— Maria Quejada

So, uh, it is something that, um, you definitely want to kind of work on on a meal by meal basis. Um, and then kind of, uh, go up to say a week by week basis, um, just starting off with your meal plan is great, you know, um, look at your meal plan for the week and kind of look at ingredients that you can use in multiple dishes. Now, this could be something as simple as like rice, like, right? So, you know, you're gonna be using rice in two different dishes, um, to be able to go shopping, that's gonna save you on budget because you're not buying multiple kinds of things. And, um, you know, but you also, like, where that really comes into effect is in vegetables, right? So things that will go bad over time. So if you know you're going to be using something, you know, that's more perishable, like not onions or something, but say tomatoes, right? So, you know, you're gonna be using tomatoes, um, in an Italian dish on Monday, and you're gonna be using, uh, tomatoes in a dish on Wednesday, say it's a salad. And then on, uh, Friday, you're gonna take all your ingredients that are leftover and put 'em into a soup, and those tomatoes can go into that as well too. So there you are using three, uh, three dishes that have tomatoes in them, and you're actually able to portion them out on each, um, one of those. Now, uh, you'll be able to keep the tomatoes that you haven't used, put 'em in the refrigerator, then pull them back out, bring 'em to room temperature to for best quality taste as well too, before you start putting 'em into things. Um, and then you can, uh, you know, portion ADA is needed, and that way you have less, uh, items on your grocery list and less waste on that as well. Um, another way to be able to look at that is exactly what I just said a second ago. Make a soup, right? Do a soup at the end of the week. So if you did all your shopping and you're like, you know, I had big plans to make meals from home every single night, and you only did maybe two or three nights instead of the five or seven nights, right? So, um, you basically can look at what you have in the fridge and, uh, make a soup out of all kinds of ingredients that are in there. It's a great way to be able to utilize ingredients that maybe not, not carry into the next week, but aren't bad yet, right? So, um, the best way to kind of do that is look at what the, uh, what recipe items you have, look at what ingredients you have, and then look up a recipe to correspond with something like that. So if it's something like, I've had this butternut squash for a couple weeks, and it's time to be able to utilize that before it goes bad, um, you can just look up something like a butternut squash, uh, recipe, um, like a soup or, you know, roasting or something like that. But, um, and roasting it to be able to put into your soup. So a great way to be able to utilize some things that you haven't used throughout the rest of the week. Um, now another tip I'd like to add onto this is create a composting, um, uh, area. So, um, even if you're, you don't have like a big yard or something like that, um, you can still compost like within your house as well too. They have composting machines that you can have inside the house. If you do have a yard of some sort, I highly recommend composting, um, to be able to utilize scraps. Uh, probably the most, like, uh, just this week I made a vegetable stock from just scraps. So every week I will save my scraps. If I'm cutting an onion, I'll save the peel, and if I'm, you know, peeling carrots and cutting off the ends, I'll put those into like a big gallon, you know, baggy, uh, a freezer baggy and put all those in there. And I'll put mushroom stems and, um, you know, the cores of peppers, all kinds of things like that. Just nothing that's too aromatic. So I'm not gonna put like garlic into it. I'm not gonna put herbs into it or stuff like that. But, um, you know, kind of those like simpler items like that. And I'll, once that bag fills up, and then I'll make a stock. So that usually takes me to one to two weeks to be able to, uh, fill up that bag to get it so I can fill like a big sized pot and make two pretty large jars of vegetable stock that I use continually. Um, and especially during soup season, I make sure to have that kind of rolling constantly. Now when I'm done, um, with that, I'll basically put the whole thing in a pot and then cover it with water and then cook it. I'll bring it up to a boil, and then down to a simmer for at least an hour. And you get this really nice kind of brown liquid that's coming from it. And then you drain off the stock and keep, uh, you know, keep just the stock after you've, uh, you know, uh, drained it out. Um, then you have all this kind of leftover vegetable and everybody's like, what do you do with this? How can we make it? It's actually best for compost. It's, uh, you know, I just made it this week and it was like, okay, in Wisconsin we just had 12 inches of snow. It's a little hard to compost, um, but I still put it on top of my compost pile. It's gonna freeze, but when it, uh, falls out, it's going to compost really nice, and I can use it in my garden beds. Um, if you don't have a garden, that's okay. You can even use that compost for potting soil just to be able to put in pots and grow fresh herbs in your window sill. Um, so those are a couple ways to be able to be cognizant of waste and utilizing your ingredients responsibly. Um, those are a a few different ways that I, uh, you know, use, uh, really continuously. But like I said at the beginning, um, it really, you have to kind of get into the rhythm of doing that. Um, you know, if you kind of jump right in and try doing everything right away, you're probably gonna get a little frustrated and be like, I can't really do this, but take one step at a time. Maybe the composting thing's not ready for you right away, but, um, you know, there's, uh, a lot of organizations locally that will take compost as well too. Um, you know, in some areas, uh, I've even seen people that have curbside compost pickup, which is pretty amazing when I live in Austin, Texas, we had that, that was pretty plant forward. If you, if I don't, you know, I put the joke in there. But, um, anyways, so that's probably the best way to be able to, uh, you know, be cognizant of your waste that I can think of. We also do, um, offer a course, uh, from the James Beard Foundation on, um, you know, waste and responsibility on that too.