CBM Recommends: Dive

Happy New Year, Dear Readers. A few minutes ago I realized that cut back month starts today. I must confess that while this initially seemed like a fun idea, the reality is sinking in and I've (jokingly?) debated several times delaying Cut Back Month until February (it is a shorter month, after all). But alas my Partner in Crime (Rebecca) gave me a look that convinced me to suck it up and move forward with our initial plans. So here we are. Day 1.

Last night Jeff and I stayed in for New Year's Eve (I know, lame, and we couldn't even blame it on CBM because it was still December!). We settled down to watch a variety of movies/documentaries, and were tucked in and asleep well before 11pm. Our one indulgence was ordering take out from a new nearby favorite fancy italian restaurant Piccoli. Dear Reader, if you are ever in South Park Slope and want to have the socks blown off your tastebuds - try Piccoli, the Trattoria one. A-maaaaaah-zing. But also on the pricey side. Call it our last hurrah if you will.


We ended up watching Netflix on demand - the last half of Tangled (the first half watched with Charlotte earlier in the evening), the last 20 minutes of The Business of Being Born (highly recommended, and what started my journey on the road to eventually having a homebirth, I'm sure Ricki Lake would be happy to know), and finally the documentary "Dive".

A group of people salvage, prepare, and eat food from the dumpsters of large national grocery store chains. I'd heard of these people. I thought they were weird. The movie helped me realize they're pretty normal. And the amount of waste they show is staggering. Grocery stores throwing away hundreds of pounds of perfectly edible food because of "sell by" dates (which we all know can be arbitrary - I've dubiously sniffed many a purportedly expired milk cartons, only to drink it and find it perfectly fine), and a lack of organization required to get the food to people who actually need it. Hundreds of pounds of meat, vegetables, eggs, fruit, bread, cheese, wasted each night.

Now don't misunderstand me - you'll never find me digging through a dumpster at 1am (but should you find that YOU are interested in exploring the world of dumpster diving, check out Freegan.info's Dumpster Directory which will help you find the choicest dumpsters in your neighborhood. But the movie did make me think more about waste and how much of it we produce as a society. Especially and specifically food.

So a natural companion to CBM is trying to reduce food waste. I do think (not to toot my own horn) that we're already relatively mean and lean in terms of food waste, at least comparatively. Why just this week I put close to seven bananas in the freezer because they were past the point of ripeness that we like in our family. Two days ago Charlotte and I used half of them to make banana bread. I think produce waste is one of our (and everyone's) biggest challenges. Mainly because it's hard to freeze vegetables to use at a later date (which is my trick for things like meat and fruit and even dairy that is about to go bad). As I type, I have a bag of brussel sprouts in my crisper turning yellower by the day.

So this month I aim to cut back on our food waste by thinking of creative ways to use food that would otherwise go bad or get tossed....anyone know any good recipes for frozen brussel sprouts?