The great strawberry sort
I felt like my grandma last week when I purchased 8lbs of really ripe local strawberries from one of our local grocers, extra inventory that wasn’t moving fast enough (well, faster than the speed of fruit fermentation). I paid a third of what they were asking for the pristine version of the berries. I’m no stranger to ‘seconds’, but it really hit home how much can be saved from compost, or worse, trash.
Grandma Mannie (Bertha Burnham, in the book) told me stories of growing up in Michigan, the lean years when there wasn’t money for food so she and her (7 other) siblings would go fetch produce the grocery stores pitched; “Just cut off the bad part. The rest is perfectly fine.”
That’s just what I did. I cleaned and sorted and hulled and hulled and hulled. I separated true compost (the moldy ones) from the just mushy, the shrub-worthy from the creme de la creme, the jam berries. After all that, only 1lb was true compost, 1lb ended up simmered in white wine vinegar (to make a shrub), 2lbs made their way to the freezer for smoothies, 2lbs became jam and the mushy and leftover bits and pieces went into a 6-quart Cambro to become fermented strawberry scrap vinegar (which I’ll post soon, for now check out this recipe and just sub strawberries if you’re itching to ferment).
Food waste is a hot topic where I live, as it should be everywhere. I’m reading this book by Jonathan Bloom finding the stats quite staggering, like how America could fill up the Rose Bowl (the stadium in Pasadena) full of food waste every. single. day.
How are you making a dent in decreasing food waste?
Budget Living, Fermentation, Food News, Food Preservation, Freezing, Fruit, Green Living, Spring, Traditions
Reader Comments (4)
By learning to turn my "expired" milk into yogurt instead of pouring it down the drain! Thanks for teaching me!
My own grandmother was a rescuer of culls and windfalls. One summer afternoon she arrived home with a couple of flats of "gone by" strawberries that she had rescued from the local grocer. They were at that perfect stage of melting sweetness, and went down in history by the name we put on the jar labels, "Trashberry Jam."
With that role model from early on, I'm a great believer in once-in-a-lifetime soup (strategically combined leftover veg plus homemade broth plus a handful or two of pasta or leftover rice). It's great on a chilly spring day, especially if you have some homemade croutons you can take out of the freezer. To make, spread a little butter and your favorite herb mix on the last couple of slices of bread from the loaf, cut in chunks, toast in a slow oven, cool, and bag in the freezer for later use. A mixture of varieties of bread makes a lively garnish for soups and salads -- and saves those bits from molding and going in the trash.
What a sweet note, Oona. Love the Trashberry Jam!!!
It 's not exactly eliminating waste, but I put all veggie scraps in a container in the freezer, and about once a month I have enough to make my own veggie stock. I've made some awesome Asian-style stocks here, flavored with shiitake and maitake mushrooms, garlic shoots, leftover kombu, etc. added to the standard onion, celery and carrot-based stock. I live in a Tokyo apartment with a tiny balcony, so composting the used goods after that point isn't an option for me, unfortunately. But at least I can use the veggies' last vestiges of flavor and nutrition before throwing them out. (Japan burns its food waste, FWIW.)