Tag Archives: food waste

Soured on the Kitchen

Somehow, I had two lemon halves, plus a wedge, in the fridge. I knew about one of the halves, but when I went digging for it, I suddenly realized I had a second. That was kind of embarrassing, because it meant I’d cut open a whole new lemon when I needed a half and had a half ready to go.

A close up of two half lemons and a lemon wedge in a plastic container. To their left is a baggie of carrots.

This is kind of the story of my kitchen functioning right now. It’s low. Very low. Some of it is the recuperating I’ve previously mentioned and some is the fact that occasionally I sleep for more than 10 hours in a night. Unfortunately, some is just a complete lack of want to do things in the kitchen.

Bill and I both get this way sometimes.… Continue reading →

Some Food Science Related to Brewers’ Spent Grain

As I’ve immersed myself in beer culture, I’ve come to be incredibly aware of brewery waste. In particular, a brewery-in-planning specifically mentioned spent grain and its uses to me; until then I hadn’t really put much thought into it. That mention led Bill and I to make a few loaves of spent-grain bread, after which I became curious about the nutritional content of spent grain.

So I did what is practically second nature these days: I asked Google to help me figure it out. From various, long-unrecalled sources, I did discover spent grain has a lot of fiber (which I expected) and is high in protein (which surprised me).

I was most curious about micronutrients, though, which is how I ended up asking Google, PhD1 for further help.… Continue reading →

Making Compost

My life has suddenly become rather focused on compost in the last few days. I’ve been, as I’ve mentioned in the past, rather interested in food waste for awhile.

While my interest in compost has remained about at the level mentioned in the linked post, my compost solutions have improved. Sort of.

They’ve improved in that I have a couple of potential methods now to compost some of this stuff. I spoke in the above link about “a specific composting system” that Bill and I would acquire some two or three years ago. And we kept putting it off because we didn’t know what to do with the finished compost. I’d chat with folks, but no one needed it.

Well, serendipity struck. That system? It’s an electric, indoor composter.… Continue reading →

Stock and Wasted Food

One of the more interesting panels at Edible Institute this year was all about recent non-fiction food books. Three authors, Barry Estabrook, Terry McMillan and Jonathan Bloom were all there to talk about their experiences.

Estabrook, who wrote Tomatoland (affiliate link) and maintains the blog Politics of the Plate mostly asked questions of McMillan and Bloom, but did put in a few words of his own.

McMillan wrote The American Way of Eating (affiliate link) and does not appear to maintain a blog. ETA, 3 April 2012: It turns out she does, but the way I looked for it didn’t turn it up. Anyway, she blogs here.

Bloom wrote Wasted Food (affiliate link) and maintains a blog of the same name.

I’ve read Tomatoland, and it was fascinating and educational.… Continue reading →