Are You A Food Waste Warrior?

A hotdog wrapped in a cornmeal pancake. 

I’m an Electric Speed subscriber, and last month, writing guru Jane Friedman posed a non-literary question, inquiring about her readers' best cheapskate practices. “I eat my leftovers!” I said immediately to no one in particular.

Food waste, not at my house. In South Korea, throwing away food is illegal.

Later that day, during my writing critique group on Discord, my writing peep Rodney admitted that my submission had ignited his taste buds for strawberries (In my story, the characters were shopping at a farmer’s market in South Carolina with dewy, rainbow-colored produce). I was so happy! Because writing about food puts the sizzle in my storytelling. Last month, I talked about birds as literary inspiration, and the culinary arts also inspired my novel. I could wax poetic about food like a shiny supermarket apple, but I’ll simply offer my best practices for eating my leftovers:

 

1)   Shred the chicken from a supermarket rotisserie, freeze the bones in a jumbo Ziploc, and when you’ve compiled an entire henhouse of skeletons, make 1-2 giant pots of fragrant broth. Bones and water transform into gold; you don’t need Rumpelstiltskin.

2)   Leftover cornmeal pancakes become buttery hotdog wrappers or fluffy tostadas for taco night. Tasty tip: If you wrap a campfire hotdog with a piece of potato lefse, you’ll never return to a wonderbread bun.

3)   Leftover chicken satay has become the perfect topper for my famous Thai pizzas. But any leftover chicken will do. Combine peanut butter and soy sauce for the pizza sauce, then add mozzarella and parmesan. Top with chicken, diced carrots, and thinly sliced peppers. Don’t forget to sprinkle cilantro and minced peanuts on top after it’s baked. I use small flour tortillas as a quick pizza crust.

4)   I freeze leftover carnitas, chorizo, or taco meat for nachos. Nachos rule! The same goes for Mexican restaurant chips and excess taco sauce packets. I use them on nachos, too.

5)   Chop and freeze old celery, peppers, and carrots as an instant soup starter. The same goes for berries. Freeze them and put them in pancakes later. Throw leftover tomatoes into a blender and freeze them, too.

6)   Put leftover fried rice into a big pot of homemade wonton soup. See the broth above! Trader Joe's has good frozen wontons; don’t forget to add candied ginger.

7)   Do you have leftover potato oles from Taco John's? I call them crack because even Walter White couldn’t create a more addictive drug. If the DEA knocks on your door, throw the evidence into a veggie, ham, and cheese frittata.

8)  Do you have a dab of vegetables left from dinner? Freeze them and keep adding leftover vegetable sides to the bag, and eventually, you can add the vegetables to a pot of homemade soup.

9)   You can throw leftover ketchup packets into chili. Chocolate and molasses are good in chili, too. 😊

10)  Do you have an abundance of basil in your herb patch? Make a BBT = A bacon, basil, and tomato sandwich. Yum! I hope I’ve inspired you to eat your leftovers!

I received a tasty literary appetizer last month when my first printed book arrived in the mail. Things just got real. Subscribe and look to your inbox on August 21^st for my next newsletter.

           “Unless you are a pizza, the answer is yes, I can live without you.” -Bill Murray

Sharon Wagner Books