Subtitle: Salvaging Food
Buy it, grow it, scavenge it, wildcraft it, however you acquire your food, you have to prepare it for either eating or storing.
This diary is about preparing your food to eat. I'm going to assume you already know how to prepare fresh foods. What we're talking about here is preparing food that's wilted, past its optimal ripeness date, on the edge of being spoiled, and will be edible for only a few hours more.
This is by no means a comprehensive list for every type of limp carrot, wilted lettuce, withered apple, or drying rib of celery, but it does give some pointers on salvaging food that many people consider inedible.
Bananas seem to be one of the most commonly tossed foods. As soon as the skin begins to turn black, a lot of people think that means it's rotting. In reality, it's ripening and bananas are at their sweetest when the skin is fully black, the stem has withered, and the banana is very soft and mushy. It can be eaten as is. It can be cooked into puddings, baked into cakes and muffins and breads, mashed with a bit of lemon juice and frozen for using later, stirred into hot cooked cereals, mixed with honey and used as a spread for pancakes, French Toast, waffles, English muffins, or toast. It can be stirred into sweet soups, and it goes exceeding well in some cream soups, like cream of chicken. Bananas at this stage of ripeness also make excellent smoothies, stir well into yogurt, and give up the best flavor in making ice cream. So many people waste perfectly good and delicious bananas because they think it rotted when it merely ripened.
A banana is rotting when the skin dries and splits, the pulp oozes out and begins to switch from smelling sweet to smelling sweet with an underbite to it, kind of like a faint whiff of fresh nail polish. At this point, the banana is probably still edible, but it won't be for much longer. Instead of trying to preserve it by freezing or canning it, eat it right away by cooking it in breads, muffins, or hot cooked cereals. Taste a little bit before you cook with it and if it tastes kind of plastic-y, a biting sweet taste that leaves your mouth feeling rancid, don't eat it. Compost it. But if it doesn't have that edge, eat it immediately. Don't wait an hour. Bananas, when they do hit the rotten stage, rot very quickly.
Another problem with bananas is that they are sprayed with chemicals to get them to ripen faster. Sometimes, they are picked too underripe and sprayed and they never ripen. They go from underripe to rot with no sweetness in between. If your banana never gets sweet, use it to cook with. Don't bake with underripe, never ripening bananas. Instead, fry them and eat them as a sandwich filling, or a side dish (goes great with poultry, squirrel, rabbit, pork, and nutria). They can be thinly sliced into "coins" and deep fried like potato chips. They can be sliced and fried with eggs in an omelette. They can be mashed in with ground beef for a meatloaf. They can be dipped in batter and fried. Bananas flambe are best done with under ripe bananas. And under ripe bananas can be pickled.
Pickling bananas is simple enough.
3-4 large under ripe unpeeled bananas
8 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
1 cup each granulated sugar, rum, hot sauce, diced jalapenos
Bring the vinegar, water, rum, sugar, hot sauce, and jalapenos to a boil. Remove from the heat, drop in the bananas in their peel and cover. Let it cool completely. Put the bananas into a large sterilized mason jar, then fill the jar with the liquid. Process in a hot water bath and let age 3 weeks. Decant, peel the bananas carefully with a sharp knife. The peels can go in the composter. Slice into rounds and serve.
If you like a sweeter banana pickle, you can substitute the hot sauce, rum, and diced jalapenos for a packet of unsweetened koolaid mix and up the sugar by half a cup, then add another cup of water. You can also substitute the hot sauce, rum, and diced jalapenos for 1 cup green tea, 3 inches of cinnamon stick, 5 whole cloves, 2 whole star anise, 1/2 inch of gingerroot, sliced, and 1/2 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns. Otherwise, the process is the same.
Wilted greens are also all too often discarded when they are still edible. Bagged salad greens are the worst offenders, being tossed unopened if they even look wilted. Open the bag, remove any rotting leaves to the composter, rinse the remaining leaves well, and then put them in a bowl of ice water for 10 - 20 minutes. This will perk up most greens to make them crisp and good. You can now eat it as a salad, on sandwiches, as a garnish, or make it into soup.
