It’s shocking how much food we throw away because it goes bad in the fridge. Aside from wasting money, it’s just plain wasteful, given how many people go hungry.
One of our New Year’s resolutions was to stop wasting food. We looked at exactly what we were throwing out a week later, and figured out how to use it within a day or two. Here’s the plan we devised:
• Cooked Vegetables: All leftover vegetables go into an omelet or scramble for the next day’s breakfast or dinner.
• Proteins: Meat and fish leftovers too meager for a sandwich get added to the next day’s pasta or rice dish.
• Salad: We only dress half of the salad. If anyone wants more salad, it’s easy to dress and serve. Dressed salad turns into a soggy mess overnight; but washed, undressed salad stays crisp in paper towels and a plastic bag.
Leftover scraps go into omelets, pasta or rice.
Photo courtesy Callisons.
• Berries: Berries are very perishable; ours often rot before they’re finished. If you simply can’t finish them on breakfast cereal or as a snack, stick them in the freezer and use them in a smoothie or a puree.
• Other Fresh Fruits & Vegetables: If they’re about to go bad and we don’t have the appetite to eat them, we slice and marinate them (use vinaigrette for veggies, liqueur for fruits) or quickly steam them. It buys another couple of days. Steamed fruit and veggies can be turned into purées or soup. Vegetables can be topped with sauce and grated cheese for a snack or side.
• Bonus: Chicken carcasses, meat and fish bones get converted into stock. Though we’ve often made excuses for not making stock (no time top make it, no place to store it), we find that if we start the stock as we’re cleaning up from dinner, it “makes itself.” And we don’t store it because we plan to use it the next day.
Think of how you waste food and write down—then follow—your own tips to stop it. If you need ideas, let us know.
Pretty patterns abound with Aequare Fine
Chocolates. Photo by Emily Chang | THE NIBBLE.
Ecuadorian cacao is prized worldwide for its full body, floral aroma and deep chocolate flavor. If you win this week’s chocolate Gourmet Giveaway from Aequare Fine Chocolates, you’ll have an opportunity to taste the company’s line of artisan bonbons and chocolate bars.
THE PRIZE: Aequare Chocolates will give one winner a 6-piece gift box of French bonbons and two bars of chocolate, in Lemongrass and Mandarin Orange flavors. The melt-in-your mouth chocolates are an enjoyable experience. Approximate retail value: $22.00
To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gourmet Chocolate Section and enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, May 24th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!
Doodles cookie mixes are gluten-free but they’re soooo good, we fought over the last crumbs—and then named them a Top Pick Of The Week. And no one at THE NIBBLE is gluten-intolerant!
These magical mixes will become favorites with anyone who is looking for a home-baked treat, but are a godsend for people with gluten allergies. That they’re certified organic is icing on the cake! Read our full review.
THE PRIZE: One winner will have an opportunity to try the entire line of Doodles organic and gluten-free cookie mixes. Flavors include Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix, Double Chocolate Chip Habanero Mix, Nut Butter Cookie Mix and Sugar Cookie Mix. They’re all really terrific! Approximate retail value: $26.00.
To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gluten-Free Section and enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, May 24th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!
Nougat is a confection made of egg whites, toasted almonds or other nuts, and sugar or honey. Gourmet nougat is appearing on the scene.
If you’re given a gift of nougat and you’re not inclined to devour the box, what to do with it?
• You can store it in the refrigerator for longer life.
• Serve pieces like petit fours, with coffee, tea or hot chocolate.
• Toast it like marshmallows and make nougat s’mores.
• Chip it and use it as a dessert garnish on ice cream, puddings and anything with whipped cream.
To make nougat chips, freeze the nougat overnight, then chip into small pieces. Refreeze the chips and add the frozen chips just before serving the dessert. Don’t thaw frozen nougat; it will destabilize.
We’re not fans of red velvet cake. We just don’t find a lot of flavor in it. We don’t want faint hints of cocoa: We want chocolate cake (or banana cake or buttery yellow cake or anything with lots of taste).
But we can’t deny that red velvet cake has become a national craze—so much so that Schmerty’s Cookies of Santa Monica, California have created a red velvet cookie! The cookies are also certified kosher.
Where did the storm of red velvet cake begin?
Actually, in the film Steel Magnolias, featuring six stars of the silver screen: Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Daryl Hannah, Shirley MacLaine, Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts.
Follow the trail prior to then, and there are claims that the red velvet cake originated at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in the 1920s—birthplace of classics such as Waldorf Salad, Veal Oscar, Thousand Island Dressing and the Manhattan cocktail.
Like red velvet cake? Try red velvet cookies.
Photo by Jerry Deutsch | THE NIBBLE.
While the hotel certainly popularized the cake, beginning in the 1920s, the origin of that cake is the Devil’s Food Cake that began to appear in print at the beginning of the 20th century.
The first published record for Devil’s Food Cake is a 1902 recipe from Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book. A recipe in Good Housekeeping Woman’s Home Cook Book, in 1909, more closely resembles modern recipes for Devil’s Food Chocolate Cake. A recipe for Philadelphia Red Cake, published in the Perry (Kansas) Home Cook Book in 1920, uses squares of chocolate, baking soda, buttermilk and egg whites—identical to recipes for Red Devil’s Food Cake.
Our mother made Red Devil’s Food Cake—a rich, chocolaty cake, not the bright red, vaguely flavored red velvet cakes of today. So where did today’s red velvet cake come from?
No one knows, exactly. In the 1960s, recipes for today’s red velvet-style cake were being published that added red food coloring as a prominent ingredient, along with buttermilk and cocoa powder. A southern favorite, it was launched to stardom in Steel Magnolias.
