Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook


Book Description

This “slim but indispensable new guide” offers “practical tips and delicious recipes that will help reduce kitchen waste and save money” (The Washington Post). Despite a growing awareness of food waste, many well-intentioned home cooks lack the tools to change their habits. This handbook—packed with engaging checklists, simple recipes, practical strategies, and educational infographics—is the ultimate tool for using more and wasting less in your kitchen. From a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council come these everyday techniques that call for minimal adjustments of habit, from shopping, portioning, and using a refrigerator properly to simple preservation methods including freezing, pickling, and cellaring. At once a good read and a go-to reference, this handy guide is chock-full of helpful facts and tips, including twenty “use-it-up” recipes and a substantial directory of common foods.




My Zero-Waste Kitchen


Book Description

Learn how to reduce food waste with quick tips and simple solutions in My Zero-waste Kitchen. Live sustainably and embrace the three R's: reduce, reuse, and recycle. In My Zero-waste Kitchen, find creative and unexpected ways to eliminate trash, save money, and give leftovers a new life. Plus, learn to grow your own vegetables and herbs from scraps, and nourish your plants with compost. With 15 nutritious and versatile recipes in which nothing goes to waste, this guide shares the secrets to smart shopping, meal planning, and the nutritional value of often-discarded food products. Turn beetroot peelings into delicious falafel, pesto, or a melt-in-your-mouth cake. Revive produce nearing the end of its shelf life with "flexi" recipes-for risotto, stir-fry, smoothies, and more. The tips and tricks in My Zero-waste Kitchen show how easy it is to live more sustainably without making a complete lifestyle change.




Cook More, Waste Less


Book Description

An indispensable cookbook of delicious, flexible recipes, and easy, everyday solutions to reduce the amount of food waste you produce—for life. THE STATS ON FOOD WASTE ARE STAGGERING: currently one-third of all the food produced in the world is thrown away. Going zero-waste with food isn’t some-thing we’ll reach overnight, nor is it a hard and fast rule; but it’s something we should all be moving towards—to help the environment, and our own wallets too! Cook More, Waste Less uses recipe icons to guide you, and shows you how, for example, to cook a hearty Pot Roast and turn the leftovers into a Savory Pie, and then use the bones to make a stock to freeze for when you next make soup. And, how to make a meal of Simple Roasted Vegetables, then whip up a frittata the next morning, and use any scraps for Stone Soup. If you’ve got some extra rice? Turn it into Fancy Fried Rice with other ingredients in your fridge, or Leftover Rice Pudding for dessert. Fruit going soft? Turn it into Any Way Marmalade, or use banana peels for This Bread is Bananas. Fresh herbs or greens wilting? Put them in a pesto! Christine also includes guides on how to mix and match any array of vegetables, meats, and plant-based proteins for flexible, fast recipe ideas like Pasta Night or Taco Tuesdays. This definitive cookbook even looks beyond meals to other creative uses for extra foods, like making pet treats, beauty treatments, and home cleaning products, and it features advice from other experts—such as composting tips from Carson Arthur, and food waste solutions from Anna Olson, Bob Blumer, and Todd Perrin. Cook More, Waste Less is a life-changing cookbook that gives you simple and actionable steps on what you’ll cook next—and what you won’t throw away.




The Waste-Free World


Book Description

The next revolution in business will provide for a sustainable future, from founder, CEO and circular economy expert Ron Gonen Our take-make-waste economy has cost consumers and taxpayers billions while cheating us out of a habitable planet. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Waste-Free World makes a persuasive, forward-looking case for a circular economic model, a “closed-loop” system that wastes no natural resources. Entrepreneur, CEO and sustainability expert Ron Gonen argues that circularity is not only crucial for the planet but holds immense business opportunity. As the founder of an investment firm focused on the circular economy, Gonen reveals brilliant innovations emerging worldwide— “smart” packaging, robotics that optimize recycling, nutrient rich fabrics, technologies that convert food waste into energy for your home, and many more. Drawing on his experience in technology, business, and city government and interviews with leading entrepreneurs and top companies, he introduces a vital and growing movement. The Waste-Free World invites us all to take part in a sustainable and prosperous future where companies foster innovation, investors recognize long term value creation, and consumers can align their values with the products they buy.




