. I particularly enjoyed these: I love that this exercise is encouraging me to use up my leftovers in new meals instead of letting them [...]
On the repurposing food front, I recently heard from an Australian reader named Angela. I’ll let her tell the story: We, too, are constantly looking for ways that we can use leftovers and avoid wasting food. I thought I’d share something that we did for the first time this week. We had a BBQ on [...]
Monday, I wrote about the turning excess buns from barbecue takeout into garlic bread. Well, what about the meat? We had two rather large containers of chopped beef and barbecue chicken and had consumed more than our fill of both. Yet, plenty more remained! My idea: meatloaf! I was really glad to have my mom [...]
No, I’m not writing to confess how much food waste family life creates. That’ll come in a year or so. (Joking, hopefully). More to the point, my parents are in town helping out while we get used to life with a son (a cute guy, in my humble opinion). Fortunately for us, my mom has [...]
