Food WastED - Menu Item

The topic of Food Waste is a large. Food is wasted in many ways by businesses, organizations and individuals. Various organizations are creating solutions. I hope to write more on this later.

One of those solutions is for restaurants to design menu items that use their own food "waste."

For this post, I want to simply list a menu item I found on a recent trip.

I was in Washington, DC, visiting a friend. We went out to eat several times. One stop was at Teasim, a funky restaurant.

I noticed a category on the menu, Trash or Treasure. This reminded me of a yard sale slogan, so I was intrigued. There were two menu items under this category that "were developed to utilize product often wastED in restaurants."

I choose a item from this category, the "Bread Salad", a bowl of roasted vegetable slices, large seasoned bread cubes, fruit slices, sunflower seeds with an orange fennel vinaigrette.

I did examine the salad trying to figure out how these items might have been considered "waste." I assumed that the fruits and vegetables were preparation remains from other menu items that were not enough to keep and that the bread cubes were made from bread ends.

The "Bread Salad" was great on many levels. Now to start with, I like all those items. It was tasty. It was the right amount of food for me at that moment, often I don't want a large meal. It was inexpensive. It was an adventure, and I became a participate in the WastED campaign to reduce food waste.

Trash or Treasure Menu Items

Bread Bowl

Look for future posts on food waste. It's a great tightwad idea :-)

One resource: http://www.wastedny.com

Cabbage Crazy Salad

When I looked back at my Crazy Salad post, I realized that was the beginning of my crazy salad experiments. This is an update.

After I found that a head of lettuce went bad before I could eat it all, I got a head of cabbage and tried that. I liked it. It is different. But, it makes a great base for a crazy salad. Plus, it keeps for several weeks in the frig.

If I worry about it going bad, I just cut a half or quarter of the head, drop it in boiling water for a few minutes, then freeze it. The frozen cabbage can be used in my Universal Skillet Dish or other cooked cabbage recipes.


Cabbage Crazy Salad

Base (Choose One)
1-3 Tablespoons per serving

Chicken, cooked and diced or canned, or as chicken salad
1/8 Head green cabbage, sliced into short thin strips

Rice, cooked, or Spanish rice
Salmon, canned, plain or as salmon salad

Step One - the Base

Other Ingredients (Use What You Have)
1-2 Tablespoons per serving

Vegetables
Artichoke hearts, 1-3

Avocado, slices

Beans, canned, black, red, or Chick peas

Beet, slices or cubes

Broccoli, pieces

Carrots, sliced or grated or shredded

Cauliflower, pieces

Celery, diced

Celery, sliced or diced

Chayote, sliced

Cheese, white, cubed

Cucumbers, sliced or diced

Green or red pepper, sliced or diced

Jicama, thin slices

Leeks, diced

Mushrooms, sliced

Olives, black or green, sliced

Onion, red or white, sliced or diced

Palm hearts, 1-3

Radishes, sliced or diced

Tomatoes, regular or cherry tomatoes, sliced or diced

Fruit
Apples, slices
Pineapple, fresh or canned, chunks
Raisins


Toppings (Use What You Have)
Croutons or toasted bread cubes
Imitation Bacon bits
Parmesan cheese


Seasonings (Choose one or two)
Curry powder
Ground black pepper
Paprika

Final Step - adding the extra ingredients

Note: I often don't use any dressing because the salad has lots of flavor.

Midnight Snack -- A Variation on an Appetizer

Skewered Midnight Snack

Why I get the urge to eat late at night is still a puzzle.

Usually, I would eat a few pretzels or a slice of turkey, but then I got a bright idea.

Let's make a skewer.

Ingredients:
1 skewer stick (wood or metal)
a few grape tomatoes
1 slice of turkey lunch meat, cut into strips
a few small chunks of cream cheese or other cheeses
a few olives
1 tsp of dry basil

Process:
Fold the strips of lunch meat, then piece the meat to add to the skewer.
Pierce tomatoes or olives or cheese to add to the skewer stick.
Alternate the order of the items.
Crush the basil between your palms and sprinkle over the skewered items.

No Bake -- Blackberry Shortcake-Styled Dessert

No Bake -- Blackberry Shortcake-Styled Dessert
Adapted from: Enjoy Cooking: The Costco Way, Blueberry Shortcake

Ingredients:
1 Soft sweet roll(s)
1/4 Chunk of cream cheese
2 Tbspns of Blackberry Marmalade or preserves
2 Tbspns whipped cream topping
Garnish: Crushed nuts (Optional)

Nuts not shown.

Process:
Slice roll in half horizontally.
Spread a portion of the cream cheese over the top of each roll half.
Add 1 Tblspn marmalade on top of cream cheese, spread out over cream cheese.
Add 1 Tblspn whipped topping on top of each roll half.
Sprinkle each half roll with a little crushed nuts. (Optional)

Suggestion: use a fork to eat.

