I was reading an article in the NY Times this morning about the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer and how this is leading to forever chemicals in our foods that can cause birth defects, cancer, and other health risks.1 After I finished screaming into a pillow, I got back up and went about my typical Saturday which included dropping off our food waste to our town’s recycling program and of course, tending to my garden.
Like most of us, my climate anxiety is real. We are taking steps to make our home more sustainable- we added solar panels and plan to replace our oil heat with a hybrid heat pump system. June through November, we get the bulk of our vegetables through a CSA. We have cut way down on our meat consumption and we buy most of our meat through Walden Local.2 But one of the most impactful and important things we do is we do not put one drop of food waste in the trash.
Since 2008, I have found a way to compost my vegetable and fruit scraps no matter my living situation. When I lived in a one-bedroom condo outside of Boston, I brought them to a local farm. When we moved to NY and lived in an apartment, I brought them to the community garden or to the composter in my school garden. Now I have a composter in my yard, and the rest of the food waste goes to our town’s food waste recycling program.
According to ReFED, a U.S.-based nonprofit working to catalyze the food system toward evidence-based action to stop wasting food, food waste is defined as “uneaten food and inedible parts (e.g., peels, pits, bones) going to the following eight destinations: composting, anaerobic digestion, landfill, combustion, sewer, dumping, spread onto land, or not harvested.”3 Food waste occurs across the whole supply chain, beginning with farms that, depending on economics, may leave surplus food in the field to rot if the cost to harvest is too high, to retailers that dispose of perfectly good food that consumers have rejected, to consumers at home who let food spoil and then throw it out. We are all guilty of this. Access to food waste recycling is limited. My town and our neighbor to the north launched pilot programs for food waste drop-off. We donate all our scraps and are given bucketloads of compost in the spring for our yards. It’s a win-win. This should be the norm, not the exception.
If your locality does not have food waste recycling, there are other efforts you can make to do your part to stop food waste:
Plan your meals: No matter how busy I am, I sit down and plan our meals for the week. I buy the ingredients I need and prioritize the ones I already have.
Buy the ugly vegetables: During the off-season, I buy much of our produce and other goods from Misfit Market. I get some terrific deals on there.
Store food properly: If you place berries in the fridge with too much moisture, they will spoil faster. I put all the leafy greens in a bag in the vegetable drawer. If not, they will wilt faster.
Eat the leftovers: My husband runs 6-8 miles per day so we rarely have leftovers, but when we do, we eat them! I bring them for lunch the next day or he eats them on the weekend. They are not always fun and exciting, but you already put the effort into the meal the first time. Leftovers just need a microwave.
Donate what you don’t want: We all have non-perishables you bought and meant to use but never did.
Preserve food: One of my favorite things to do with a bunch of basil is layer it in a mason jar with olive oil so that all the basil is submerged in the oil. Put it in the fridge and you have basil to add to dishes all winter. Likewise, not one tomato from my garden is wasted. They all become salsa, sauce or go into a salad.
Be creative in how you use vegetables: When I have some odd vegetables left, I make enchiladas! Zucchini, peppers, yams, corn, tomatoes, spinach, kale, onions, and garlic can all be put together in a saute pan with some beans and some seasoning, rolled into tortillas and smothered with enchilada sauce and cheese. So good!
And finally, when life gives you fruit a little past its prime, make sangria. We have a bigger issue with wasting wine in my house. My husband is very bougie and likes a fresh bottle of wine when he wants a glass. That means we have unfinished bottles in the wine fridge. I have no problem drinking wine that’s been open for a few days, but if I can’t keep up with the access I make sangria. There are usually 1-2 clementines left that no one wants to eat. Same with an apple that has sat in the fruit drawer a little too long. If I don’t have quite enough fruit, but a lot of wine, I’ll throw in some frozen fruit that I keep on hand for smoothies. I never go to the store to buy fruit for sangria. I use what I have. This is the true essence of sangria. It was (most likely) created by peasants who used what they had provided by the land around them.
Below are my basic recipes for regular sangria and mocktail sangria. Adjust the recipe based on how much wine you have left over. For this batch, I used 3 lonely strawberries from my patch, frozen berries, simple syrup leftover from cocktail making, and a bit of orange juice since I am out of triple sec. I garnished with flowers from the edible flower bed. The sangria was excellent.
For the sangria sans alcohol, it just so happened that the whole family was slammed by a cold last week, and we had white grape juice left. I hosted a brunch yesterday and made this for the under-21 set. It was a huge hit.
Basic Sangria
4 cups of leftover wine
1/3 cup brandy
a splash of triple sec or orange juice
1-2T of sweetener, adjust according to your tastes
leftover or frozen fruit
Place all ingredients in a large mason jar or pitcher. I like to place it in a mason jar (no ice) and sit it in the fridge for an hour or two before serving.
Non-Alcoholic Sangria
4 cups white grape juice
leftover or frozen fruit
a few mint leaves
club soda or seltzer water
Place juice, mint, and fruit in a glass. Add ice and a splash of bubbly water.
Tabuchi, H. (2024, August 31). 5 takeaways from our reporting on toxic sludge fertilizer. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/climate/takeaways-pfas-sludge-fertilizer.html
Walden Local delivers pasture-raised products from New York and New England farms, headquartered in my hometown in MA. I wish I could be a vegan, but my thyroid issues prevent me from doing so. Believe me, I have tried!
https://refed.org/food-waste/the-problem/#what_is_food_waste
Oh lord, get outta my head! I work with neuro-spicy folk in a teeny-tiny community, and - as a farmer - I preach these ideas, dawn til dusk! Many thanks for this ❤️
Will keep this in mind next time I have some leftover wine!