Recently I had a good friend over for dinner to celebrate her birthday. Whenever I have guests for dinner, I plan my menu strategically. The goal is easy entertaining. I avoid dishes that rely too carefully on exact timing. And I won’t serve anything that requires much in the way of last minute cooking. I’d much rather spend time relaxing and enjoying the company of my friends than fussing in the kitchen.
I was extra strategic when coming up with this menu. Since I haven’t done much entertaining in recent history (thanks, pandemic), I was a little worried I might have lost the knack. So I set this menu up to be pretty foolproof. You can make most of it ahead, so it is low-stress as well. Yet the result is a restaurant-quality feast that looks as if you’ve slaved.
Today I’d like to chat about how to reduce food waste with root-to-top eating and other strategies. I’m riffing, of course, on the carnivorous nose-to-tail concept where you consume as much of an animal as possible in order to reduce waste. Though in this case I am talking about vegetables. Why should we be concerned about food waste? Because: