Want to Reduce Your Food Waste (And Save Money)?

Tossing food that can be used is, in the eyes of many people, a tragedy. It squanders natural resources, wastes the energy deployed in the food's production, spills megabucks and overburdens our landfills. In many tradtions, it is also a sin.

Yet according to current estimates, some forty percent of all food produced is wasted—thrown away when it can prefectly well be used. A new cookbook aims to cut down on such waste by providing simple and delicious recipes that call for the use of leftovers, food scraps, visually unattractive food and other ingredients that are often bequeathed to the dumpster.

"The Amazing Waste Cookbook" was created by four students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison to help undergraduates and other young cooks pollute less and save more. Its fifty recipes are divided into two sections, one dedicated to salvaging food scraps and the other to repurposing leftovers.

The book can be downloaded free as a pdf file, at www.gibbs-lab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cookbook050516.pdf. There's also an accompanying website (https://theamazingwastecookbook.wordpress.com) with background info, "tips and tricks," instructional videos and more.

"Fruit and vegetable scraps are the stars of the food scrap recipe section, since the abundant remainders of these food groups are often disregarded," the book notes. "The repurposed food section of the cookbook features recipes that transform common leftovers into tasty dishes."

Recipes in the first section include "Bruised Apple Sauce," "Overripe Banana Ice Cream" and "Wrinkled Grape and Lemon Peel Breakfast Cake." From the second section:  "Asparagus Ends Soup," "Kale Stem Pesto," "Baked Potato Peel Chips," and a suggestion for an "Aged Tropical Fruit Smoothie."

Sounds like a luscious meal. And an imaginative one, too. "Cooking with food scraps entails thinking outside of the box, breaking the rules and getting creative in the kitchen," the authors say.

So let's do the right thing: Starve a landfill today.

--By Sari Therman