Coronavirus Good To The Last Bite

Monster cookies. I only had one and half cups of chocolate chips instead of two a recipe required. But I found the remnants of a bag of pecans and a tiny amount of coconut that had been sitting in the fridge for who knows how long and mixed them in. They were some of the most amazing cookies I have ever made.

  

This morning I read a New York Times article about how consumer's grocery habits had changed. Not only were consumers buying products in larger quantities, but they were also figuring out how to use all of their food down to the last drop.

I realized I fit right into that last category of change.

"Regrow your kitchen scraps," proclaimed the YouTube video I watched last week. They planted vegetable parts I would typically throw away, scallion ends, bell pepper seeds, and celery bottoms and showed how quick they grow. (The YouTube link is at the bottom of this post.) The simplest one was the green onions. You just cut off the bottoms - roots with 1-2 inches of its white stalk - plant them with the white tips above the dirt and in a week you will have new green onions. Just clip off the green ends and eat. Then a week later, that part you had cut off will have regrown into a new green stalk ready to cut and eat. Can I have an endless supply of green onions?

I have also been going through my cupboards and refrigerator finding obscure food that I haven't eaten because I didn't know what to do with them. The can of kidney beans became part of a turkey soup; the balsamic vinegar I bought months ago (hopefully not years ago) became balsamic chicken thighs, a new household favorite; and my claim to fame - the lentils that I turned into pie weights. I don't like lentils. I have no idea why they were there in the cupboard, but then I read that they make the perfect pie weights. And sure enough, they have worked great to blind bake 3 pie crusts so far.

My son just finished working on a merit badge for the Boy Scouts on sustainability which covered of all things, food waste.

"Are you going to eat that?" I asked my son who had one large untouched piece of rib roast on his plate. "No," he said. He had taken 2 large pieces and now one just sat there. I took his plate to the kitchen, into a baggie went the slice of meat, and then into the refrigerator.

When he complained that he didn't want to eat leftovers for lunch the next day, I said its because we are minimizing food waste as discussed in your merit badge book.

Surprisingly, he brightened and ate every single bite.

Take care and be safe.

Posts Tuesday and Saturday.

Regrow Your Kitchen Scraps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk2Z954prz4