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Image: Cooking with Food Scraps

Get The Most Out of Your Groceries: Easy Ways to Use Food Scraps

This innovative cookbook has us marveling at ways to use up the bits from cooking that we normally throw away. When was the last time you looked at potato skins, stale bread, corn cobs, and wilted greens and thought “YUM!”? Here are some exciting new recipes and so much more which keep waste from our landfills and save you money at the same time!

From turning citrus into air fresheners, to using cucumber peels as an ant repellant, to grinding up eggshells to clean your bathroom and tossing your scraps into a pan to create dinner, the IKEA Scrapsbook makes it easy to be sustainable in your own kitchen and truly get your money’s worth out of your groceries.

Keep reading for the tips! Remember, doing good things for the Earth doesn’t have to be complicated.

Image: Cooking with Food Scraps
Source: Unsplash

Turn your “trash” into a new favorite dish!

At the end of prepping for our meals, we’re usually left with a lot of random bits and pieces: carrot tops, broccoli stems, citrus peels, watermelon and cheese rinds, shrimp shells, you name it. And even though you didn’t use them in your dish, you can still make something awesome with them!

All it takes is opening up this PDF cookbook. They have an index full of scraps and the recipes that they can be included in, as well as pages of ideas on how to use your scraps in ways outside of the kitchen.

Whether you’re using banana peels to shine your plants, scrubbing your cutting board with lemon, or even regrowing certain scraps like bok choy, green onions, and celery, there’s something in this cookbook that’ll make your life so much easier and more fun!

Here’s Alejandro Alba from NowThis Earth to show us all about the many ways that we can use our banana scraps—even making banana peel bacon!

Via: NowThis Earth 1

Click here to see the entire IKEA Scrapsbook! Show us what you use your scraps to make over on Instagram.

If you’d like to see more great content from NowThis Earth, head over to their YouTube channel and subscribe!

Some of my favorite tips:

  • Used coffee grounds can become a great plant fertilizer as well as a facial or body scrub!
  • Banana peels have all sorts of uses. Drop a few inside of a container of water for a few days and you can make a potassium and phosphorus-rich compost tea for your garden. You could even use the peels to remove dust from plants, or incorporate them into your next dish!
  • Veggie tops like carrots and radishes are really tasty and can be eaten separately.
  • Dry, stale bread can be used as a sponge for cleaning and it’s a great addition to recipes with a lot of juice.
  • Citrus can be boiled in water on a stove as a natural air freshener, or be dried and added to your cleaning solution to better fight grease.
  • Regrow what you can! Scallions are one of the easiest foods to keep growing—many of my friends have gotten multiple servings out of the same bunch just by sticking the stems in water after you cut off the white part.
  • Wilted veggies are great for soups and sautees.
  • Bruised fruit? Make a jam!

There is a seemingly endless treasure trove of ideas to keep your kitchen more sustainable and to keep more money in your pocket. It’s a win-win for both you and the Earth!

If you’d like more easy ways to have a positive impact, check out these articles next:

Easy Ways to Go Green: The Compost Pick-Up Services Coming to a Stoop Near You!

Wait! Before those food scraps in the garbage, here’s an easy way to make a positive impact as you go about your daily routine. Turn your food waste into a resource without having to make a compost pile in your own backyard by having it picked up and taken away, right from your front door!

Read Article Watch Video Listen to Podcast
Turn Your Junk Mail into a Masterpiece: How to Make Paper!

Stop throwing away your junk mail! With a little water, that recycling could become your next notebook, card, or to-do list. Let’s rethink our conceptions of waste and think critically about recycling, all with a fun new activity: paper-making! 

Read Article Watch Video Listen to Podcast
Our Plastic Waste Problem: It’s Not About Perfection

We all know that plastic waste is a huge problem, but what are we supposed to do about it? Turns out there’s a lot we can do with just a few little changes!

Read Article Watch Video Listen to Podcast

What are some of your favorite no-waste tips? Share them with us on Instagram!

And as always, my friend, stay open to new possibilities. You never know how good a “pulp burger” can be until you try it.

Sam

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Notes:

  1. NowThis Earth. “New IKEA Book Shares Ways to Minimize Food Waste.” YouTube, 14 May 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAt8g034Fr4. Accessed 23 June 2021.
Image: Samantha Burns

Sam Burns

Former Editor-In-Chief

Sam wrote and edited hundreds of articles during her time on the Goodness Exchange team from 2016-2021. She wrote about topics from the wonders of nature to the organizations changing the world and the simple joys in life! Outside of the Goodness Exchange, she’s a part-time printmaker, collector of knick-knacks, and procurer of cheeses.

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