A Scrappy Plate: Vegetable Broth

My grandparents must have had vivid memories of "going without" during the Great Depression. They tended to squirrel away free napkins and ketchup packets from McDonald's to use with casual dinners. No screw, bolt, or twist-tie was thrown out. Junk mail and it's containing envelopes were saved for scrap paper, and gifts were unwrapped so carefully that the paper could be used again next year (if they had to be unwrapped at all - Nanny's technique was to wrap the box top only so it could be lifted off and the entire ensemble reused).  I remember these habits fondly.

What Happened?
American's attitudes regarding waste have changed dramatically in a mere two generations. According to the EPA, the U.S. sent 33 million tons (that's 66,000,000,000 pounds) of food to landfills in 2009.  This includes food we put on our plate but can't finish.  It's leftovers that spoil, fresh produce that isn't stored properly or used quickly enough, and it's also money.  Not eating the food you buy is literally throwing away your money. Most of us wouldn't pay for a new shirt and toss it, unworn, into the garbage two weeks later, but we are much more careless with food.

What Can We Do?
We can work on buying only what we need. Planning meals for the week in advance and having a list at the store can make a world of difference.  We can also practice storing vegetables and fruits so that they last longer.  Try putting them in an airy basket.  I have had success using green bags.  We can prepare food and freeze it before it goes bad if we find we have bought more than we can eat.  We can also repurpose would-be food waste and use it as compost.  Or, as I have recently discovered, we can sometimes use food waste to make new food.

Make Broth
I usually buy the quart-size low-sodium vegetable broth cartons at Trader Joe's, and I like to stock up (no pun intended) as winter - a.k.a. soup season - approaches.  Their list of ingredients is reasonable, but I wondered how homemade would compare. Dan and I were preparing a simple stir-fry, and I was also pre-chopping some carrots, celery, and parsnips for a dish later in the week so I had plenty of vegetable scraps handy.

The "ingredients" include:

- fresh (but limp) parsley that would have been thrown out otherwise
- ginger peel
- garlic skins and 1 odd-looking clove, smashed
- 3 bell pepper tops, stems, and seeds
- carrot ends and peel
- celery ends and leaves
- the skin and ends of a red onion
- parsnip ends and peel
- a handful of spinach that was about to go bad
- a handful of basil, oregano, and sage stalks from my herb garden
- 3 bay leaves
- a pinch of salt and pepper

The scraps themselves looked beautiful - so bright and colorful. I put them all in a pot, added enough water to cover them, and brought it to a boil.  Everything simmered for about an hour.  It smelled wonderful.  The broth turned out to also have a rich color and a very, very good taste.  The boiled vegetables will end up in our compost pile and used to nurture a garden in the Spring. I think Nanny and Poppop would be proud!

Hot Days, Cold Drinks

I normally don't like to turn the stove on at all when it's hot out, but I broke my rule and we made some really delicious food this weekend. Dan made bean enchiladas from his favorite vegetarian cookbook, Rabbit Food.  They were AMAZING.  I don't know about copyright laws and whatnot, so I won't post the recipe here, but you should definitely get the book because they have some really good, simple, and easy to modify dishes.  He added one jalapeno pepper and some cheese to the book's recipe.  This morning I ate a cold leftover bowl of the enchilada sauce with a bit of the bean mixture because it was so good.  Hello, breakfast enchiladas!  I also grilled a piece of fresh rockfish and served it with a little Earth Balance, oregano, and lemon juice on top.  We had some leftover snap peas from our stir-fry last week, so I steamed those to go with it.  It was all quite good.

Iced Masala Chai
On to the topic at hand.  I love a good soy iced chai.  The problem is there are almost no places that make a good soy iced chai so I've resorted to doing it myself.  At almost anyplace you order it, if you ask you will find out it is made from a pre-packaged concentrate or worse, a powder.  If said place has "chai tea" as their menu item, don't even bother asking ("chai" is the Indian word for "tea", so this place is offering you "tea tea").  The secret to masala chai, literally "spiced tea", is to use a good loose-leaf black tea and incorporate really good spices.  I tried making my own spice mixtures for a while, but I had a hard time getting it right.  Fortunately, last year Dan and I were in Portland, Oregon and we hit the jackpot.  We were at a small cafe and I was served a delicious, fresh-brewed chai with a peppery kick.  Upon asking what spices were used we found out the spice mix was commercially available from Morning Glory Chai so of course we ordered some.