Greens Soup
3/4 pound coarsely chopped mixed salad greens
1 cup diced onions or shallots
1 garlic clove, minced
3 tablespoons butter, unsalted
1/2 teaspoon each ground coriander and salt
1/4 teaspoon cracked peppercorns
3/4 cup diced peeled potato
3 cups water
Saute the onion and garlic in the 2 tablespoons butter over low heat until transparent and beginning to caramelize (turn brown) - about 10 minutes. Add the seasonings and cook another minute. Add the potato, greens, and water, raise the heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer about 10 minutes or until the potato is very tender. Puree the soup in batches. Return to the saucepan and re-heat, stirring in the last tablespoon of butter and adjusting the seasonings to taste.
Serve with toasted day old bread.
Cold Lettuce Soup
7 cups salad greens (lettuce and spinach taste best, but really, any will do)
1/3 cup minced onion
3/4 cup yoghurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups stock
salt and pepper to taste
Puree all of this in a blender. Chill. Serve with thin slices of radish, cucumber, carrot, and tomato.
Potatoes that have just begun to sprout can still be eaten, just peel them and cut out all of the sprout. All of it - potato sprouts are poisonous. Remember, potatoes are related to deadly nightshade. Withered potatoes can also still be eaten, just peel and dice them and use them in soups where their mushy texture will make the soup better. Potatoes that have a layer of green just under the skin need to have all the green parts peeled off - like sprouts, this part is not good for you. The rest of the potato is still good. Bruises can be cut off and the rest of the potato is still good. Even potatoes with a rotten core can still be eaten after peeling and cutting off the rotted bits.
Old bread and pastries are the next most commonly tossed food. Bread that has gone stale is still good bread. If there's no mold on it, let it finish drying out, then crush it into bread crumbs. The crumbs can be stored in a tightly sealed jar and used to thicken soups, sauces, and stews, as breading on fried and baked foods, and to make crumb toppings. Bread that's old but not quite stale can be cut into cubes, tossed with a bit of oil or melted butter and seasonings, then toasted into croutons. Old bread can be refreshed by placing it in a brown paper bag that's been sprinkled with a bit of water and baked at 300ºF for 5 - 10 minutes. Old bread can be used to make bread puddings, stratas, souffles, bread salads, French Toast, bruschetta, panzanella, stuffed soup, or grilled sandwiches.
Stuffed Soup
1 cup of dried bread, broken into coarse chunks
1 teaspoon parsley
1/2 teaspoon each oregano, sage, thyme
2 cups cream soup (any cream soup will do - I like cream of celery)
1/2 cup diced meat (optional)
1/2 cup diced cooked vegetables (any ones you think will taste good with the soup)
Mix well and pour into a heated and lightly greased skillet with a muffin or crumpet or pancake mold. Let one side brown (about 5 - 8 minutes, then carefully flip it to brown the other side. It will be crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.
Withered apples are the next most common food thrown away. You just don't know what you're missing. Withered apples are almost like dried apples - the sweetness is concentrated. Peel them to eat out of hand. The peel can be used to make apple jelly. You can also cook the withered apples to make a compote (just add raisins and a dash of honey and cinnamon), or make applesauce or apple butter. You can also peel them, slice them, and finish drying them. Or you can puree and season them and spread them out to dry into fruit leather - home made Fruit Roll-Ups. Almost any fruit that's fully ripe and leaning into overripe can be pureed and dried into fruit leather - strawberries, blueberries, bananas, peaches, nectarines, plums, pears.
That covers the most commonly discarded foods. Think about the food before you throw it away. Can it be eaten as is, can it be cooked, frozen, dried, pureed, fried, or otherwise made into something you can eat now - or later?
If the food truly is beyond edible, you still shouldn't throw it away - compost it. That way you can use it to grow more food next year.