Before you toss out trimmings or wilted produce, consider these uses for food scraps. Most are from an article by Becky Striepe on Care2.com.
1. BREAD CRUSTS & CRACKER CRUMBS. If you’re making crustless sandwiches or if nobody want the end of the bread, grind them into breadcrumbs. Store them in the freezer until you have enough. The crumbs from the bottom of a box of crackers can be used for breading or to top off a casserole. If there aren’t enough cracker crumbs, mix them with your other breadcrumbs.

2. CITRUS PEEL & ZEST. After you’ve squeezed the juice from the lemon, zest it or remove the peel. Add zest to salad dressing or dough; stir zest or peel into cold drinks or tea (without milk). Use zest as a garnish; infuse it into vinegar, vodka or other spirit.

A small slice of citrus peel keeps brown sugar from hardening. Just store the sugar and peel the fridge to keep the peel fresher, longer. If you have no immediate use for peel or zest, you can freeze them or grind them in the garbage disposal to generate a fresh aroma.

When an apple is no longer crisp enough to eat, cook it. Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

3. COFFEE GROUNDS. Use the grounds to deodorize your hands and cutting board after chopping garlic and onions. Rub them on, then rinse off. Seriously, it works!

4. FRESH FRUIT. Aging apples, pears and other fresh fruits can be baked, sautéed or puréed into a sauce. The peels can be stepped into a cup of black, green or white tea. Apple peels can be steeped in boiling water with cinnamon and other spices to make a tasty “cider tea.”

Save those pretty celery leaves for garnish. Photo courtesy Burpee.

6. VEGETABLES. Wilted veggies, broccoli and chard and kale stems, peels, tops with leaves: Many people toss them; but they’re just as edible as the rest of the plant. Steam and purée, stir fry or bake these veggie bits with tomato or cheese sauce. Add garlic or chile. Beet tops can be cooked like chard, a close relative.

Or make broth: Celery tops, onion and garlic skins, carrot peels, and other food scraps can be used to flavor vegetable broth. You can save the scraps in a freezer-safe container until you have enough to cook. When the broth is done, strain out the solids. You can always give them to someone with a rabbit, hamster or gerbil.

Instead of throwing out celery leaves, use them as a garnish.

Try any or all of these tips, and see how good you feel about not wasting food.

Flowers are lovely, of course. And arrangements of seasonal fruits and pine—lady apples, clove-studded oranges, pomegranates, pine cones and branches—have been our centerpiece of choice.

But how about an edible centerpiece that becomes part of dessert?

There’s nothing more charming than an old-fashioned gingerbread house as a holiday centerpiece. And if the gingerbread is top quality, it’s a joy to be part of the “demolition crew.”

You can serve it at the end of a big holiday meal with ice cream—a much lighter choice than most cakes and pies.

We have to give props to the creative bakers who’ve thought “outside the house” to produce these two gingerbread centerpieces.

To grace your table, a gingerbread train. Photo courtesy Mackenzie Ltd.

ALL ABOARD THE GINGERBREAD EXPRESS

Destined to become a classic, this three-car gingerbread train (photo above) replaces the traditional gingerbread house with a whimsical choo choo.

Entirely edible, the train is a memorable holiday centerpiece that will delight children and adults alike. If you know model train enthusiasts, it makes a delightful gift.

It’s 21 inches long, $59.95, at MackenzieLtd.com.

This stunning centerpiece is also 100% edible. It measures almost a foot tall and 15″ across. You can provide some optional old-fashioned carousel music during the dessert course.

With an impressive amount of hand decoration, the gingerbread carousel is $149.95 at MackenzieLtd.com.
Both the train and the carousel are made of high-quality gingerbread and arrive fully assembled to immediately grace your table.
 
Here’s the history of gingerbread, which evolved in 15th-century Germany. The Medieval German Lebkuchen Guild (lebkuchen is German for gingerbread) turned it into a highly-decorated art, crafting fancy shapes decorated with sugar and gold.

It’s truffle season, and while we love the aroma and flavor of truffles, our budget doesn’t afford them often.

So when we encountered an easily affordable spray bottle of Grand’Aroma Truffle Flavored Extra Virgin Olive Oil by Fratelli Mantova, we thought, “Why not?”

We know that most truffle oils are flavored with “truffle essence”—laboratory approximations of truffle aroma. But some of them are quite passable. In fact, truffle oil made with natural or chemical aroma and flavor—as opposed to infusion with real truffles—has a more assertive truffle flavor. The downside is that some brands, flavored with chemicals, have a hint of artificiality.

We were willing to invest $9.00 to explore the truffle oil spray. We have a couple of bottles of truffle oil, but were particularly attracted to the spray format (which uses no chemicals, additives or emulsifying agents).

And we like it—we really like it!

Mantova Spray Truffle Flavored Extra Virgin Olive Oil in an eight-ounce spray is $9.22 on Amazon.com. It’s a welcome stocking stuffer or small gift for any cook or foodie.

We also picked up a sesame oil spray, a very good way to add just a hint of this heavy oil to stir-frys and other protein or vegetable dishes.

The Eggnog “Martini” in sunny Napa Valley.
Photo courtesy Boon Fly Café | Carneros Inn.

Of course not; otherwise you’d call a Cosmopolitan a Cranberry Lime Martini with triple sec substituting for vermouth.

The Martini is a cocktail made with gin and vermouth, and garnished with an olive or a lemon twist. The first recipe for a vodka Martini appears in 1951, but didn’t gain world notice until the publication of the second James Bond novel, Live and Let Die, in 1962 (Bond’s cocktail of choice was a vodka martini, “shaken not stirred”).

Here’s more Martini history.

Why a vodka Martini? Two good guesses are that a bartender made it for a customer who didn’t like gin; or that a vodka distributor created and promoted it to move more vodka—also a clear spirit but without the aromatic gin ingredients.

If you want to make a cocktail with rum, tequila or whiskey, call it something other than a Martini.

Even if they don’t know the rules, the folks at Boon Fly Café at the The Carneros Inn (in sunny Napa Valley) are pleasing customers with Eggnog “Martinis.”

All you need is eggnog, Captain Morgan Spiced Rum and a Martini glass.

Ingredients For One Drink

 
Preparation

1. SHAKE rum and eggnog with ice and strain into a Martini glass.

2. GARNISH and serve.
 
MORE CHRISTMAS MARTINI RECIPES

Candy Cane Martini

Cranberry Martini

Ginger Martini

Pomegranate Martini

This recipe comes from Immaculate Baking Co., which makes refrigerated cookie dough, pie crusts, biscuits, scones and other doughs in natural, organic and gluten-free versions.

RECIPE: CHRISTMAS CINNAMON ROLLS

Ingredients

Immaculate Baking Co. used its gluten-free cinnamon rolls for this recipe, but you can use any refrigerated cinnamon roll dough.

Preparation

1. HEAT oven to 350°F. Cut five 18-inch pieces of foil. Crush each piece of foil into a cone shape 3-inches high with a 2 1/2- inch diameter base. Spray each cone very generously with cooking spray.

2. SEPARATE dough. Unroll each roll into long strip. Wrap dough around cone starting at base and ending at top. Press at top of cone to form point. Bake 16 to 18 minutes or until golden brown.

3. COOL 5 minutes. Gently remove foil cones; cool trees upright on cooling rack about 30 minutes.

4. STIR together icing and food coloring in a small bowl. Working with one tree at a time, drizzle or frost edges of tree from top to bottom; sprinkle with candies. Repeat with remaining trees. Serve.
You can follow the recipe in photos in Immaculate Baking’s cookie blog.