"What is it?" asked our son, eyeing up the gigantic pot I had simmering on the stove top.
"Soup," I offhandedly replied as I chopped something else to add.
"Yum yum!" He responded, although I am not quite certain why because although he will eat nearly everything presented to him soup would not be his ultimate choice, or even in his top ten, of food items, and yet sarcasm is still alien to him.
Still on the soup kick I have been uncovering even more edible parts of food that would otherwise go to waste.
I knew that cauliflower stems taste just as tender when cooked as do the "tree-ish" florets but the leaves? A lot like cabbage they work well in soups, coleslaw, and grated into salad.
Carrot, celery, and fennel tops. Radish and pea greens. Banana peels can be finely diced and put into cakes or made into homemade vinegar and coffee grounds can be used to tenderize meat or to flavour chocolate cakes. Watermelon peels, cubed, can be part of your soup. (okay, not the "peel peel" part but the whitish rind part.) Waste Not, Want Not: Stop Throwing Away Your Food (Andrea Karimon)
And those day lilies that festively hold their cantaloupe-coloured heads up so high, and have no problem appropriating lawns and gardens? All parts of them are edible! Deborah Aldridge, a Southern woman who loves the garden almost as much as her kitchen, advises to "chop up some of the spicy-flavored leaves into a salad. When you're thinning them, pick off a few roots to chop and add a crispy crunch to any dish. Fresh or faded blossoms can be eaten too, as well as the bloom stems, but they're sort of tough and stringy." http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/265859/deborah_aldridge.html
Who knew of all these possibilities? Items that would otherwise be tossed to our one remaining guinea pig friend or chucked into the compost have an even greater purpose!
And it's truly not simply a matter of stingy food conservation (although that definitely plays apart), but also of environmental protection. If we use less, and cultivate our ground more effectively and without nasty chemicals to grow plants of which we intelligently use every morsel possible, we save us, our pocketbooks, and the planet.
"People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue." Michael Pollen
"What is it?" you may ask when eyeing up my gigantic soup pot simmering on the stove.
"A wonderful soup-y surprise!"
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