It is easy not to waste food if you live on the countryside. Take our Sapanca farmhouse. If something is not eaten it will be put on the table next day or re-purposed. If an ingredient has been around for a while my mother-in-law would turn it into a tasty lunch. If a cooked dish has been in the fridge for too long it goes into the dog food and if something has perished – it will be composted.
In a city it is harder to be so thrifty. The households are smaller so less enthusiastic eaters for the food leftovers and who wants to eat the same meal again if you can go out or order in; dogs eat premium packaged food and composting may be a dream. Yesterday after I cleaned the fridge and freezer at my kitchen in Istanbul I felt like a sinner: despite all of my efforts and consciousness I had to throw away a few things. Yet fortunately I managed to re- purpose a few of them too, which made me feel a bit better. We, urban dwellers, have a lot to learn from the people living closer to their land and food. So here are five lessons from our countryside food waste management that can surely be applied at a small urban household.
1. Don’t stock up.
Stocking up is last year’s news. Unless you do data-driven meal planning the chances are you overestimate our needs and stocking up way more food we are able to use before it perishes. For a small urban household it makes sense to buy few fresh ingredients and use them up before you head out shopping again.
I try to buy fish or fresh produce from the Kadıköy market on the day I am going to cook it. And I am not ashamed about bothering vendors with the smallest quantity. “What are you going to do with just small 3 fishes?” asked my bewildered fishmonger once. I knew that if I were to buy more I would not be able to eat them right away; I would put that fish in the fridge for tomorrow, and tomorrow something else happens so I would never eat them anyway.
I know not everyone is lucky to live near the best food market of the town and for many people 3-4 shopping trips a week is too much effort. For instance, to shop from Eminönü is the whole trouble of getting on a ferry and then dragging heavy bags back to the Asia. So I tend to overstock during my trips to Eminönü. Weekly markets present another lovely shopping opportunity that most likely to result in overstocking. I try to stay realistic about my needs because at the end of the day it cost the same or less to come back in a week for more than to throw away the perished food. There is just one exception to the no stocking up rule: I will buy more than I need if the item freezes well and can fit my small freezer (good butter from the Sunday Inebolu Market).
2. Use your freezer
Meal planning is a cool idea which I often entertain but it never really happens: it may work for big families but not for a small urban household. I am too spontaneous about my cooking and my schedule is so unpredictable that it is an illusion to believe I am going to make fish cakes on Wednesday. I don’t even do meal planning for my cooking classes leaving it to the gut feel and peek at the market the day before. So if you don’t stock up and don’t do meal planning how can you put together a quick and healthy meal? You use your freezer to the fullest.
My small freezer is staffed with the items ready to be turned into a meal: cooked chickpeas to become hummus or salad, reconstituted sun-dried tomatoes and red bell peppers to add to a soup, a stew or börek stuffing, fish and vegetable stocks and egg whites left from baking. Also, in my freezer you can find something I bought in the quantities too large to be consumed immediately. I buy a big chunk of good butter, divide it into 100 g pieces and freeze in a ziplock. A loaf of bread is sometimes too much for me and I freeze a half of it, cut into 2-3 parts: I can pull it out, defrost and have fresh bread for my meal. Besides that I freeze some seasonal produce for later – the other day I used the last summer tomato from the freezer and replaced it with fresh green peas.
3. Learn to re-purpose leftovers
Being creative about the use of perishable foods has been a vital survival skill for the humankind. Dishes made of stale bread, stocks, pickles and fermented foods are good examples. You’d be amazed how much you can do as a small urban household if you give it a thought .. and a try! For instance, skins, stems and other scraps are the most under-rated ingredients that are too often trashed while they can become excellent stews, soups, stocks and with some effort may be turned into your signature DIY dry seasoning (excellent for gifts).
On the fridge cleaning day I gathered a quarter of onion, half of a carrot, slightly softened potato, a bag of frozen Swiss chard stalks, parsley and dill stalks and eggplant carvings left from making stuffed eggplant during a recent cooking class. I was leaving for Sapanca next day so turning these scraps into a meal was out of question. Drying could have been an option if I had more time. So I sauteed the onions in olive oil, tossed the rest of the prettiness into a large pan, filled it with water and simmered for a while. An hour later I had a liter of dense flavorful vegetable stock to freeze and to elevate my soups later.
4. Do inventory often
Food perishes and even your freezer is not the Siberian permafrost so you need to revisit your pantry often. As for my freezer I store food in the ziplocks each labeled with a date when I put them in the freezer. I have a list of everything that goes in the freezer; I look through it weekly so I can include slowly use up the frozen ingredients. Fridge and pantry are more visual, so I revisit those a fey times a week to see if I have too much or too less of particular ingredients and if something is about to expire.
It is lovely to cook inspired by a recipe from a glossy cookbook but the it makes you a more established cook if you are able to cook from the pantry. It’s a great training and no wonder it is a part of the competition on the Masterchef when the participants have to create a dish with only a few given ingredients at their disposal. Try it at least once a week and you will become more confident cook who does not need to follow a recipe to create deliciousness.
And then there are categories of dishes that are meant for utilizing leftovers: pizzas, hot sandwiches and savory pies! On the days when I manage to use a few leftovers at once and come up with a spectacular dish I feel particularly accomplished. Like the morning I combined cheese that was becoming too tart, a bit of my dry red bell pepper salad with some yogurt and milk, spread the mix on the slices of home-baked stale bread and sent the sandwiches to the oven for a few minutes. My husband loved that breakfast as he grew up eating this kind of hot sandwiches prepared by his mother.
5. Feed stray cats and dogs
Maybe it’s unthinkable and potentially dangerous in some cities but in Istanbul it is a very viable option. The city is full of cats and dogs that only look stray but in fact almost always are taken good care of. In many neighborhoods you’d find an area where locals bring food leftovers and often cat food to feed the animals.
My grandma in whose house I grew up always gave rather ‘human’ food to the dogs – liver sausage (I used to snatch and eat as a kid), bread, boiled grains and milk. My family in Sapanca alters dog food and bone stock with bread and any leftovers that even our aristocratic cocker spaniel Bakır eats it with a big appetite. So when I have nice meat leftovers and no one around to feed it goes to the dogs (and cats) and no one feels sorry.
That’s it from me. But I am sure that you have your own ways to minimize food waste at home? I am looking forward to hearing about those: please, share away!
