After I wrote a post in May entreating Americans to return to our roots and once again become “a nation of farmers” by growing at least part of our food on whatever spot of earth we can find to cultivate, I was amazed at how strongly my ideas seemed to resonate with readers.

Yesterday as I watered the forty basil plants, (we like basil here–a lot), dozen chili pepper plants, various assorted tomatoes and other herbs up on my deck, I reflected on how good it made me feel to know that in a few months I’d be harvesting a lot of tasty food just outside my kitchen door. In a small way, it brought me back to my childhood summers at Grandma’s farm, and how wonderful it was to grow, harvest, cook, preserve and eat vegetables and fruits so fresh that they tasted of the sweet sun-warmed, rain-bathed earth itself.

Of course, I still look longingly at the huge hillside in our backyard, the one that -will- be terraced within the year, dreaming of the plenitude of food, herbs and flowers we will be growing in the future, but as I do so, I cannot help but think that not only is it beautiful to grow my own food, in the future, it will be an economical choice that will help cut down our food costs as well.

It seems that I am not the only one thinking these thoughts in the United States. Other folks have decided to grow food instead of lawns this year, and many of them cite the rising cost of food as the reason for their sudden interest in vegetable and fruit gardening.

According to the New York Times, sales of vegetable and herb seeds and plants from the W. Atlee Burpee company have risen 40% in the past year–an amazingly precipitous jump that heralds a burgeoning interest in home food production that has not been seen among Americans since the 1970’s. Garden centers are selling out of vegetable and fruit plants and seeds and even potted fruit trees faster than they have in past decades as many new gardeners try out their green thumbs on full-blown kitchen gardens.

In the recent past, Americans have spent most of their gardening money and time on lawns, annual flowers, perennials, vegetables, trees and shrubs, in that order. According to a poll conducted on behalf of the Garden Writers Association, this year, American gardeners’ priorities have changed drastically as vegetables have jumped from fourth to second place.

To my ears, this is amazingly great news, because as far as I am concerned, anything that reconnects Americans to the source of our sustenance as well as getting them outside, moving and exercising in the fresh air and sunlight is wonderful. Gardening not only helps with grocery bills and overall health and fitness, it can also help us develop spiritually. There are so many lessons to be learned while digging in the dirt, pulling weeds and harvesting fruits, and I think that Americans will be the better for relearning these lessons.

Reading the New York Times article brought a smile to my face and to my heart, and I just wanted to share it with everyone here.

And while I am at it, I wanted to share some resources for gardening how-tos and inspiration, because as I imagine that many new gardeners could use a little advice on how to grow vegetables, herbs and fruits most efficiently.

For starters, look at this new article from the LA Times about a technique that allows gardeners to get great harvests with no digging and very little watering. In drought-prone areas of the country, ideas like the ones outlined in this article can help make the difference between puny yields and a bountiful harvest.

Then, check out the supplementary website for the gardening book, Food, Not Lawns. The articles there are interesting and informative and give you an idea on what the book is about, which is a call on how to turn our lawns, which are resource-guzzling areas of essentially wasted space, into productive kitchen gardens and orchards

There is always The Mother Earth News, a great magazine that is chock-full of advice on gardening, frugal living, food preservation, composting, livestock husbandry, energy production, solar power and other green topics. I was first exposed to “Mother” as the publication is known by its fans back when I was a kid, because my grandparents subscribed to it and all of us learned a great deal from it. You can order their complete back issues on CD Rom from their website and I cannot think of a better resource for all things green than that.

Grandpa also introduced me to Rodale’s Organic Gardening by my Grandpa who switched from conventional petrochemical agriculture to organic methods and ended up with higher yields in the long run, not to mention not having to worry about pesticides killing his grandkids if we came across them in the barn.

A book of interest to those of you who are looking to grow food for the first time would be Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food In Hard Times. I haven’t gotten a copy of it yet, but I have read many glowing reviews of it, and when my copy of it comes in, I will definitely review it here.

Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
is a manual for growing vegetables all year around through the use of inexpensive unheated hoop houses and cold frames. Coleman is a market gardener in Maine, and he sells his vegetables all through the year, and he shows how sunlight and protection from the wind are more important for growing vegetables than temperature.

Coleman also has another useful book–The New Organic Grower–which is great primer on the subject of growing vegetables organically in either a home kitchen garden or a market garden setting. It contains all sorts of useful knowledge for both beginning and advanced gardeners.

