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StillTasty.com

Talking Turkey and wasting less

November 12, 2020 //  by Karen

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Only two weeks until our first Pandemic Thanksgiving! It’s time to “talk turkey” (even for vegans and vegetarians) about less wasted food.

Imagine sitting at bountiful Thanksgiving dinner table. You’ve just filled your plate with an appetizing assortment of your favorite dishes. Suddenly, someone comes over and scoops up a quarter of what’s on your plate, takes it over to the compost bin and dumps it.

Shocking, right? But it’s a good metaphor for how the average American family wastes at least 25 percent of its food purchases every year, at a cost of $1,600! What’s also wasted are the Earth’s precious resources — water, energy and soil — as well as the human labor that went into that food.

But we’re all about changing that. Right, Conscientious Food Consumers?

Turkeys roaming in Philomath (staff photo)

Let’s talk live turkeys first….

Wandering wild turkeys are not an uncommon sight in urban areas of Oregon, including certain neighborhoods of Corvallis and Philomath. Both comical and majestic, these birds are generally tolerated by their fellow urban dwellers. But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife stresses: Don’t feed the turkeys!  If your neighborhood flock (and their you-know-what) becomes too big of a nuisance, you might want to apply for an ODFW “turkey hazing” permit. (No hassling the turkeys without one!)

Here’s a few fun facts about our iconic Thanksgiving mascot from the Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District.

TALKING TURKEY: Celebrating Safely

Whether you’re planning and preparing a Thanksgiving meal for meat-eaters, vegetarians or vegans, this year’s celebration will be very different under the threat of COVID-19. Health safety guidelines from the CDC and the Oregon Health Authority advise avoiding travel, moving activities outdoors (where feasible) and limiting the number of people gathering ’round the Thanksgiving table.

TALKING TURKEY: Planning and Shopping Your Meal

A meatless “Tofurky” roast (WikiMedia Commons)

So let’s “talk turkey” about our Turkey Day logistics. That includes vegans and vegetarians who don’t eat actual turkeys! For many of us, based on what we already know about living through this pandemic, Thanksgiving 2020 may be unfolding as follows:

  1. A smaller dining group, which means smaller quantities of food will be needed (and potentially less wasted) compared to previous years; SO
  2. Your holiday Meal Plan and Shopping List may be less ambitious than in previous years; COINCIDENTALLY,
  3. Your holiday grocery budget may be smaller than previous years, depending on how COVID-19 has economically impacted you personally and/or your family; SO
  4. Your holiday Meal Plan may be based more on cooking with what you have on hand in the pantry and in your freezer (as listed on your Freezer Inventory), which you’ve been stocking and managing throughout the year; AND
  5. You’re already shopping strategically with Shopping Lists for those socially-distanced, in-and-out trips to the Farmer’s Market, the Co-op or other local markets, or for online grocery orders.

With our Kitchen Confessions this year, we hope we’ve helped you become familiar with these Smart Strategies (highlighted above in bold) to help you accomplish the above tasks. They’re all available in both English and Spanish from our Wasted Food Prevention Tool Box.

In addition to those at our own website, we love turning folks onto resources like these for Thanksgiving (and year-round) meal strategizing:

  • Make your own turkey bone broth and/or stock: Don’t let these nourishing and valuable parts of the turkey go to waste!
  • StillTasty.com, “Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide,” for getting clear before Thanksgiving about how to handle those leftover cooked turkey pieces, that leftover gravy and those cooked giblets your kid doesn’t like;
  • First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op’s “Budget Bites” – budget-minded meal plans for a week’s worth of meals for two adults;
  • BigOven.com, also has meal planning and shopping lists (and tons of recipes). Upload your own recipes! (They could use a lot more vegan/vegetarian ones!)

TALKING TURKEY:  Caring and Sharing

The 40th Annual Benton County Community Holiday Food Drive, in cooperation with local food pantry organizations like Linn Benton Food Share, will also be affected by this year’s pandemic. For 39 years, legions of caring volunteers assembled and delivered holiday meal food boxes throughout the county to thousands of low-income individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. These efforts are too risky this year with COVID-19.

Instead, the Food Drive is collecting only monetary donations for grocery gift cards, redeemable at the Corvallis Grocery Outlet, where recipients can shop for themselves this Thanksgiving. Food will continue to be available for distribution and pick up at Food Share’s warehouse and other local pantries, like the one in South Corvallis. All monetary donations to the Holiday Food Drive will be used to benefit Benton County residents in need, and are tax deductible.

