— Diane Kirschner

That is a very good question, and I'm gonna give you a couple of reasons why. Gonna backtrack and maybe you know, that Rouxbe offers a course from, um, the James Beard Foundation. It's called Waste Not. The course is free, and it is the total eye-opener in terms of, uh, practicing full food utilization, how not to have waste in your pantry and in your refrigerator. It's, it's, I took the course several years ago and it was a real eye-opener in terms of, um, being a better menu planner in my home, um, having dishes that are related to one another, but not necessarily the same. I'll give you an example. You ba you batch cook a bunch of baked potatoes. My goodness, that sounds like a tongue twister. Say that five times fast. But you, um, batch cook, uh, five pounds of sweet potatoes. And one night you may have them with a mango salsa, and one night you might have them as a simple baked potato, but then you might use them to make a dessert or you might use them to make a sweet potato hummus. So it's looking at food in a global way so that you can maximize the use of that food without having any leftovers. And I'll give you an example. I have about a half a cup of unused pumpkin in my refrigerator, and I have a little, uh, container of hummus that probably would like fit, like one carrot stick on it. So after this, I'm going to put the two of them together and make a pumpkin hummus, uh, maybe put a little cinnamon in it and a little bit of ginger to spark something up. So it's always thinking about what can I do so this doesn't go to waste? But then beyond that, thinking of what can I do to make this taste really, really good? Because sometimes we get very creative and make these concoctions that really aren't good, and I'm guilty of that. When I was thinking about my first plant-based Thanksgiving, uh, 15 Thanksgivings ago, and I didn't really know how to cook plant-based, uh, without oil, salt and sugar. And I pretended that everything was delicious. But then, uh, after reading lots of books and going to lots of seminars, and also being a Rouxbe grad, uh, I feel really, really comfortable not only in my own kitchen, but also professional kitchens as well. So I hope that that has been helpful to you and, uh, thanks for asking that question. And, uh, Patrick has posted the link to Waste Knot. Uh, it's a fascinating course you will learn just so, so much, uh, being a part of it.

https://wastenot.rouxbe.com/