Finally, there is Edward C. Smith’s The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible: Discover Ed’s High-Yield W-O-R-D System for All North American Gardening Regions--a very useful guide to growing vegetables in a small or large garden. I really like this book myself and have used the principles outlined in it in my garden when we lived in Pataskala to great effect.

Those are just some of the possible resources for all the new gardeners out there–can any of you suggest others?

Cross-utilization means using an ingredient, sauce, or condiment that is usually used for one or two specific dishes for another dish or two where, perhaps, they are not expected, or are not usually used. The way my grandmothers, both of whom lived through the Great Depression, referred to it was “making do.”

“Making do,” basically means using what you have on hand, rather than running out and buying something new. Whether this refers to what is in your closet, or what is in your pantry, it is the frugal person’s way of creatively making something new out of something old. And, as I have mentioned before, chefs, as a group, are nothing if not frugal.

For a chef, cross-utilization generally refers to using basic pantry items to make up new menu items or daily specials, which not only avoids having to buy new and different ingredients and uses up what is in the pantry, but it also stimulates creativity. Being limited by a set number of materials and ingredients forces anyone, but certainly a chef, to think outside the box, to work around a problem, to, essentially, turn a limitation into a positive attribute.

I don’t know how many times I have come up with appetizer and dinner specials that use only pantry items, and pretty much every time I have done so, the response from diners has been overwhelmingly positive. It is really cool to be able to make something that blows people away, seemingly out of nothing, and it makes For more on the philosophy of cross-utilization, see my recent post all about it here.

Cross-utilization, or making do is something that every home cook probably has done in the past, especially in times of financial stress, but it is good to try and do it as often as possible anyway. It is a good habit to get into. Not only does it cut food loss and waste, it helps keep a cook creative when it comes to thinking of ways to cook different ingredients and differing presentations of everyday dishes.

For example, a while back, my parents planned to come visit us for the day, which would be their first big driving expedition after Dad’s surgery. Morganna and I wanted to make Indian food, so when we went shopping, we kept that in mind. We ended up picking out some purple cauliflower which we intended to make into aloo gobi–curried potatoes and cauliflower. However, my Mom caught a nasty cold which turned into bronchitis, so we never got around to that planned feast.

Instead, a week later, when I came home from work late Saturday night, and found extra folks around at dinner time (I forgot that it was Torchwood and Dr. Who night–silly me!), even though I was planning to have keema mattar, which is minced lamb with peas, I saw the cauliflower and decided it would work perfectly well in the dish in addition to the canonical ingredients. And it did. It worked so well, in fact, and looked so pretty (I love how fresh green and purple look together!) and tasted so nice that it was remarked upon by everyone who ate it, and so I will be making my keema mattar gobi again. And the truth is, I would never have thought of it in the first place if I had not had cauliflower sitting around needing to be used and a mind open to culinary possibilities.

Repurposing food is a similar process to cross-utilization, but instead of pertaining to using ingredients in more ways than you had originally intended, it has to do with creative use already cooked food. You know–leftovers.

Yes, leftovers. Even restaurants have them and, if they want to keep their food cost down, chefs have to figure out how to use them.

Sometimes, leftovers are made on purpose in restaurants. If one is going to make a stew or soup that will freeze well, and you have space for it in your freezer, why not make twice as much (which takes not much more time than a single batch) and cool some down and freeze it, properly dated and marked, for a later date? Every chef needs a quick lunch or dinner special now and then; sometimes, in the middle of a shift, a soup runs out and you need another one very quickly. It is nice to be able to heat up something which you know is good, in a matter of minutes, when unforeseen circumstances strike–the special runs out, the cook who was supposed to make the soup is deathly ill with pneumonia and had to be sent home, or the gas line is leaking and you can’t use your stove, but you still have people to feed.

But even if you didn’t mean to have leftovers, sometimes they can be frozen and used later. There are a few guidelines about doing this–the leftover food should only have been cooled and reheated once, and it should be cooled to below forty degrees F. before being put into the freezer. This is for food safety concerns–the more times food is cooled and reheated, the more chances there are for harmful bacteria to proliferate. In addition, food that has been cooled and reheated more than once or twice suffers greatly in quality–food textures go awry, the colors can fade or oxidize and turn brown and the flavor balance can be upset beyond repair.