Next week: Honoring this land and its Native peoples this Thanksgiving; Getting ready for loving those Thanksgiving leftovers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category: Kitchen ConfessionsTag: Benton County Community Holiday Food Drive, Budget Bites, CDC, COVID-19, First Alternative Co-op, Food Action Team, Linn Benton Food Share, Oregon Health Authority, StillTasty.com, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Food Drive, turkey, vegan, vegetarian

No more “freeze it and forget it”!

October 29, 2020 //  by Jeanette Hardison

If you were expecting a lurid foodie tale about eager veggies, twisting around each other in the privacy of soil, only to be exposed by a hungry, voyeuristic gardener, that’s an entirely different blog!

If you have forgotten freezer food, you are in the right place!

Many well-meaning freezer users have put good food away for later, but then forgot it there and it froze to death.

This unfortunate habit is just like throwing edible food into the garbage, simply because the outcome is the same… and composting it is only one step better than garbage. 

When you include the cost of running an overfull freezer, plus any gas spent driving it home, the cost of disposal (if you don’t compost it), all the many resources that went into growing it and so on, that forgotten freezer food could become your “kitchen confession”! Wasted food happens to all of us… even our staff!

The easy solution is a Freezer Inventory, one of our many Smart Strategies!  It’s a simple 8.5″ x 11″ form you can download, print out and hang on the front of your fridge or freezer, and change as you go (also en Español). We recommend using a pencil for easier updating.Here’s how to use it!

 

ADDITIONAL TIPS:

  • Another Smart Strategy is our Eat First! signs (also en Español), to use anywhere in your kitchen to help ID which items need to be used up the soonest. Simply print and trim, and apply to any food or shelf containing those items!
  • Overfull freezers function less efficiently! CONFESSION: Recently, my own freezer was too stuffed and the little vent/fan at the back sounded awful! It was working too hard, and frost had built up… if I hadn’t noticed, my whole freezer motor might have failed. Yikes! A lesson to keep it clear and not too full.
  • Items in the freezer door are subject to greater temperature variations, so be more mindful of what gets stored there.
  • Food safety also depends on maintaining consistent fridge and freezer temperatures, so be sure to keep your fridge between 38°F and 42°F and your freezer between 0°F and 5°F to be safe.
  • The US FDA recommends specific storage lengths for specific foods, for maintaining quality. One of our favorite resources for safe food storage is StillTasty.com.
  • Remember: most frozen food is safe indefinitely, but be sure to double-wrap food and eat it before it’s freezer burned.

 

I CONFESS: We were still “freezing and forgetting” stuff at home when we started No Food Left Behind – Corvallis. I hadn’t yet implemented this Smart Strategy! Since we did, we’ve had no more freezer-burned food, items are rotated out more often, and everything is getting used. The Freezer Inventory really works and our family is saving money in the process!

Not only that, but our meals have also become more varied as we’ve forced ourselves to get creative with ingredients we might not normally put together. I often consult BigOven.com’s leftovers page, which enables users to type in two or three ingredients and receive existing recipes that use those very items. Just click on “BigOven, what can I make?” – highly recommended! BigOven also offers an app – click here for NFLB’s favorite apps!

Thank you in advance for recommending our Freezer Inventory to any friends with forgotten freezer foods… and if you need one too, that’s okay! This is Kitchen Confessions, and your story is safe with us.  😉  We invite you to share your stories in the comments! Confessions? Or maybe you started using the inventory and want to celebrate? Let us know.

As for those lurid carrots, we’ll have to get to the ROOT of that some other day…

 

Category: Kitchen ConfessionsTag: Big Oven app, BigOven.com, compost, eat first, food safety, Freezer inventory, kitchen confessions, leftovers, saving money, smart strategies, StillTasty.com

Pumpkin guts are good for you!

October 22, 2020 //  by Karen

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Another pandemic milestone is fast approaching — Halloween without much trick-or-treating. Thank goodness pumpkin carving is still CDC-approved! So is, we assume, National Pumpkin Day on October 26th.

The season of the jack-o-lantern brings to mind one of my (and my kiddo’s) favorite bits of macabre Halloween hilarity — Science Bob’s exploding pumpkins experiment on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Admittedly, it was also a frivolous waste of pumpkin innards, including all those nutritious seeds…

Did you know? Pumpkin guts are good for you!