In a way, making recipes for the next volume of Recipes from the Kitchen of a Frugal Non-Cook has blown my food budget and my healthy eating diet.  I keep buying things that I will use infrequently like the blackberry preserves and whipped topping. But, it's fun and educational.

Salmon Ceviche Recipe and More...

When I worked, I never had time to really learn to cook, to explore or research all the various aspects of food preparation.

While Amy Daczycn gets the credit for inspiring me to try to learn to cook on a budget, and to use my creativity, so many more authors and agencies have led me down various paths to finding recipes, and food and cooking information I could adapt or use while I try to write my second cookbook.

Along the way, I have explored sustainable seafoods and I am always on the alert to health and safety issues.

Another thing I try to show is the mistakes and the learning curve that occurs when trying new recipes and when you try to adapt a recipe using what you have on hand or using substitutes.

Since my move, I have a limited reference library. But, I was perusing my cookbooks and took another look at Enjoy Cooking: The Costco Way and I was floored when I saw so many recipes similar to ones I had already tried, like: Berrylicious Breakfast Crepes, Nutella Breakfast Granola Parfaits, Asparagus Frittata, and others. Plus, now I can now add "Stacks" to my many variations such as: sliders, skewers, wraps, melts and more.

http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/cookbook_enjoy?pg=1#pg1

Note: you can read this cookbook online.

The only recipe I had adapted previously from this cookbook was "Double Nut Berry Yogurt Pie" (pg 228). My recipe "No Bake - Fruit & Yogurt Dessert" is different in ingredients and serving size.

Anyway, I found several recipes I wanted to try including "Ceviche-Inspired Wild Alaska Salmon", again, I had to adapt.


Salmon Ceviche

Ingredients:
1 can 210g of Salmon, drained
1 can salsa 210g, drained carefully
6 grape tomatoes, quartered
About 6 pickled cucumber slices or fresh, diced
1/2 white onion, diced (or red onion)
2 Tablespoons, carrot shredded (Optional)
1 capful of lime concentrate
1 tablespoon dry cilantro or fresh
Hot sauce to taste

Onions not shown.

Process:
Add Salmon to large bowl. Using a fork, separate large chunks into smaller pieces.
Add salsa.
Add tomatoes.
Add diced cucumber slices.
Add diced onion.
Add carrots (Optional).
Stir to mix ingredients thoroughly.
Add lime concentrate.
Crush dry cilantro between your palms. Add cilantro.
Add hot sauce.
Stir again, to mix throughly.

Single Serving Shown

When I opened the lime concentrate it hissed which lead me to believe it was fermenting but after just reading about botulism, it made me wonder. I guess I'll know in 12 hours to 8 days. Feel like pinning a note to my clothes, "If I am found paralyzed, check for botulism poison."

USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service - Clostridium botulinum
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/foodborne-illness-and-disease/clostridium-botulinum/ct_index

Sucker Purchase

Just came home from grocery shopping. I noted that a few items went up in price like milk went up considerably from $13.80 (pesos, MX$) to $15.20 for 1 liter, whereas a few items went down a few pesos in price. I did pick up a few items on sale.

But, I was also shopping for a friend's care package. I always include chicken soup in the items. I could not find "chicken soup." I have not tried the canned "Sopa de Lima", but, I came across some children's canned chicken soup. I bought a few cans because I thought they'd give my friend a laugh.

The children's soup ($27.90 a can) was just one serving. It was good soup.

Whereas, the other canned soups I bought ($14.03 a can) are concentrates. I can make three bowls of soup from one can.

As a consumer, it is important to be aware of packaging, varying sizes, marketing, sales, ingredients, price differences, and more, in order to make smart purchases.

Online Publishers' Customer Service -- Update

3/5/16 UPDATE: In further correspondence with LuLu, they answered my questions fully and promptly which made me happy. Lulu looks good at this point. Now, it's up to me to make sure I made a good file for use on their site.

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As an author, for me, good customer service is one of my primary criteria in choosing an online publisher as well as other online services.

As a Smashwords.com author, their customer service is very good in my opinion, which I appreciate.

But, in my search for a POD publisher, I have been less than satisfied with the customer service. Most send you to a "knowledge base" which is often a mishmash of customer comments and do not address specific minute details.

For example,

This reply does not address my question specifically and saying they will respond in x number of days is not reassuring. This is the type of reply I get often from various online services including Blogger.com. From my perspective, this is very unsatisfying.

I can not seem to get POD publishers to understand my request.

I want a POD publisher who will 1) host my POD (made by me) for sales and distribution from their site  2) distribute it to other eTailers and 3) make it available for download as a POD file, so customers can go to their local printer to get a copy made.

I see this as another publishing avenue as seen by the growth of the Espresso Business Machine (http://ondemandbooks.com) but even this program does not address the lack of service in many areas of the world where mail service is costly and delivery times are long. But, if local printers could produce a POD, then customers could go to them to get a print copy of a downloaded POD, much like customers do with photobooks.

I do recognize that POD file formats will vary.

Also, in some cases, using POD publishers can be costly.

I am still researching this issue.