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Making Use of Food
Past Its Prime… Don't Throw That Out!
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Eating
Economically at the Co-op series
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by
Miriam Axel-Lute
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Few
things are quite as painful to the busy yet ecological and budget-
minded as having to toss out food that came into the house full of
tantalizing promise and yet somehow didn't get finished before it lost
its perfection.
But in more cases than you might realize, that food may still be
useable. Here's a quick run down of sneaky tricks to breathe a second
life into that stuff at the back of shelf or the bottom of the crisper
drawer.
• Fermented cider. The bottle is puffed out at the sides and you just
know when you open the lid that you'll hear that telltale little hiss.
Though hard cider has its devotees, making a batch worth drinking takes
more controlled circumstances than the back of your fridge. But all is
not lost. Substitute fermented cider for the water in a bread recipe
(works great in bread machines) and watch the extra rise you get
(especially great in usually dense wholegrain loaves). Substitute it
for some of the cooking liquid for grains for a subtle sweet flavor, or
use it in place of the dash of cider vinegar at the end of soups.
• Sour milk. There many recipes out there that tell you to purposefully
sour your milk before adding it, which should be a tip-off that sour
milk can be a baker's friend. Biscuits, pancakes, and even homemade
cottage cheese can be made using recently soured milk, as long as it
isn't rancid, moldy, or solidified. Check out this Cooks.com page for a
long list of recipes (www.cooks.com/rec/story/121).
• Stale baked goods. Stale bread crusts or heels can be tossed into a
sealed container in the freezer until you have enough to puree for
bread crumbs or use for bread pudding. Stale tortilla chips can be
toasted in the oven to regain their crispiness and used for casserole
toppings (crushed), croutons, or the Portugese/ Tex-Mex dish migas,
which is basically scrambled eggs with day-old bread, tortilla, or
tortilla chips mixed in (www.recipezaar.com/Migas-109514).
Stale cereal (or just the crumbs at the bottom of the bag, stale or
not) can be used for breading.
On the sweet end, if you ever end up with stale cake (is that
possible?) it can be made into a crumble topping for ice cream, or used
as the based of a trifle. It may be counter-intuitive, but toasting a
piece of slightly stale banana or zucchini bread or a fruit muffin and
spreading with butter revives it quite nicely.
• Overripe bananas. Puree with silken tofu, vanilla, and a little
sweetener to taste for a banana cream treat, or with juice and/or
milk/soy milk for a smoothie. You can also freeze them whole (they'll
turn black on the outside, but this is OK) until you have enough to
make banana bread (or a batch of banana cream big enough for a pie).
• Rock ‘o brown sugar. If your brown sugar has gotten to the chiseling
stage, put it in a tightly sealed container with a crust of bread. In a
few days the bread will be stale and your sugar as good as new.
• Wilted veggies. Vegetables that are wilted but not moldy might not be
attractive or quite as nutritious as they once were, but they are still
food. Deal with less than exciting texture with pureed soups, or spice
up past-prime flavors with curries, Having a few "toss everything in
the fridge in here" standard recipes can also help you clear out a
motley assortment or produce just prewilt. Every culture has a few of
these dishes, whether it's a burrito/quesadilla filling, a rice
casserole, or a quiche/ tortilla (add stray bits of cheese and meat and
well as mixed veggies).
• Special cases. Love Food Hate Waste has collected an entire list of
what they call "rescue recipes" (www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes/list?group=1)
that work well with food past its prime, and you can search it by the
food you've got in mind. (Lemons? Microwave lemon curd. Salsa? A lazy
flavoring for a spicy rice casserole.) It's a United Kingdom site, but
each recipe can be viewed in "imperial units" for us metricsystem
challenged cooks.
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