In addition to its dense flesh containing essential vitamins, beta carotene, and minerals such as calcium, the pumpkin’s oval seeds are packed with a surprising amount of protein, fiber and omega fatty acids, as well as anti-oxidants and nerve-calming magnesium. Here’s an outline of the health benefits associated with pumpkin seeds from the BBC’s “Good Food” website.

So don’t toss (or compost) those punkin’ guts! (Slimy-stringy guts, ok.) It will take a bit of time and effort, but the reward will be a healthy, versatile snack that you made yourself — while saving a few $$$ you may have otherwise spent on fancy packaged trail or nut mixes.

As usual, we turn to the OSU Master Food Preserver program for the definitive how-to on Drying and Roasting Seeds for pumpkins, other squash and for sunflowers as well. The process involves these basic steps:

  • DIG ‘EM out, CLEAN ‘EM and DRY ‘EM well in the oven or dehydrator;
  • Add seasonings, oil and ROAST ‘EM in their white outer hulls (being careful to not over-cook them),

UNLESS:

    • You really want just the tender and green inner seed (known as a “pepita“) — particularly to make the seeds easier for younger kids to eat. Then you’ll be doing the extra work to remove the tough and fibrous outer seed hull before continuing on to the frying or roasting.  If you prefer, prepare a batch to use soon and eat raw.

THEN:

    • SNACK ON ‘EM as is, or THROW ‘EM in your salads, muffins, breakfast cereal, trail mix, what have you! STORE ‘EM in an airtight container in your fridge or freezer (not the pantry, where they will likely turn rancid).

A bit of clarification regarding carving pumpkins, a.k.a. “jack-o-lanterns” versus their non-exploding cousins the “pie pumpkins” which provide the best tasting “innards” for your winter and holiday dishes. Carving pumpkins are grown for their size and tend to have unpleasant-tasting flesh, while the smaller pie pumpkins are cultivated primarily for culinary uses. Right now you might be getting ready to do some pumpkin PREP to:

  • PRESERVE/FREEZE ‘EM, referring to these expert pumpkin preservation and preparation tips from OSU Extension Service. (Make sure to note the items on our handy, downloadable Freezer Inventory and Meal Planner!)
  • STORE ‘EM properly in the pantry or fridge; track their consume-ability and get help for burning questions like “How long does pumpkin bread last?” or “How long do pumpkin seeds last?” from StillTasty.com’s searchable database;
  • USE ‘EM in desserts, soups, cookies and other baked items, and check StillTasty.com regarding food safety guidelines.

Don’t forget the pumpkin’s winter squash relatives — the striped and speckled delicatas, spaghettis, acorns, butternuts, Hubbards, etc. —  in your prep, preservation and seasonal meal planning!

HAVE KIDDOS? They’ll probably jump at the chance to get their hands in some “pumpkin guts” or puree to help you make kid-friendly recipes like Jack-O-Lantern Pancakes, pumpkin pudding or even fruit dip. They’re all part of FoodHero.org, a bilingual collection of nutrition learning resources from OSU Extension Service’s Family and Community Health Program.

On their pumpkin home page, kids will find videos, coloring sheets,  infographics and even jokes! The “Pumpkin Basics” infographic introduces key facts and messages such as “Store well, waste less” — which we love seeing!

*****

And now for this week’s Kitchen Confession:

KAREN CONFESSES: This can of butternut squash was once intended as the main ingredient for a nice soup, but got “left behind” in a secondary pantry storage area that I hadn’t inventoried until… this year!

Although StillTasty.com advises that it is still safe to eat as long as the can is undamaged and its seals intact, I didn’t feel comfortable using it.

$$$ WASTED: $2.49

LESSON LEARNED: Consolidate and reorganize my pantry storage by placing older items in front of those with a longer “Best by” date. Check for other items nearing their date and transfer to upcoming Meal Plans!

 

“Local Eats Month” is underway in Corvallis, with special menu offerings at selected local restaurants celebrating the farmers and foods produced within our six-county region. Between October 18 – November 14, check “Sustainable Corvallis” on Facebook for announcements from the Food Action Team about the latest specials from participating restaurants. On Instagram: @sustainablecorvallis

 

Category: Kitchen ConfessionsTag: Food Action Team Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, FoodHero.org, Jimmy Kimmel Show, Local Eats Month, Master Food Preservers, OSU Extension Service, pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, Science Bob, StillTasty.com

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