Love to waste vegetables!

You figure it might be fun to just cook some potatoes.  You don't cook much, but making mashed potatoes just sounds like comfort, and the recipe looks so easy!

So you come home with the potatoes, pull out your (well, yes, dull) peeler or paring knife, and start on your first potato.

Each peeling separates from its potato, paper thin.  Parings pile up, but it's been -- what, forever? -- and you just finished the first potato!  Never again! 

When I talk to friends who don't cook from scratch much, I find out that there are several reasons they don't care to cook.

1. It's too hard to learn to do it well -- prepared foods are just tastier than my own cooking.
2. It takes too long.
3. It's too gross and time consuming to clean up.
4. I feel guilty when I waste food.

Now, I can make good arguments about  1-3, too, but today I'd like to address reason four, because it seems to me I'm hearing this more and more.

Anyone who's worked in a business that deals with perishables knows a bit about waste.  Not only do things spoil, but to efficiently process raw foods into a prepared meal often entails about as much waste as finished product.

But for ourselves, we're taught not to waste, so we hide that waste away, out of sight.

When you buy prepared potatoes, they've probably been processed in a far more wasteful way than anyone would prepare them in a home kitchen.  But as an example, let me describe the most efficient way to peel a potato.

If the potato is flattish or oblong, peel a wide swath from tip, around the flattish edge, around the toe, and back to tip.  There should now be a belt of peel-less potato, and a top and bottom disk of peel.

With your knife, pare off most of one of those disks.  Yes, you'll take a bunch of potato with it -- but these are cheap veggies!  If you feel guilty, save peelings for stock or compost.

Flip the potato and take off the other disk of peel.  You won't probably get all of it, but there will be perhaps 4 strips of peel to trim off, and maybe an eye or two to dig out with the point of the knife.

Peeled potato.  15 seconds.

Next!

Peel an onion.  Slice the root end and the stem end off, perhaps 1/2" from the tips.  Slice the onion in half lengthwise.  Don't bother to peel the paper off -- take the first fleshy ring of the onion, and strip it and the paper off all at once.

Peeled onion.  15 seconds.

Next!

Do you really need to peel carrots or parsnips, or should  you just scrub them a bit under running water?  Most are tender enough that the skins are hardly noticeable.  (Of course, with carrots, you can buy baby carrots for raw snacking and to save prep for cooking!) 

Does this sound wasteful?  Trust me, the food you buy pre-prepared is far more wasteful, and less fresh and nutritious.

If you buy five pounds of potatoes, you may use half of them before they get starchy or green.  Green potatoes are ok, if you take off the green.  Starchy potatoes are great for some recipes, such as latkes.

Keep a small whiteboard on your fridge and jot down the veggies you have when you buy them -- and wipe them off when you use them up.  This is what pro kitchens do, to track what needs to be cooked first.

Slightly tired "distressed" veggies can make great soup or soup stock, so long as they aren't moldy or slimy.  Trim generously, and make  chicken veggie soup with rice -- pot luck from the veggie drawer, a bit of onion and garlic, your choice of spices, perhaps some fresh cooked diced chicken.  Add leftover cooked or new raw rice.  mmm-mmm good!  My mom sometimes referred to this humorously as compost soup, but it can be great!

Learn to love to waste vegetables!