Waste Not, Want Not and All That

Anyone feeding a kid, especially a baby trying new things, is probably going to waste a lot of food. “Beets? Are you kidding me! NOOOOOOOO!” Then the batch of beet puree or beet/blueberry puree (because you thought hiding the putrid beet taste amid plump, juicy blueberry yumminess would make beets palatable) is without a taker. I hate beets, so what did I expect? Blueberries seriously didn’t help.

Thanks to my much beloved “Good to the Grain” cookbook, the beet pancakes I made with the leftover puree were amazing. I hate beets. I hate pancakes. Beet pancakes were amazing. Go figure.

Or you have a food snob – can I amend my wish upon a star to “not so food snobby that she won’t eat leftovers or something that has been frozen?” I fear one does not get do-overs in the wish department. So that mango/carrot/apple puree, which was devoured right out of the food processor and eaten only one more time was rejected by Miss Picky Pants once it was frozen and thawed. That made lovely smoothies with plain yogurt.

I was raised by my grandmother, who grew up in the Great Depression, and wasting ANYTHING, let alone food, is immoral. Her influence greatly informs my everyday choices. I turn the light out every single time I leave the room. I save rubber bands. I save the pages from the page-a-day Basset Hound calendar to make grocery lists on the back. The thermostat is low – we wear sweaters.

Don’t get me wrong. I throw out food. Sometimes I wait days and days until whatever in the refrigerator looks spotty is, in fact, covered in some kind of slimy, fuzzy substance so I may throw it away without guilt. But who am I kidding? The ideal is to use that food and not throw it away.

Americans waste mountains of food every year. In fact, we toss 40 percent of the food supply, which amounts to a whapping $165 billion, or for the average family of four, that means $2,275 of food each year is tossed into the trash, according to a study released this past summer by the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) food and agriculture program.

Recently, NPR did a series on food waste in restaurants. All that food, which is the largest component of solid waste, according to the NRDC, goes into landfills, and makes methane. Surely I don’t need to go into what methane does to the environment, do I? Unsold fruits and vegetables in grocery stores account for a big part of the wasted food.

So what can we do? Bake bread!

I made spinach-zucchini puree and Georgia refused to eat it. The recipe looked lovely. I tried it. It was rather gross, so I couldn’t blame her. That sent me to my rather disturbingly large collection of cookbooks to find a good recipe for zucchini bread, figuring zucchini/zucchini-spinach – same(ish) thing.

Once again “Good to the Grain” came through with what looked like a great recipe for my processor bowl of rejects. I cut back on the sugar on the hope that Georgia would eat the bread and made some tweaks since I never have everything a recipe calls for just sitting about in the kitchen. If you have wheat germ, use ¼ c of that instead of the whole wheat flour in the recipe below. If you aren’t avoiding sugar, you can use the ½ c called for, although I swear it is not necessary.

The result was pretty dang good. The bread was slightly sweet, hearty and was the color of money. Not necessarily the most appetizing color, but not terribly off-putting either. Georgia gobbled it up. Drew inhaled it. I liked it, too. Several of my friends have asked for it via Facebook. Here it is:

Spinach Zucchini Bread

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

¾ c spinach zucchini puree (or use ½ lb grated zucchini)

½ c plain yogurt

2 eggs

1 c all-purpose flour

1 c multigrain flour mix* (or use whole wheat flour, all purpose or ½ c of each)

¼ whole wheat flour

¼ c sugar

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a standard load pan.

Combine the melted butter, spinach puree, yogurt and eggs and whisk thoroughly.

Sift the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, pouring back any bits left in the sifter. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir, gently folding until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake for 60 to 70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. The bread should be dark golden brown and spring back when touched. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then invert onto a cooling rack.

Wrapped tightly, the bread should keep for three days.

*The multigrain flour mix that Boyce alls for in “Good to the Grain” is

1 c whole wheat flour

1 c oat flour

1 c barley flour

½ c millet flour

½ c rye flour

If you don’t have the burning desire to bake with various flours like I do, or you think “are you kidding me, when will I ever use millet flour again?” mix whatever combination of these that you feel you might use again. Or just use whole wheat flour. You could use all-purpose flour, but I think the rustic element that whole wheat adds really helps out in a bread that has vegetables or fruit as an ingredient.