In some cases, you can make one dish, and turn it into something completely different. A classic example is where cooks diners and similar restaurants will save leftover baked potatoes and make baked potato soup the next day. Leftover keema sookh–a dry curry made from minced lamb, beef or chicken, can be mixed with rice, vegetables and spices and then be used to stuff roasted vegetables the next day. Taco meat can become chili, leftover rice can become rice stuffing or fried rice and leftover bechamel sauce can be turned into mornay sauce with the addition of grated cheese, which can then be used in any number of other dishes. Leftover vegetables can be saved and made into soups, either as mixed vegetable soups, or as pureed cream soups. Leftover bread can be fried into croûtons which can then garnish salads and soups, or it can be made into one of my favorite desserts of all time–bread pudding. Leftover tortillas can become the garnish for sopa de lima–a tangy chicken and lime soup with a garnish of fried tortilla strips–and leftover roast meat can become the basis of a soup, a salad, a casserole, or a sandwich or dumpling filling.

For an example of how I took an unpopular dinner special made one night and turned it into a completely new dish that sold out the next night, read this post which also is a rumination upon the art of cooking and even more importantly, naming and marketing dinner specials.

There are so many ways to use leftovers in both a restaurant and home kitchen that there isn’t really a great excuse for a lot of the food waste that goes on in the United States. But even though there are ways to re-use or repurpose food, you have to follow strict sanitation procedures and food safety guidelines in order to ensure that the leftovers are handled properly so that no diners get sick. Only foods which have been handled properly should be repurposed, which means that if a food has stayed between the temperatures of 40 and 140 degrees F. for more than four hours, they should not be used. (That range of temperatures, known in restaurants as “the temperature danger zone” or “TDZ” for short, is the perfect temperatures at which most harmful bacteria thrive and grow.) When in doubt about the safety or the quality of a food, it is best, if regrettable, to throw it out. (Another industry catchphrase–”When in doubt, throw it out!” is a good principle for home cooks to live by as well.)

Now that I have discussed the biggest techniques that help restaurant cooks and chefs decrease food waste and thus keep food costs low, all of which can be modified for home use, my next post will be about -why- there is so much food waste in American restaurants, and what can be done about it.

Some fresh foods can simply be converted to frozen foods without much work or trouble, and then, can be used from the freezer over the course of months, instead of days. Sweet and hot peppers can both be simply chopped or sliced, packed in plastic bags and frozen. The same can be done with onions and garlic. Spinach can also be frozen with minimal processing–if the leaves are mature, remove the thick veins and stems and either leave the leaves whole or tear into smaller pieces and then pack into bags and freeze. If you have baby spinach, you just pack the whole leaves into bags and freeze them. Frozen spinach leaves can then be added directly to simmering soups, stews or sauces without pre-cooking.

Fresh herbs can also be frozen with minimal preparation. Most of them can just be chopped finely and frozen in bags, although some people put tablespoon amounts into individual compartments in an ice cube tray, and add a little bit of water to hold them together, then freeze the cubes. After they are frozen, the cubes can be packed in plastic bags and stored for future use. Some herbs, like cilantro and basil, can be pureed and then frozen in ice cube trays without the addition of water, and can be used like the chopped frozen herb cubes.

Alternately, batches of green cilantro chutney or pesto can be made and frozen, either in small bags or containers, or in cubes, to be thawed and used later or to be added to curries, soups and sauces as they cook.

Fresh fruits such as strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and mangoes can all be frozen simply as well: for the berries, you just wash and dry them, then layer them onto sheet pans, put them in the fridge until they are frozen, then pack them into bags, label and date them and store them in freezer. Strawberries can either be frozen whole or sliced. All of these fruits can be used to make pies, dessert sauces, ice creams, sorbets and smoothies in the future.

For mangoes, simply peel and pit them, and cut into slices. Treat with a bit of lemon juice to prevent discoloration, and freeze on sheet pans and then pack into bags. I like to use frozen mango to make lassi, chutneys, salsas and to add to curries.