American Wasteland


Book Description

What Tom Vanderbilt did for traffic and Brian Wansink did for mindless eating, Jonathan Bloom does for food waste. The topic couldn't be timelier: As more people are going hungry while simultaneously more people are morbidly obese, American Wasteland sheds light on the history, culture, and mindset of waste while exploring the parallel eco-friendly and sustainable-food movements. As the era of unprecedented prosperity comes to an end, it's time to reexamine our culture of excess. Working at both a local grocery store and a major fast food chain and volunteering with a food recovery group, Bloom also interviews experts—from Brian Wansink to Alice Waters to Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen—and digs up not only why and how we waste, but, more importantly, what we can do to change our ways.




The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking


Book Description

With The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking, it's possible and even convenient to create an inviting space for living and entertaining on a budget. From unique decor ideas to growing strawberries on your fire escape, Kate Payne shares fun, low-cost (and often free!) creative solutions that will make anyone feel more accomplished in minutes. Inside this savvy motivational guide filled to the brim with small-scale creative home projects, Kate's tongue-in-cheek tone will keep you tuned in to her much-needed advice. In three easy sections, you'll learn how to create a comfortable space while being time- and budget-conscious. Section One, Home-ify Your Pad, features quick, convenient ways to make your place cozier with low-cost, special touches to help you tap into and show off your inner artist. Section Two, Impressive Acts of Domesticity, teaches how to impress others (and yourself) with the gratifying pleasures of self-sufficiency—a first-time guide to cleaning, sewing, repairing, and other previously out-of-the-question tasks. Section Three, Life After Restaurants, frees you to release the take-out menu, avoid pricey bar tabs, and entertain others in the space you've so thoughtfully and gorgeously created. User-friendly "how-to" sidebars, illustrations, and tips and tricks throughout the book offer easy-to-follow recipes and do-it-yourself craft suggestions for making your home hip, comfortable, and inviting. Keep in mind that this is not your grandmother's handbook and it's not the kind of wisdom your mom knows how to impart. Modern women need a modern approach to domestic pleasures—a guide to doing household things on our own terms, because most of this stuff isn't as hard as we've been led to believe. Don't worry, she's not asking you to host Tupperware parties or iron your underwear. But as all beginning home keepers know, a sure fire way to feel bad about ourselves is to consult Martha Stewart. So ditch that 2-inch thick handbook, dust off your pots and pans, and join Kate on this journey to incorporating creativity and self-sufficiency on the home front.




Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking


Book Description

A Food & Wine Best New Summer Cookbook A Book Riot Most Anticipated Cookbook of 2023 How to cook flexibly and fight food waste, with 80 recipes and 150 ideas to use up what you have. You’re standing in front of your refrigerator, a week after your last trip to the supermarket. You’ve got a bunch of random veggies, some wrinkly fruit, near-expired milk, and those pricey fresh herbs you bought for that one recipe and don’t know how to use up. For a split second you picture yourself opening a trash bag, throwing everything away, and ordering takeout. We’ve all been there. But instead…you pick up this cookbook. In no time you’ve prepared a Make-It-Your-Own Stir-Fry and How-You-Like-It Savory Pancakes, plus a Mix-and-Match Fruit Galette that you’ll have for dessert. Time to celebrate—you’re saving food, shrinking that grocery bill, and learning some key skills for making the most of what you have. It’s exciting to be able to create new dishes and waste less food, and most importantly—a delicious dinner is on the table! Perfectly Good Food is a book for those moments everyone has, whether you cook for one or a whole household—moments standing before an overfull pantry or near-empty fridge, not sure what to do with an abundance of summer tomatoes or the last of the droopy spinach. Chock-full of ingenious use-it-up tips, smart storage ideas, and infinitely adaptable recipes, this book will teach you why smoothies are your secret weapon; how to freeze (almost) anything; why using your senses in the kitchen (including common sense!) is more important than so-called shelf-life. Written by the chef-sisters behind Boston’s acclaimed Mei Mei Dumplings, this cookbook/field guide is a crucial resource for the thrifty chef, the environmentally mindful cook, and anyone looking to make the most of their ingredients.




