![]() ![]() Rub it into the flour with your fingers, blend it with a fork or just toss it with the flour if you grated it in. Using a small paring knife, slice the butter into the flour mixture cut it into chunks or grate it (mark off the point you want to grate it to with a knife) on the coarse side of a box grater. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Coarse sugar, such as turbinado, for sprinkling (optional).3/4-1 cup milk, buttermilk, cream or thinned yogurt or sour cream.1/3-1/2 cup butter or other fat, such as shortening or cold drippings saved from roasted meat.Most do anyway, or note which day it was packaged on, allowing the consumer to use their discretion. Products with a lifespan of 90 days or less that are packaged in-store, such as fresh meat, are not required to be labelled with a best-before date. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the date indicates the durable life period, or the anticipated amount of time that an unopened product, stored properly, will retain its freshness, flavour, nutritional value and other qualities claimed by the manufacturer. Remember that best-before dates are generated by food manufacturers, who are more focused on freshness than food safety. Unless you’re diligent, there’s usually some waste when you buy a bunch of spinach or a tub of delicate berries, but an entire bag of the same food frozen typically gets used. Store-bought frozen produce is just as nutritious as fresh – and sometimes superior, as produce is harvested at its peak and flash-frozen, so it doesn’t degrade in transit and storage. ![]() Here are some tips to extend the useful life of your food and prevent it from reaching the tipping point that takes it from edible to compostable. Fried rice ideally begins with cold leftover grains, which are less likely to clump together than a freshly steamed batch.Īs with so many things in life, the first step to reducing food waste is paying attention – to what we have, and what can be done with it before it’s too late. Good banana bread, for example, requires bananas well past the point at which most of us would consider them edible. Dishes around the world were created to make use of wrinkly veggies, sour milk and scraps of the previous night’s meal. For as long as food has been foraged, hunted and harvested, we’ve made efforts to extend its life by curing, jamming, pickling, culturing and fermenting, transforming ingredients such as milk, meat, grains and produce into new foods and beverages that barely resemble their younger selves. The truth is, time often improves flavour. As consumers, we have become accustomed to the luxury of choice, the option to choose between multiple brands and varieties, and make our selections from abundant displays of dry goods and produce.įood writer Tamar Adler, who idealized kitchen scraps and leftovers in An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace and the just-released The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z, recently wrote in The Washington Post that we “need to collectively replace a preoccupation with ‘food waste’ – which does not sound edible, never mind delicious – with a passion for food use.” I could not agree more. ![]() That was before big box stores encouraged purchasing large quantities of everything to stash away in our chest freezers and walk-in pantries. Past generations were more habituated to use what they had, with access to fewer ingredients in smaller quantities. We’re digging deep into our freezers, upcycling stale bread and using the ends of bags of pasta instead of rushing to restock. Skyrocketing grocery prices, an increased desire to be self-sufficient and a deeper understanding of the environmental impact of raising, growing, processing, transporting – and, yes, discarding food – has helped drive a collective shift toward using what we have. In recent years, though, we’ve become more aware of what we toss instead of eat, as the COVID-19 era added financial stresses, made it more difficult to run to the grocery store and sporadically affected distribution channels. So while stats vary, it’s clear much of our food goes uneaten. Second Harvest, the country’s largest food-rescue organization, puts that number at 58 per cent. Environment and Climate Change Canada estimates that 20 per cent (11 million tonnes) of all the food produced in Canada annually bypasses our tables and winds up as landfill or compost. Spring is the season of new growth – of green shoots pushing themselves up out of the earth and into the world, beginning their journeys toward our plates. ![]()
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