Rethinking and Repurposing Food Waste | Sustainable Lifestyle | Luxiders
Luckily, food waste is an issue that we as consumers can have a big role in curbing. It does take a broader perspective to rethink and change how we consume; from organizing our kitchen, meal-planning, fridge-based shopping, to rethinking the new possibilities of foods undone on the kitchen counter.
Below, we have compiled ways to rethink and repurpose the scraps left in the kitchen counter or at the corner of your fridge.
REPURPOSE AS OTHER FOODS AND DRINKS
Bruised Banana El Presidente Nice Cream
Bananas are one of those fruits that get easily bad. It is also those fruits that would look beautiful when you buy them in the pretty bunch. Luckily, with the tender texture and the bland taste it got when it starts to go bad, banana is also the fruits that you could easily repurpose into pound cake or ice cream.
Simply soak bananas, pears, apples, dragon fruits, and berries in rum for 3 days, strain them, store in the freezer, and keep the fruit infused rum in a jar. After 3 days, you could mix the frozen fruits in a food processor with some honey, a tablespoon of rum, cinnamon, and grated orange peel! Talk about some Cuban daydreamings!
Kvass
As much as we love a good sourdough or rye bread, there will always be some leftovers for let-me-think-about-it-later scenarios. It’s because we are not going to always have breakfast with toast or have some to scrape over all those pasta sauce. To us, crouton is the first option. But, Kvass sounds more exciting to repurpose stale breads.
Kvass is a traditional eastern European drink that dates back to at least the middle ages, if not well before. Back when water sanitation was pretty questionable, it was much safer to drink fermented alcoholic beverages than water. Kvass is not particular alcoholic, as many are somewhere between 0.5 to 1% alcohol.
Toast your stale breads, place them in a big mason jar with water, sourdough starter, and some honey. Cap the jar loosely, store it in room temperature for 3 up to 7 days, and you got a probiotic drink from your leftover breads!
When in doubt, make veggie broth!
Vegetable peels, seeds, stalks, tops, stems…you name it. Instead of throwing them away, you could store them in freezer and use them to make veggie broth! We usually collect or veggie scraps in a ziplock bag – from the extra top of radish, stalks of broccoli, to stems of celery. When we got a full bag of them – usually it would take one up to two – we’d put them in a big pot with water, garlic, coriander seeds, and put some herbs like Kemangi (Indonesian basil), and bay leaves. Then, we’ll let it simmer for two hours, strain it, and store it in a jar!