Tomatoes can be frozen whole, but they are better, and they take up less space, if you make them into a nice marinara sauce or plain tomato sauce, pack these sauces into quart bags and freeze them flat, so they stack easily in the freezer for storage. (Speaking of tomatoes, you can also use the freezer to store excess tomato paste. Restaurant pack tomato paste is often sold in huge units of several quarts or pounds. If you don’t need that much in whatever recipe you are using, the rest can be stored in smaller portions from a cup to a tablespoon in freezer bags. For the smaller amounts, you can squeeze the paste into ice cube trays or freeze tablespoon-sized plops on a sheet pan lined with waxed paper. Once they are frozen, the cubes can be popped into a bag, or the plops can be peeled up and popped into a bag which then lives happily in the freezer until it is needed. You don’t even have to thaw the paste before using it, although I always do.)

Speaking of sauces, we come to the issue of stocks, soups, sauces and stews.

These types of recipes are the secret weapon of cooks and chefs when it comes to using up excess ingredients.

If you have some potatoes on hand that have gone a bit soft, or some carrots that are a little rubbery, or some celery that is no longer crisp, then don’t throw them out–use them in a soup or stew or a sauce. Daily soup or dinner specials are not just a way to vary a menu, they also help a chef or cook deal with surplus perishable ingredients in a delicious and constructive fashion.

I don’t feel in the least bit bad about using slighly older produce in soups or stews, because it isn’t like I am using rotted food. Far from it–slightly older vegetables which would be nasty in a stir fry or salad are perfectly fine to be boiled in a soup or stew where the liquid is meant to be eaten along with the vegetables. With vegetables that are a bit too old, often the only characteristic that suffers is texture, and with a soup , stew or sauce, that doesn’t matter. The boiling water extracts all of the water soluble vitamins left in the vegetable, and then they are eaten in the broth, along with the solids. The flavors are all extracted and present in the finished dish, and frankly, there is nothing more homey and comforting than a stew or soup.

Stocks are a special case. Stocks are made, in large part, from parts of animals and plants which are frankly, otherwise inedible to people. Bones are not a big part of the human diet when they are whole, but when they have had all of their goodness extracted by a long simmer in a stockpot, they create the basis for every great soup, sauce and stew–stock.

Every chef I have ever known has extolled the virtues of the stockpot, not only for creating kitchen gold, but also because it fits perfectly with their frugal natures. Bones cannot be eaten by people, but there is no need to throw them away without first extracting every ounce of goodness from them. Carrot ends, celery leaves and ends, leek tops and onion skins also are not palatable to humans, but they add flavor, fragrance and color to stock. (Onion skins give a golden color to chicken stock which makes it more appealing to the eyes.) Bones from every animal, along with fish heads and tails, shrimp, crab and lobster shells, and crustacean heads, are all saved by chefs and used to make stocks which results in every scrap of food being used to make a food product that only enhances every other dish to which it is added. Stocks can be frozen, too, in whatever increments one likes, so they can have a very long shelf life, although in larger restaurants, a stockpot or two are always going on a back burner of the stove and what it makes is used up as it is made.

Stocks are simple, and make goodness out of what many people would see as garbage, using bones, vegetable scraps, herbs (and yes, you can use some herbs that are not pretty enough to put on a plate as garnish, but are still good to cook with in a stock, and unlikely bits of carcass like chicken or pig’s feet. (For illustrated instructions on how to make chicken stock, click here. For Chinese style pork and chicken stock, click here.)

Running a restaurant does not have to be a wasteful enterprise. In fact, if the chef is clever, it can be the exact opposite–it can be a model of how best to use every scrap of edible foodstuff inherent to any given ingredient, but it does take a little extra work to avoid just throwing away raw materials.

The next post will talk about what happens to food that is already cooked in a restaurant, and how to avoid throwing it away.

What it means is that you use the older food before you use the new food–preferably, even before you have new food come in. You want to avoid as much overlap between new and old ingredients as possible, although, you -never- want to go with an empty cooler, freezer or pantry. At the same time, you don’t want to have stuff on your shelves that dates back to the Clinton administration, either.

How does this get done?

It requires work, but keeping inventory of what you have and making note of what you use over the period of a week or a fraction thereof (for fresh seafood, you don’t order enough for a week, necessarily, you order enough for a few days, and have several orders come in through the week). These records help the chef avoid over-ordering perishable foods such as meats, fruits, vegetables, fresh herbs, dairy and eggs, all of which are expensive, and can really drive food costs up if they end up in the trash bin.

Once inventory is done, preferably weekly, and orders are made, then orders must be received and put away properly in order to maintain the ideals of FIFO.