I follow the directions on the package.  What you are making is essentially the "concentrate" a restaurant might have except it's so much better.  As sweeteners, I use 1T agave nectar, 1T real maple syrup, and 1T honey.  Let it cool off, fill a cup 3/4 of the way with ice, put in about 2/3 chai mixture and 1/3 soy milk (adjust which alternative milk you use and the amount to taste).  This was so refreshing in the 100 degree heat!

White Sangria
Last weekend, Dan and I visited one of our favorite local wine stores.  I like it because every single time we go in they are pouring samples of yummy wine, and Dan likes it because it happens to have a great selection of craft beers, a win-win for us. The lovely folks that work there mentioned using "New Age", a particularly light and effervescent white wine to make sangria.  I had to try it!  Today at the farmer's market, I picked up some tiny local plums and ripe peaches.  We chopped those up, added a few chunks of frozen mango that hadn't made it into smoothies and poured in the full bottle of wine.  To that, we added about a shot's worth of Grand Marnier (any citrusy liquor will do, that is just what we had in the house), and about 1/4 cup of sugar.  After letting it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours, it has turned out absolutely wonderful! Serve over ice.

Three Peaceful Freebies

Grounds for your Garden
Historically, Starbucks hasn't gotten the best reputation when it comes to the environment. They give out billions of paper cups (2.3 billion on 2006) that cannot be recycled or composted.  The company does have a plan for improvement and is on track to provide recyclable cups as well as recycle bins by 2015.

Starbucks has a great program to help those of us making our own compost who are short on food scraps: "Grounds For Your Garden".  Dan and I haven't tried this yet, but their website claims if you go into a Starbucks you can ask for a 5 pound bag of used coffee grounds and they will happily hand one over.  It seems to me you might have to go into the store one day to ask for the bag and pick it up the next day, but what a great concept! More restaurants should save compostable food scraps for the community.

Rake & Take Program

If you are getting extra coffee grounds from Starbucks, you may need more "brown material" to balance out your compost pile. Brown material is typically yard waste; leaves are a good example.  In Howard County, MD, the Master Gardeners group has a "Rake & Take" program.  Those who have extra yard waste and those who need extra yard waste are put in contact with each other.  The "rakers" put their bagged yard waste at their curb and the "takers" pick it up. I hope other counties and states have implemented similar programs.

Amazon Trade-In
The most selfless of us are perfectly happy to give away all the items that we no longer need.  You can do that in any number of places - Goodwill donations, craigslist, Purple Heart collection, or just leaving something in your front  yard with sign announcing "FREE".  My mom recently gave away a living room chair, mattress, and box spring using the latter method.

While it's great to donate things to a worthy cause and I'm 100% supportive of that, sometimes it's nice to get a little something in return.  I can wholeheartedly recommend the Amazon Trade-In program.  I've used this before to sell back a bunch of college textbooks and a couple of Wii games that would have been thrown away otherwise.  You don't get a ton of money, but something is better than nothing and it all adds up.  All kinds of things can be traded in - electronics, games, books - and the list keeps growing.  You'll need to find a box to use for shipping your items (check around your workplace) but the shipping is free and you get payment as a credit to your Amazon account.

A Colorful Plate: Salad & Stir-Fry

I've read that the more colorful a dish is, the better it is for you.  Think bright red tomatoes, deep purple eggplant, and crisp green beans rather than red meat, white meat, or orange roughy.  They say brightly colored food packs a lot of nutrients that can aid in cancer prevention, and just generally make your body happier.  I'm not sure if those are true statements, but I'd like to share two colorful dishes Dan and I made yesterday.

The Big Salad

Eating hot food on a hot day is not something I enjoy, so in the summer I make a huge bowl of salad every week.  Most days, I bring a giant tub of it into work for lunch with a little olive oil & balsamic mixture as dressing.  I've gotten at least one comment that my salads actually look good which is high praise coming from a non-salad-eating co-worker!

I do have some tips for making a potentially mundane bowl of vegetables more exciting.  

1.  Go nuts!  Literally.  I sprinkle sunflower seeds and sliced almonds on top of every salad.  They add a lovely crunch and great taste.  If you are worried about calories, cut them out somewhere else.  These are too yummy to miss!  (Just kidding, sort of.  Another good idea is to throw some chickpeas or beans into the mix.  You get the earthy taste of nuts with less calories.)

2.  If the salad is a little boring flavor-wise, throw some fresh salsa on top.  Trader Joe's make a deliciously vinegary mild tomato salsa with a ton of flavor.  

