Over a year ago I happened to catch an episode on the Food Network called "The Big Waste" where two teams were in competition with each other to see who could come up with the best meals using only food that was going to be discarded by restaurants and stores. Usually not one to be easily convicted or moved by what I perceive to be liberal or tree hugging agendas this show sickened and changed me within sixty minutes from start to finish. I have never treated the food in my own kitchen the same way since. The show follows the contestants as they run around the city and go to different supermarkets looking for food that is going to be tossed. Food gets tossed out for being unappealing visually, because it won't sell. A LOT of food. It is disturbing to realize the waste in our country when so many go without in the world. What we as American's consider inedible is a far cry from what is actually inedible at times. After watching how much food gets thrown into dumpsters I was convinced that I have a personal and moral responsibility to A) reduce my own food waste in the kitchen and B) to choose bruised or unappealing fruits and vegetables at the store rather than perfect ones if I know I am going to be using them soon or in cooking as the looks do not change the flavor. Otherwise these fruits and vegetables will just be thrown away. My decision to change the way I view my food will not change the world, but when I stand before God I hopefully won't be confronted with how much food I thoughtlessly wasted. I feel like we have been given such a gift of overabundance in our country that I had lost the gratitude I should have had. With gratitude comes wise stewardship of the gift. I should not be using more than I need and when it comes right down to it I should not be eating more than I need! Although I am still working on that last one I do believe it is true. For further reading on annual food waste in America you can check out this website:
Wasted Food
It was many months ago that I first read an article about the benefits of making your own chicken stock or bone broth. Unfortunately I cannot find the article now but it convicted me in terms of the health benefits of choosing to do this and it was in line with my prior change of heart regarding using as much of my food as possible rather than wasting something another would be thankful for. There is a long history of using the bones from animals to make nourishing broths that were believed to heal and strengthen the human body. This simple truth was passed down for hundreds of years because the results were powerful and healing. The proof was in the pudding, as they say. Now, if you google search the healing powers of bone broth, science has provided the answer to what people have known for hundreds of years. There are many articles delineating the benefits of making your own broth/stock and why it works. What struck and convicted me was that it is a very holistic way to remain healthy and heal your body, it is a money saver, you can control the flavor and taste, and you can utilize lots of vegetable scraps that otherwise would be thrown away.
In making my own broths/stocks I am gaining medicinal value that has been stripped from processed food, saving money, utilizing parts of the animal that typically are thrown away to do it, and I have found ways to incorporate vegetables that would be thrown away otherwise. I have started a freezer bag which I use to collect vegetable scraps to add to my broth when I make it rather than using whole, fresh vegetables. I use the peeling from carrots and potatoes as well as the skin and ends of onions and garlic. There are a TON of nutrients in the peels of vegetables that we usually just throw out that you can now start drinking and using in your cooking! I use the ends of asparagus that we snap off, broccoli stocks, zucchini if I don't cook it before it gets somewhat wilty, cabbage, you get the idea! It truly feels good to be making something that I use often in cooking for practically no cost to myself! I already have been buying whole chickens for years to cook with. Today I even cooked a whole chicken and didn't feel the need to make chicken broth, as I have some in my freezer, so after boiling my chicken until cooked and deboning it I just gathered the uncooked gizzards and bones and placed them in a ziploc to freeze until I was ready. I was making a chicken pot pie tonight, in which I utilized some chicken stock I had made previously, and all the vegetable scraps from the onions, carrots, and celery went into my freezer bag for stocks. I literally threw nothing away. Even the egg shell from using the egg white to coat the crust went into my compost pile which in turn will nourish our garden next spring! I used a store bought pie crust (because making dinner with a one year old vying for my attention is pushing it and if I made a pie crust it would push me to insanity) and even the cardboard box it came in got torn into small pieces to mix into the compost pile. Compost piles need both carbine and nitrogen (brown and green materials) and since mine is heavy on green materials due to kitchen scraps and grass cuttings I am utilizing paper and cardboard waste for the brown materials thereby decreasing the amount of overall trash my household is producing. This just makes sense to me in terms of being a good steward of this beautiful earth the Lord has given us as well as decreasing my reliance on man made convenience's such as trash pick up. I mean, thank God for trash pick up and I need it still, but I would love it if I could figure out a way to re-use and recycle to the extent that I could cancel my trash pick up and instead pocket that money, as well as decrease the thoughtless amount of trash we produce! I am working towards that goal within the next year.
Within the next few years I would LOVE it if we could get our own chickens to harvest rather than singly for eggs. Not only is this again much healthier, but it again decreases one's reliance on man made conveniences and is an awesome way to practice stewardship and appreciation of the food God has provided to us.
Here is a picture of the chicken pot pie I made tonight, with four cups of healthy homemade chicken bone broth in it! :) Delicious and nutritive! I would share a link for the recipe but I read three different ones and took my favorite ideas and combined them to make my own. :) Allrecipes.com and pioneerwoman.com both have very popular recipes. Everything tastes better, in my opinion, with fresh herbs and I was excited to use some fresh thyme from our herb garden for the first time this year! I even made extra filling on the side so that tomorrow I can make a few smaller pies for just Eli and I. These I will freeze before cooking so there will be something easy to throw in the oven when Sang is gone all week for work. Its always more challenging for me to be motivated to cook when he isn't home so I figured this would be a good way to at least get a couple good meals in.
