Wasting Food

I'm not exactly sure how I got this way because it was not ingrained into me as a kid, but I really have a difficult time wasting food. If the kids do not finish what is on their plates, 9 times out of 10 I will either finish it right away, or put it into the fridge for leftovers. The 10th time would be when they are sick, and I don't want to catch what they have. But even then sometimes it pains me so much to throw away good food that I'll cook it again to kill any germs in it, and eat it.

Here is a can of olives that I found this past winter while walking my son home from judo. It was neatly placed on the window sill of a local Vietnamese restaurant. The ends were bulging a bit at the time, but I figured that was just from the stuff inside expanding from being frozen. I know, I know, you should not eat canned goods that are bulged. But that is only a general rule of thumb for people who do not actually know why you should not eat them when they are bulged. I do know why, and I knew that if I took the can home and left it a few months, it would tell me whether or not it was still good to eat. It still looked fine today, so I put it on the pizza I made for supper.

One time a few years ago after a big holiday dinner, I'd forgotten to put some of the dips into the fridge before going to bed. The next morning I mucked into them with bread for breakfast, even though one of them was based on mayonaise. OK, I admit, that was the infamous time I ended up calling Telehealth Ontario about it. But that was a chance I was willing to take for the sake of not wasting food! OK, in hindsight I would probably not do that one again, at least not without cooking the stuff first.

At our summer Brew 'n' Q backyard parties I see a lot of food go to waste. Not a tremendous amount I will say, thankfully. But even small amounts of waste bother me. And I do see a lot of meat go to waste, which bothers me more than most things because some animal gave its life only to be wasted like that. A lot of it is from kids, I know that. And it is therefore more excusable. But still not easy for me to bear. One of the downsides of the pork neck that I recently discovered and trumpeted as a frugal delight is that it is a bit challenging to get all the meat out, and the one time I served it so far this year I would guesstimate that at most half the meat had been eaten. OK, it was probably mainly an education thing and most of the people just didn't know how to get at it all.

Actually it was right after this when I started considering trying something new for the Brew 'n' Qs this year. Something that will probably gross out a lot of people. I'm considering having a special "garbage" bin for meat pieces. I'll empty it regularly during the day into a bin in the fridge, and then the next day I can pressure cook it to make a broth and get all the meat off, and then can it up. Honestly speaking, even though I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt there is nothing that could survive that 15 psi pressure canning, that even grosses me out a bit. But the fact that it grosses me out a bit is something I consider to be a challenge. Because it is food being wasted, and I don't like wasting food.

It really bothers me deeply, and metaphysically, to see food go to waste. Even little bits of it. I am a regular on the Ottawa Foodies website, where my handle is Zymurgist, or "one who brews". A while back we were discussing the new composting service that is being introduced soon to the City of Ottawa, and one user said that "Anything edible that doesn't go into the trash, is a success.". Ug. That was like fingers down a chalk board for me! Sure, the wasted food would not be going into the landfill site. But it was still wasted food, even if it was being composted! I very quickly countered by exclaiming that "anything edible that does not get eaten is a failure. Doesn't matter if it gets composted or not." And I believe this to the core of my being.

There was another thread some time ago on Ottawa Foodies where a gal had accidentally left her turkey brining for 2 days on the kitchen counter, and so had no turkey for Christmas dinner. My first thought was that a proper brining solution should act as a preservative, and I'd eat that bad boy no problem at all! Sure, I'd check it all over carefully to make sure there were no green parts, and that it smelled fine. As long as it is cooked very well done with an internal temperature way more than normal "well done" (say 195F to 200F) it should be fine. And if there were any doubt whatsoever, I'd toss the entire thing into my pressure canner, cook it really well at 15psi, then pick the carcass and can the whole thing up, again at 15psi! Anything that can survive that has proven its superiority over me, and I deserve to die at its mercy! It was a whole damned turkey afterall! That's an incredible thing to waste! An entire being!

Sadly, I still waste more food than I'd like to. Earlier today I had to toss about 7 or 8 pancakes into the composter because one of them had a few speckles of mold on it. That is twice now in about a month I've had to toss out pancakes, and I am a bit confused by it to be honest. In the past I've made a huge batch of them and they've kept fine in plastic containers for over a week. These ones were made just on Sunday - only 4 days ago - so I'm not sure why they went off so quickly. But even with the mold, there was a very long delay for me, thinking to myself how I could rescue this food from being wasted. Incidentally, my wife told me just now that I must have put them into the container when they were still warm - which I think I did actually. Lesson learned. Won't do that again.

We are also not very well organised in our fridge, so leftovers get tossed out sometimes after having been pushed to the back and forgotten. Though I can claim some moral victory here because we have gotten a lot better at this in the last year, and significantly less food gets wasted this way than used to be the case.

Still, there is always room for improvement, and I strive to do better.