Day 41 of 365 Days Of Low Carbon Living – using tired vegetables.
When you clean out your fridge, are you scared what you might find in your crisper? What do you do with your tired vegetables?
Most of us in affluent societies buy too much food.
We might have great intentions for our cooking.
Yet life can get in the way…and then we find the food isn’t very fresh (or worse!).
It’s time to clean out the fridge.
If it has been a while since your last effort there may be some surprises in your crisper.
Some of what is there may look pretty bad. Some may be unrecognisable.
If it’s unrecognisable, slimy or mouldy, it definitely needs to in the compost, Bokashi bin, worm farm or chook food (though perhaps not mouldy food for chooks…). That way, at least the nutrients in your old food won’t go to waste.
If it’s just ‘tired’, perhaps limp, half-used, or with a few spots, you can still use it – and cook something delicious, nutritious and cheap.
Why use your tired vegetables
Here are 9 reasons:
1. You paid for the vegetables (or grew them) – are you going to throw that money (or effort) away?
2. ‘Throwing out’ food wastes all the resources that went into growing them: the nutrients, the water, and the energy.
3. It also wastes all the energy that went into transporting and storing them.
4. Currently the energy embodied in your food is almost certainly from fossil oil (for farming and transport) and coal or fossil gas (for refrigeration). Using these fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide, the main source of damage to our climate.
5. Worldwide, there is a growing shortage of key nutrients that plants need to grow. Burying the nutrients in your food in landfill makes those nutrients unusable.
6. Any artificial fertilisers used to grow the food may also have come from fossil gas. It is methane, a powerful and quick-acting source of climate damage from the moment it is extracted to the moment it is burnt.
7. Any food that goes to landfill creates more methane. It leaks into the air and damages our climate. (And, no, electricity made from landfill gas does not solve the problem – it uses only some of the methane.)
8. It’s a time-honoured tradition to make use of every bit of food.
9. The big one: it’s morally wrong. All cultures and faiths teach that waste is bad. (That’s what’s behind reason 8.)
Food wastage is a huge problem in Australia. Did you know that Australians throw out $8 billion worth of food each year or that the average Australian household throws out nearly 1 kilogram of food per day?
How you can use a few tired vegetables
Here’s what I made with the tired vegetables from my crisper this weekend: chickpea and vegetable hotpot. Some pre-cooked chickpeas I had in the fridge provided the protein. Some mustard seeds and a little turmeric and salt gave the concoction a lift.
It gave me a head start for a meat-free meal for #MeatfreeMonday.
I didn’t use any recipe – just basic cooking knowledge and some creativity. I simply cut off any spots, dried edges or ends that were starting to go bad and put them in the compost. Then I cooked up my stew.
I could have looked for a recipe – typing the ingredients into a search engine or app can help – but that would have taken longer. A recent article in The Guardian gives some good places for recipes.
The challenge
First, think about how much food you really need and try to buy only what you need.
Second, when you next clean out your fridge, try to use as much of any tired vegetables you find. Be creative, experiment, and see what you can cook up!
Join me!
Any change or challenge is easier if you have company along the way.
So let’s embark on this journey together.
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