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What’s Rachel Reading? Waste Free Kitchen Handbook

This week I’m sharing another book I felt compelled to read after seeing a brief mention in an article — and it didn’t disappoint! Waste Free Kitchen Handbook turned out to be both a interesting read and a useful reference, breaking down the topic of food waste into easily digestible chunks. It’s jam-packed with charts, infographics, tips & tricks, and how-tos — as well as fairly appalling facts about how much food we waste, both individually and within our larger food system.

From eye-opening statistics (such as the fact that reducing food losses by one-third could save enough food to equal the total diets of all 50 million food-insecure Americans) to household uses for food scraps (dying Easter eggs; using avocado skins to start seedlings), Waste Free Kitchen Handbook covers a startlingly wide range of topics for such a compact little book. If you’re looking for some easy-to-implement basic strategies to help you stop food waste in your own kitchen, Waste Free Kitchen Handbook is worth a look.

Start at the store

Unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with the food purchasing pitfalls Gunders describes here: Impulse buying, overbuying, and buying ingredients with the best of intentions but later finding that life has other plans.

You might think you threw away that bag of salad greens because it went bad. But why did it go bad? Most likely, you didn’t do a good job of matching your shopping trip to the reality of your week. So as with other commitments in your life, when you’re buying (and thus committing to) food, choose wisely.

Well, if that doesn’t sum things up nicely! And she’s right: I don’t know about you, but my shopping eyes are sometimes bigger than my stomach. Something looks good in the store, sounds great for later in the week, wasn’t on my list but looks like a great deal… but if I don’t have a good plan for that food, or if I don’t stick to my plan for that food, the chickens occasionally get to feast on forgotten produce at the end of a busy week. Oh, and: The book even includes a chart on the do’s and don’ts for feeding scraps to chickens, too!

Learn how to store

Gunders also talks about how to store different types of food properly, including shelf-life, expiration date, and freezer storage advice, and provides a number of helpful food safety tips — as well as ideas on ways to use up the ends and pieces and scraps that we often end up tossing. I’ve been making vegetable broth from scraps for a few months now and try to to otherwise make a habit of using up leftovers. I am, however, intrigued by the use-it-up mentality in some of the recipe ideas here such as “sour milk pancakes,” as well as some of the suggestions for regrowing veggies (since I haven’t moved much beyond rooting green onions!).

Savings galore

The combination of wiser shopping habits and wiser food usage can also help us save: When we end up tossing out food, we end up tossing away the hard earned money we just spent at the grocery store. Gunders throughout addresses both the personal monetary savings and the societal and environmental savings that go along with wasting less food. This one little book covers everything from shopping strategies, to expiration dates, to food safety, to storage guidelines, to uses for foods scraps, to composting — and more.

While you may not implement all of the suggestions here, any step you take starts you on the journey towards reducing your own family’s food waste. After reading Waste Free Kitchen Handbook, I immediately cleaned out my refrigerator. (The less said about what I found in the back, the better!) But I now feel ready to start again from scratch and to take my own small steps today.

What are you reading this week?

What have you been reading lately? Tell us about it! ? And, you can browse all the What’s Rachel Reading? book reviews here.

Dave Gates

Saturday 20th of May 2017

HI Rachael,

This sounds like a good read. Was this a library find or did you buy the book? I'll have to check my local library and see if they carry it. We end up tossing our food waste in our compost, which we then use for the garden. It does seem like we toss a lot and could do better.

I'm listening to a book called "The worst case scenario survival handbook", It's interesting if you want to learn how to survive a falling elevator, or escape the truck of a car etc. Fun stuff.

Looks like this book would be an interesting read. Thanks for bring it to the attention of your readers.

Take care,

Dave davegates.net

rachel

Saturday 20th of May 2017

I saw the book mentioned in an article and then picked it up at the library. High School Guy enjoyed The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook a while back, if I remember right!

Nora

Friday 19th of May 2017

Excellent review. It sounds like a great book.

peaches

Friday 19th of May 2017

Thanks Rachael- I will have to check this book out of the Evanston library. There is a similar book on Amazon called Use It Up which also looks interesting. Currently I am trying to use up what I have in the kitchen, instead of going out and buying more bargains that I see at Jewel. I was at the Jewel on Chicago Avenue yesterday, and they had some lean cuisine marked down to $.44. I only ended up getting one of those, because it only had 2 grams of fiber. When I checked out though, I got a check out coupon for $.50 off three lean cuisine, and I was tempted to use the coupon, and get three more dinners for $.27 a piece, but I decided that I did not need them, and passed on them. I did get a package of WW spaghetti, which did not ring up a price, but the cashier called up somebody, and they sold it too me for $.50, and I got two packages of baby carrots, which they had marked down to 2/$1, and a package of Birdseye frozen protein steamables marked down to $.44. I did not absolutely need them, but they were such a good deal. I will use them up eventually.

I have a hard time dealing with people who get something just because they can get it for free, and they will hit five stores just to find it. Most of the freebies at Jewel are loaded with sugar and other stuff I don't need, and so I usually pass on those. Somebody on Jill's site posted last week that he could not get any more free ketchup, but how much ketchup do you need. I know you can donate it to the food pantry, but if given a choice between a donation of five bottles of ketchup, and one jar of peanut butter, most food pantries would much rather have the peanut butter. One of the food pantries in Evanston, picks up excess produce at the Evanston farmer's market, as they are getting ready to shut down. If you make it easy for the farmer to donate stuff, most of them will gladly do it. One of the gardener's at my community garden also collects excess produce that people put in the cooler on Friday evening. He then takes the cooler to the same food bank on Saturday morning.

Sara

Friday 19th of May 2017

I just finished The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff and it was fantastic! Available through both Overdrive and Hoopla (free library apps). It's the story of a circus that sheltered people from the Nazis during WW2.

I just started GI Brides by Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi Available through Hoopla. It's the store of 4 women who came to America as war brides from the UK.

rachel

Friday 19th of May 2017

If you enjoy GI Brides, last year I read Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes (who's also the author of the book I reviewed here last week) -- it's the story of a group of Australian war brides heading to England just after WWII, and was also pretty interesting.

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