Chef Dan Barber is unflinchingly proving that food waste can be deliciously repurposed. My old lettuce, I fear, is beyond help…
Few things in life are more shaming than poking around in the crisp box of your fridge (though one might be using the prissy and somehow very 70s term “crisp box” in the first place). For isn’t there always a heart-sinking moment at some point in the month when you reach down and pull up a stinking bag of yellowing kale, a too-bendy carrot, a tomato whose youthful blush has turned unaccountably to grey? Yes, my cupboards are occasionally just as mortifying: the other day, in search of chickpeas, I put my hand on a can whose vintage appeared to pre-date the coalition. But it’s my fridge that most often admonishes me for my profligacy, guilt surging queasily up through my stomach and thence into my arms and legs the better that it might paralyse me just as I’m halfway to the bin.
What’s to be done about waste? We all know the answer. We must buy vastly less, and shop more frequently, adding things to the list only when we truly need them. We need to plan meals, rather than pile up random ingredients, and to try not to deceive ourselves when it comes to the things we feel we should eat, but probably won’t in the end (one bag of kale will do). In the matter of “sell by” and “use by” dates, we must attempt to be both less absolutist and less squeamish. That cream that’s a little sour won’t be any good on the strawberries, but it will probably be fine in a sauce. And then there’s the problem of procrastination, our general failure of rubber-gloved nerve. Why do we avoid the back of the fridge? It’s so dumb. The longer we leave it, the more likely it is to be like a scene from Alien.
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