No Scrap Left Behind


Book Description

The story of a mother’s quest to end her family’s food waste—and all the blunders that came with it. Teralyn Pilgrim had no idea the environmental and economic impact of food waste, or that she could save $100 a month by being waste free. But when a story of hungry children fills her with unbearable guilt, she decided to make a change to the way her family approached mealtime. Despite finicky kids and a skeptical husband, Pilgrim turned her feelings of guilt into action and created a zero-food waste kitchen. Pilgrim began her journey by defining food waste with Rule #1: the Hungry Kid Test—would you throw something edible away with a hungry child watching? If the answer is yes, it can go in the compost. If the answer is no, then it’s time to get creative. Narrating her trials and errors—emphasis on errors—Pilgrim invites readers to her table where leftover food is a personal challenge to reduce waste, save money, and guard against squandering natural resources. Things get tricky when she discovers a five-year-old fish in her freezer, accidentally buys the grossest fat-free cookies in the world, and finds her dog is as picky as the kids. Addressing myths about how being waste-free is too hard (it’s not) and whether expiration dates mean anything (they don’t), Pilgrim teaches readers clever ways to be resourceful while also offering a broader look at why food waste matters and the global effects of this massive problem. Both a resource for families and a call for worldwide change, No Scrap Left Behind offers nine-step program and hundreds of food-related tips to help readers find their own way to sustainable living, trim the grocery bill, and effect change...starting in their own kitchens.




Why Waste Food?


Book Description

About one-third of all food grown for human consumption is lost or discarded every year, despite financial, environmental, and ethical reasons not to waste food. We grow enough food to adequately feed everyone on the planet, yet hundreds of millions of people suffer from hunger, malnutrition, or food insecurity. Together, this food waste accounts for about eight percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. So, if wasting food is such a patently bad idea, why do we discard so much? In Why Waste Food?, Andrew F. Smith investigates one of today’s most pressing topics, examining the causes of avoidable food waste across the supply chain and highlighting the ways in which everyone can do something to tackle this global concern.




A National Strategy to Reduce Food Waste at the Consumer Level


Book Description

Approximately 30 percent of the edible food produced in the United States is wasted and a significant portion of this waste occurs at the consumer level. Despite food's essential role as a source of nutrients and energy and its emotional and cultural importance, U.S. consumers waste an estimated average of 1 pound of food per person per day at home and in places where they buy and consume food away from home. Many factors contribute to this wasteâ€"consumers behaviors are shaped not only by individual and interpersonal factors but also by influences within the food system, such as policies, food marketing and the media. Some food waste is unavoidable, and there is substantial variation in how food waste and its impacts are defined and measured. But there is no doubt that the consequences of food waste are severe: the wasting of food is costly to consumers, depletes natural resources, and degrades the environment. In addition, at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has severely strained the U.S. economy and sharply increased food insecurity, it is predicted that food waste will worsen in the short term because of both supply chain disruptions and the closures of food businesses that affect the way people eat and the types of food they can afford. A National Strategy to Reduce Food Waste at the Consumer Level identifies strategies for changing consumer behavior, considering interactions and feedbacks within the food system. It explores the reasons food is wasted in the United States, including the characteristics of the complex systems through which food is produced, marketed, and sold, as well as the many other interconnected influences on consumers' conscious and unconscious choices about purchasing, preparing, consuming, storing, and discarding food. This report presents a strategy for addressing the challenge of reducing food waste at the consumer level from a holistic, systems perspective.