MI Love: The Remnant Game

I've been trying to reduce food waste and expenditures lately. I wouldn't say that I'm where I want to be, but I'm trying to work with what I have and what's in season rather than randomly conjuring up a dish out of a cookbook. I've had to do this more because of our community supported agriculture share at Faith Farm CSA in Detroit. So far, I've found a few rules that help this go better:

Have a theory or recipe base for the dish.

Have some expectation of how you want the thing to come out and how you're going to serve it. I made a fruit salsa with mint in it a few weeks ago. It was killer, but the flavors were so bold and unusual, and I hadn't planned what to use it for, so I ended up pitching more than half of it.

Stick to one seasoning palette.

Even if you're not using the same meat or vegetable as a recipe, decide whether this dish is going to have a central Mexican, southern Italian, northern African, Indian, etc feel. Use spices consistent with this. It's all the better if you can think about the flavors you're already incorporating and help to round them out. Some of my biggest failures were when I didn't stick to one palette. There was an everything pizza that got pitched because it had too many flavors even for me.

Keep staples in your pantry/fridge.

Having a certain number of staples at all times can really affect how well you're able to use other ingredients such as fruits and vegetables that are close to spoiling. Of course, everyone's ideas of staples are different, but find yours and make sure you don't run out. I'll post a list of some of mine (that might surprise you) in a subsequent entry.

Make stock.

So much this. Making your own stock is delicious, cheap, and healthy. Not to mention the fact that you can customize it for the dish you're planning (assuming you follow the above tips, that shouldn't be a problem). This is a great way to squeeze the last bit of life out of slightly dried out herbs, veggie ends, animal bones, etc.

Hope that helps! Let me know what your secrets are for reducing food waste.