3.  Chop it up.  For some reason, lettuce and most other vegetables taste better when they are chopped into tiny pieces.  This is why restaurants offer "chopped salad" on their menus.  All it takes is a few extra minutes.

In this salad: chopped up red and green head lettuce, cucumbers, spring onions, shredded carrots, green and orange bell peppers, organic grape tomatoes
Other things that are good in salad: red onions, arugula, fresh mint, fresh cilantro, chickpeas, black beans, red cabbage, broccoli

The Stir-Fry
The great thing about stir-fries is that you can throw in almost anything and it will taste good.  You need  a really big pan or wok to cook it all and a good knife for chopping, but that's about it. Whatever vegetables you have leftover in your fridge, whatever they had available at the farmer's market that week, doesn't matter because it will all taste good.  I'm a big fan of mushrooms, carrots, and sugar snap peas so those will be staples in mine if I have them.  Ginger, garlic, and onion makes a delicious base.  Ours turned out really well - light on the sauce, but tons of flavor!

Stir-fry tips:
1.  Don't buy a pre-made stir-fry sauce.  It's very likely whoever manufactured it put crap in there that you wouldn't eat if you knew what it was.  Peanut butter mixed with low sodium soy sauce (a trick I learned from You Blog What You Eat) makes a yummy and simple dressing.
2. Always add cashews!  They taste fantastic with the flavors of the veggies and spiciness of the peppers.  Add them at the very end because they just need to be heated up but not cooked.
3. Don't overcook the veggies.  5-7 minutes on medium to high heat is usually enough to get them crisp-tender.  Serve over rice or rice noodles.  We made brown rice to go with ours.

In this dish: zucchini, broccoli florets, crimini and shitake mushrooms, sugar snap peas, sliced carrots, ginger, garlic, shallots, hot green peppers, bell peppers, cashews, crushed red pepper flakes, and sauce: 1 cup vegetable broth, 1/4 cup water, 2T low sodium soy sauce, dash of freshly ground pepper, 1t sugar, 1 small scoop natural peanut butter

3 Things You Should Be Making

Dan and I have been making more and more things ourselves.  Frozen yogurt, freshly chopped salad, bean dip, veggie burgers, smoothies, beer, and the list goes on.  I believe that we spend less money when you consider the quality of what we are making, not to mention that it's fun and rewarding!  Making things from scratch can take a little longer and might require some special equipment, but in the long run it definitely pays off.  Check out these suggestions for some easy do-it-yourself ideas.


Morning Cuppa Joe

Rather than going to Starbucks for a sugary pick-me-up, make it fresh and stay in your pajamas!  One of Dan's favorite coffees is a fair-trade Ethiopian blend that we pick up at the local David's Natural Market.  Trader Joe's has several good varieties as well.  Before work, he heats up water and grinds an appropriate amount of beans - the single biggest difference in coffee flavor is how recently the beans were ground; he uses his french press to make about 32oz of coffee.  Throw it in a quality thermos and it can be enjoyed throughout the day.

As a quick cost comparison, the fair-trade beans cost about $15 for a bag that lasts between 2-3 weeks including the workday 32oz and 16oz each weekend morning.  Purchasing that same amount of coffee from Starbucks rings in at over $40!  Especially when you consider the reduced amount of waste from always having a reusable mug, brewing at home is a great deal.


Nut Butters
I don't do this yet myself, but from what I understand it is super easy to make peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter, and so on in your own kitchen.  You need a food processor and some nuts.  I am holding out for this one and a bit more counter space.  Throw in the nuts and let them go until they turn into a paste.

It is a lot easier to find truly natural nut butters these days with only the nuts as ingredients and maybe a dash of salt, but I have to believe that making them fresh would taste that much better.


Dirt
Composting is one of the best things you can do; your household will produce less garbage and all the plants in your garden will thank you.  Not to mention it's fun to see your food scraps and yard waste turn into something that's actually useful.

We started a compost pile back in March with this really basic bin.  We decided to make a lid for it and line the inside with chicken wire in case we didn't get the ratio of brown-to-green material right and attracted unwanted creatures.  You need to have mostly "brown" material which is mainly yard waste and can be in the form of leaves, grass trimmings, plants that get pulled up, etc, or you can use newspaper if you don't have those other things.  A smaller portion of your compost should be made up of "green" material which includes things like vegetable scraps, banana peels, coffee grounds, or egg shells (no meat).   Dump all of that into your composter, give it a stir occassionally, and wait.  When it's done right, your compost pile will be warm and full of worms but it won't be smelly or attract pesky flies or rodents.