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Or, how I embraced Ugly Vegetables, Culinary Abundance, and Hyper-locality
Living with my Parisian host family shaped how I shop for myself, now post-grad. Currently, with the Coronavirus pandemic, grocery shopping has become a frantic national endeavor. For weeks, I’ve seen entire freezer sections and pantries gutted. People stock up when they fear scarcity.
Walking down the isles, I wonder how much is going to actually be eaten. I frequently think about food waste, especially living on a tight food budget. I’ve thought about it all while growing up, especially since I went to schools that were largely affluent. At classmates’ homes, I’d notice an overabundance of food piling the fridges of my friends’ parents’ homes. To my dismay, a lot of the food was going bad, too! Deflated lettuce, shriveled strawberries, three loaves of old bread. . . I felt physically stressed seeing all that food wasting away and knowing it was inevitably going to be thrown out. Their fear of scarcity lead to waste, rather than the abundance they’re trying to attain.
I noticed this strongly living in Paris with my middle-class host family. They would buy just what they needed and use it over the course of a few days. A roast for one dinner would turn into a soup the next; wrinkly apples would become a gallette for dessert. The first time I cooked for myself at their place, I made so much that I ended up throwing half away. It felt like burning dollar bills. Phillipe gently reprimanded me for it and I was embarrassed, not wanting him to think I was wasteful. At that point, I was just so used to cooking for three, no one. With that family, I learned how to cook for myself beautifully, seasonally, and without waste.
What my host family taught me about cooking sustainably:
Buy the bulk of your groceries from the farmers market and your local bodegas / epiceries
Arrive with a list
Cook once and make leftovers
Embrace ugly vegetables: celery root, cabbage, past-its-prime fruit
Use spices with abandon
Shop small and frequently - if you run out, you can always go back
My personal hacks for not having food waste:
You eat what you see. Wash and prep everything as soon as you get home from the store or farmers market. Label it like a restaurant kitchen with tape and a sharpie to mark the date
Save money by making free food. For example save carrot and celery ends, bones, and other food scraps in a plastic freezer bag to make stock
After squeezing a lemon for a vinaigrette, throw them in water to make spa water
Wash glass jars. They’re perfect for storing food. @BrownKids on Instagram has great inspiration
If anything is going bad, chop it, freeze it, and put it in smoothies. This works especially well for kale stems, celery, fruit, and avocados.
When you buy beets, lettuce, or celery, put the tops in a shallow dish of water to propagate it. Again, free food!
Through living with my host family, I learned how to work with what I had, rather than fear for not having enough.
Learn how I’d meal prep and what I cooked in Paris, here.