When a chef or cook takes an order or perishables in the back door of a restaurant, it behooves him or her to examine each item carefully to make certain that it is as it should be. Lettuce should be crisp, not wilted, eggs should be properly and carefully crated, clean and unbroken and crabs should be alive and wriggling, not dead and smelling of stagnant ocean. Most reputable purveyors will not send anything but the best to their clients, but everyone has a bad day and everyone makes mistakes. Examining the order in front of the delivery person is the way to ensure that if an item is not of the proper quality, the problem can be rectified immediately by alerting the delivery person and if necessary, the customer service department right away. Then, the offending item is loaded back on the truck and a credit is issued on the order. If you wait until the truck is off to another delivery to complain, it is much harder to get this level of service, and you may end up with food that is at the worst, unusable, and at best, questionable.

After the order is in the back door, then the more physical work of FIFO begins.

Instead of putting new stock willy-nilly onto the storeroom shelves, the proper procedure is to pull the older stock to the front of the shelves, and put the newer stock behind it. The same goes for refrigerated and frozen stock. When we are discussing walk-in refrigerators and freezers, that is a lot of cases of food to be moved, but it is necessary if we are to keep the food contained therein at its peak of freshness and flavor.

One thing I started to do with refrigerated and frozen stock when I was responsible for receiving and stock rotation in a chain restaurant years and years ago, was I would write the date an item came into the restaurant in a black permanent marker, and the expiration date in red. This way, I could keep track of shipments and easily make certain that older product was used before newer, thus reducing accidental food waste by 10 percent, which in turn, lowered food cost.

Proper management of refrigerators, whether they are walk-ins or reach-ins, also is crucial to controlling food loss; food safety also begins in a well-managed refrigeration unit.

Many foods have the potential to carry food-borne bacteria which can, if improperly handled, result in an outbreak of food-borne illness. In order to avoid these possibilities, it is imperative for chefs and cooks to carefully stock and clean the refrigerator.

Cross-contamination occurs when one food comes into contact with another, and can lead to illness, even if the food are fresh and otherwise safe to consume. In order to avoid this there are established protocols determining where different types of food are placed in the refrigerator. Foods which have a high potential to carry harmful bacteria, and which can easily contaminate other foods by dripping on them or touching them, should be stored on the lowest shelves of the refrigerator, and should either be placed in fully enclosed containers or, should be placed on trays in order to hold any liquid which may escape. On the lowest shelf, the only thing the liquid could contaminate is the floor, but still–it is best to be avoided. It is easier to stop a leak in the first place than it is to clean it up afterwards.

Raw chicken, seafood or meats all should be stored on the lowest shelves of the refrigerator, placed with the oldest stock in the front, the newer stock behind, and they should all be labeled and dated. That way, if a prep cook or line cook needs to take stock out, they can easily reach in and grab the oldest ingredients and use them first, thereby reducing stock loss. In the fast paced world of a restaurant kitchen, you don’t want your cooks having to slow down and think about which container of chicken legs they want to use–they need to just reach in and grab the proper ones on the first try.

Raw eggs are also stored near the bottom of the refrigerator, because most commercial eggs in the US have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella, just like raw chicken. This avoids the possibility of an egg cracking and dripping on something like lettuce which is going to be used raw in a salad.

Fruits, vegetables and herbs that are going to be eaten raw should go on the top shelves, while already cooked (and fully contained and thoroughly covered) foods, dairy products, jarred condiments and vegetables and fruits which are going to be eaten cooked can all be kept in the middle shelves.

These sorts of strict protocols governing which shelves upon which we store foods in a refrigerator seem somewhat draconian and overly cautious, but the truth is, they reduce the chances of cross-contamination which not only reduces the incidence of food born illness, but also reduces the possibility of food waste, because if cross-contamination occurs, any contaminated foods must either be fully cooked before eating or thrown away.

Take for example, the possibility of raw chicken dripping onto an entire case of romaine lettuce which was meant to be eaten in a salad. Salmonella bacteria cannot be washed away with just water and mild detergent–bleach is necessary to fully disinfect anything touched by salmonella. Bleach, however, makes an awful salad dressing, so it is obvious that one cannot safely eat Caesar salad that has had raw chicken juices dripped on it. Lettuce -can- be cooked, but is it likely that anyone is going to want to eat an entire case of stir-fried or braised romaine lettuce as a dinner special? While some chefs might try such a tactic to save the lettuce, most would just throw it away, thus wasting an entire case of otherwise edible food.

