Waste-fighting kitchen habits to cultivate

When I was growing up, I used to roll my eyes at my mother for saving things like used aluminum foil. She’d carefully wash off the foil and put it back in the drawer to reuse.

I understood recycling because we saved our old newspapers every day (two papers a day!) and hauled them to the recycling drop-off on Saturdays. But that aluminum foil thing, I just didn’t get.

Her explanation for lifelong frugality is that she grew up during the Great Depression without a lot of money and reusing every possible thing was just the norm. Very little garbage or trash was actually tossed out, and her generation truly understood using all parts of the animal, vegetable or fruit in cooking.

With Earth Day in mind, here are some ideas to combat food waste in your own kitchen:

Keep kitchen scraps such as carrot peelings, herb and mushroom stems, celery leaves and onion skins to make stock. Pickle, preserve or freeze your leftovers. I had an epiphany last year when I had leftover guacamole (how does that happen?) and I covered it carefully and froze it as an experiment. When I thawed it a couple weeks later, it was still green and delicious. Freeze surplus herbs in olive oil or

butter.

Don’t buy items on a whim. I’m always buying things I think I’ll use someday. Just checking my pantry, I found old unopened bottles of rose water, hazelnut flavoring, sorghum syrup and other things — some of which were way past expiration. If you need an ingredient for a recipe that’s unusual, buy the smallest amount possible or better yet, try to make it yourself.

Tim Young of theselfsufficientlife.com thinks above all it’s important to respect food.

“Here’s a challenge for you,” he says. “Go one month without throwing ANY food away. Wasting food is the luxury of a lazy, entitled society.” That challenge would surely motivate us all to be more mindful of what we buy and what we consume.