The Art of Using Everything

Food wasted is a terrible thing—about a third of people in the U.S. and up to 50% if children in the U.S. have food instability, which means that they literally do not reliably know where their next meal is coming from.  The second is that if you don’t eat it, it has to go somewhere.  According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food leftovers are the single-largest component of the waste stream by weight in the United States.  Food waste includes uneaten food and food preparation scraps.   Over 12 percent of the total municipal solid waste generated in American households was food scraps  thrown away and disposed in landfills or combusted in incinerators.

The environmental impact of food disposal is significant. The decomposition of food and other organic waste in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide. Landfills are the largest human-related source of methane in the United States, accounting for 34 percent of all methane emissions.   So start off by composting, because not all food scraps are edible—but for those things that are edible, make an effort to ingest them.

I am using the Brussels sprout in its natural form as an example of this concept, but I am thinking more broadly.  I am the child of Depression Era parents and one of the vanishingly few things that I have carried into my adult life from their habits is a ‘waste not, want not’ approach to food.  The corollary to that is to shop for bargains, which I have also internalized, but today I want to focus on trying to reduce the waste that is apparently quite prevalent today.  When you buy Brussels sprouts at a Farmer’s Market, you can get the whole shebang—stalk, sprouts, and leaves.  The greens on the Brussels sprout are a lot like the outer leaves of a cabbage in texture, and very mildly flavored—chop them and use them as you would any other green.  The stalks are quite stringy on the outside, but a vegetable peeler can remove that, and the core of the stalk is sweet and can be used in a vegetable soup, especially if you are going to puree it.  Then use the sprouts as you usually would, and here is a recipe for that—you can substitute chopped nuts for the meat  and use all olive oil if you  want to go vegan.

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Brussels Sprouts
2 pounds brussels sprouts
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces thick sliced smoked ham, coarsely chopped
2 ounces pancetta, coarsely chopped
1 large garlic clove, minced
1/3 cup stock
1/4 cup apple cider
salt, pepper to taste
Trim root ends from brussels sprouts. Slice the sprouts into thin strips from top to root end (as you would a head of lettuce), use food processor fitted with coarse shredding disk.
Melt butter with olive oil in large deep skillet over medium heat. Add ham and pancetta; sauté until golden, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic; stir 30 seconds. Add Brussels sprouts, broth and cider; sauté until crisp-tender but still bright green, 3 to 5 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper. Transfer to bowl and serve hot.