It is best to simply avoid any such occurances by careful management of recourses and storage facilities.

How do restaurants keep fresh produce fresh?

Truly, it is most often done by using it as fast as possible, but there are also some tricks chefs and cooks use to keep some highly perishable foods fresh for the longest period of time possible.

Lettuces are washed as soon as they come into the back door, and are allowed to dry thoroughly before being put away in loosely wrapped plastic bags or loosely covered plastic boxes. Air-flow helps keep leafy greens leafy and crisp; dry lettuces keep fresh for a longer time than wet ones–degenerative bacteria need moisture in order to work. Keeping the lettuces, or any vegetable or fruit, for that matter, whole until soon before service also keeps them fresh for a longer period of time.

Fresh herbs, on the other hand, tend to like a bit of moisture in order to stay crisp and appealing. You can either dunk the cut stems, like a bouquet of flowers, into a container of water and loosely cover the tops with a plastic bag. This raises humidity slightly while still retaining air flow. Or, you can lightly dampen paper towels, and either loosely wrap them around the herbs and put the herbs in an open container or layer the herbs between the damp towels.

Fresh seafood should be kept in containers of ice to keep them very cold and fresh, and the ice should be changed as needed.

And of course, some fresh vegetables shouldn’t be kept in the refrigerator at all–potatoes, onions, garlic, shallots, and sweet potatoes should all be kept in bins in a dark, cool storeroom where humidity is low. Keeping them in a refrigerator lowers their quality significantly–potatoes will become mushy, and garlic and onions risk becoming moldy and sprouting under humid conditions.

That’s it for today–our next topic to cover is what to do when there is a surplus of raw ingredients which are on their way out to the trash bin. You know, vegetables and fruits which are not really fresh enough for their originally intended purpose, but which are not bad enough to discard.

Most of the waste occurs after food gets into consumer outlets such as grocery or convenience stores, in homes, after the food is purchased, and in restaurants. This is a shame, because if we could save some of this food, it could be used to help alleviate the hunger problem we have in our country. We could also save a great deal of money in the process.

There are plenty of ways for restaurant workers, cooks, chefs and owners to reduce the amount of waste that occurs within their establishments, and the truth is, most chefs strive to keep food waste at manageable levels. The main reason for this is because food waste affects food cost, which is the largest, most easily controllable expense which affects the profitability of any restaurant. Another reason that chefs work at keeping food waste to a minimum, is because, as a group, they tend to be among the most frugal people I have ever met. They hate to waste food. It is nearly a physical affront to many chefs to edible food thrown away.

As the grandchild of farmers and the great-grandchild of a butcher, I grew up with a similar attitude towards food waste. When you grow or otherwise produce food for a living, you know intimately the true cost of food in the form of very hard work. Vegetables just don’t spring up from the ground without effort, and meat doesn’t grow in supermarket meat cases already encased in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. Fruits, vegetables and grains require a lot of work to be brought to market, from soil preparation, starting seeds indoors or sowing them outdoors, to weed removal, to pest control, pruning, to harvest.

Meat production is even more tricky, as it involves keeping livestock healthy, well fed, happy (unless you raise them in a CAFO–confined animal feeding operation–situation, in which case, the happiness of the animal, unfortunately, doesn’t enter into the equation), and carefully bred. Mammals and birds all have different needs for housing, food, and water, and these need to be balanced carefully when raising them for food.

In the interest of respecting the effort that goes into growing food, it behooves chefs and home cooks both to try and reduce food waste in our kitchens; the great side effect of this is that we will also reduce our food costs. In the years ahead, as oil prices rise, and food prices continue to soar, these techniques of avoiding food waste are going to become even more important than they are now.

In the following series of posts, I will list the various ways that chefs avoid food waste in the kitchens of their restaurants. These techniques are useful not only in a professional setting, but can also be adapted to our homes to great effect. In addition, I will give examples from my own experience both in restaurant kitchens and on the farm, to show how many of these ideas which have become codified into restaurant practice grew out of formerly commonplace sensible frugality.

So, look for great tips on avoiding food waste in the next few posts–I hope you will not only find them edifying, but entertaining.