Day 69 of 365 Days Of Low Carbon Living: making the most of stale bread and other leftovers.

A while ago someone gave me a large bag of sliced bread after a function. I thought I would be able to use these pieces of French stick (baguette) to make garlic bread for informal meals.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to use it all straight away, so I froze it.

It turned out that we didn’t ever get around to eating much of it and the bread dried out.

I couldn’t just throw it out though.

Why not throw out stale bread?

The worst thing to do with food is put it out as rubbish to go to landfill.

Doing that disregards all the effort, energy and resources that went into making the food.

All faiths teach about avoiding waste. Disrespecting the effort that goes into creating something is equally immoral.

Furthermore, buried deep where there is no air, food decomposes to become methane, a fast-acting and very potent greenhouse gas that is damaging our climate. Eventually it leaks into the air, where it can do its damage. Specially constructed landfills may capture some of the methane but much is missed. And, as we see from ever more extreme weather, the last thing we need at the moment is more damage to our climate.

Finally, when we bury organic matter like food, we also lose all the nutrients that go into making it. These nutrients, particularly phosphorus, are the building blocks of all life on Earth. In nature, nutrients are continually recycled. However, humans have now changed the Earth’s natural nutrient cycles. And, Julian Cribb points out in his book The Coming Famine, our over-use and wastage of phosphorus means that its future availability is in doubt, threatening food supplies at a time when there are more mouths than ever to feed.

What I did with my stale bread

In the ‘waste’ hierarchy, re-use is much preferred over recycle or discard (that is, put in landfill).

So that’s what I did this week with my stale bread: I re-used it. In the fashion and design worlds, it might have been called ‘up-cycling’.

I combined my stale bread, with some not-quite-stale eggs and a last dollop of cream I found in the fridge to make delicious bread-and-butter pudding. It’s a thrifty, high protein dessert that’s very popular again.

Here’s what I did:

• Grease a wide casserole.
• Butter the bread on one side and pack into the casserole in layers.  For a change, I tried spreading the bread on the bottom layers with a little raspberry jam. I was very glad, as it added a little oomph to the final product.
• Beat some coconut sugar (which is low GI) into the eggs, then add the cream (optional) and soy or other milk. The quantities are dependent on how much bread there is, so it’s important to remember that the aim is to end up with runny liquid that will cook into a firm custard. I started off with about 5 eggs and 1/2 litre of milk. It wasn’t enough for this batch, so I needed to make more.
• Pour the custard mix onto the bread, taking care not to displace any of it.
• Gently press the bread down to submerge it, then and leave it to soak. If there is not enough liquid to coat all the bread, add more custard
• Sprinkle with a little more sugar now or after the next stage.
• When all the liquid is soaked up, gently press the bread down again to ensure that it is again submerged.
• Bake in a slow oven until set. This may take quite a while, so make sure that it is cooking in the bottom of an oven being used to cook other things.
• Enjoy hot or cold, along with feeling good about enjoying a good Climatarian dish that helps reduce food waste and climate damage.

Challenge

If you have stale food like bread or biscuits, use it to make a new dish with it. As well as bread and butter pudding, there are plenty of other recipes to find or create.

Join me!

Any change or challenge is easier if you have company along the way.

So let’s embark on this journey together.

• Read my blog for ideas, thoughts and experiences for living a lower carbon lifestyle, more in harmony with nature – while also adapting to the consequences of our damaged climate.
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• Commit to taking action yourself.
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A problem shared is a problem halved. We’re all affected by the changes to our world so we need to be all in on the action!

Till next time…

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