Ep. 45 – How to Spend Less on Groceries by Reducing Food Waste (with Chelsey Schmuland)

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (00:00.878)
I want you to think about what’s in your fridge for a second. Is there something in there that you mean to use, but probably won’t? A box of lettuce that’s getting a little questionable? Maybe there’s a half a cucumber that’s getting a little bit slimy? Or a container of something you’re not quite sure what it is anymore? We never set out to waste food, but somehow week after week it happens. And all that food used to be money.

Today we’re talking about how to change that. Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco-curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I’m your host, Sarah Robertson Barnes, a soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living. Each week I’ll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less, save money, and make small doable shifts that actually fit your real life. Because sustainable living doesn’t have to be perfect to matter, and you don’t have to do it all to make a difference.

Hello and welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have and live a little greener, one small shift at a time. My name is Sarah and I’m really excited to be sharing this conversation with you today. This show is made possible by listeners like you. So if you’ve been enjoying the podcast, one of the best ways to support it is to share an episode with your friends. And that really helps new folks find the show.

You can also leave a quick rating or review wherever you’re listening today, or click support the show in the show notes. And if you head over to sustainable in the suburbs.com slash podcast, you will find show notes for every episode there. And today we’re going to be talking about food waste. And I do have an ebook for you on that. It’s called a beginner’s guide to a sustainable kitchen. And I will put the link for that in the show notes as well. If you opened your fridge right now,

What would you find that’s on its way out? It’s probably something that you meant to use, definitely something that you forgot about that you don’t want to deal with, something green you had every intention of eating when you were determined to eat healthier at the grocery store. Been there. We never set out to waste food, but it happens so easily. And all that food used to be money. Groceries are so expensive right now. And yet week after week, many of us are throwing away

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (02:25.068)
significant portion of our grocery budget, often without realizing just how much that really adds up. And today we’re going to be talking about how to change that because reducing food waste isn’t just about being more sustainable. It’s one of the most practical and immediate ways to cut your grocery bill. What we buy and how we store it, how we use it and what we compost at the end of its life. All of it matters. In this episode, we’re focusing on doable strategies to help you waste less food

and spend less money from food rescue and reduced racks to smarter storage, how to use your leftovers and composting what’s truly leftover. As I always say, climate action begins at the kitchen table. And in this case, I mean that literally. And to help us dig into all of that, I am thrilled to welcome back my first repeat guest on the show. Chelsea Schmeland is the owner and maker behind Hive to Home based in Nova Scotia.

where she creates beautiful handmade beeswax wraps as a sustainable alternative to plastic food storage. But beyond that, she is a grocery budgeting queen, a food rescue enthusiast, a backyard chicken keeper, and someone who truly lives the use what you have mindset. Chelsea is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to food storage, waste diversion, and building practical systems that work in real life. And I am so excited to have her back to talk about

we can stop throwing money in the trash and start making our groceries go further.

Here’s my conversation with Chelsea. Chelsea, I am so happy to have you back. You are officially my first repeat guest on the show. Thank you so much. That’s so exciting. Big believer in the pod. Reused. Is that the right context? don’t know. Am I recycled? We are recycling. We are repurposing. Repeating, repairing. Okay.

Yeah. Because I did want to have you back specifically to talk about food waste and food rescue because this is something you live every day and I’m obsessed with you over it. Thank you. So before we get into practical strategies, I just wanted to zoom out for a bit to get a sense of the scope of the food waste problem.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (04:43.441)
And we talked about this a little bit in the previous episode with Chelsea, which is episode 13. So you can go back and listen to that. But the crux of it is in Canada, at least, and the stats are very similar for the US, the average household wastes between $1,100 and $1,800 worth of food every year. So that’s at the household level, not even at the store level. And according to Love Food, Hate Waste Canada, about 63 % of that was still edible.

So we could have done something with it. That’s staggering. Yeah. It’s a lot of food. And Second Harvest estimates that about 58 % of all food in Canada that’s produced is lost or wasted somewhere along the supply chain. And we’ll come on to talk about some of that and the ways that it happens and what we can do about it as individuals. And of course, finally, nothing breaks down in a landfill, not even food.

Instead it produces methane, which is a greenhouse gas that’s 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Not good. So if food waste was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Yeah. You to that out of the landfill. So when you hear those numbers, what goes through your mind? It’s so much resources. So many resources wasted.

by going to the landfill because you’re wasting all the resources that were used to grow the food, nurture the food, produce the food, transport the food. You’re wasting that experience of going and buying that food, bringing it home. You’re missing the opportunity to connect with that food, to connect with others over that food. And then all the resources that are required to take that food from your home to the waste facility. it’s, it’s, it’s,

And you’re missing things at every step of the way. It’s interesting too that you just said connect over the food. That’s not a lost opportunity that I had thought of. Yeah, like in our home, suppertime is, it’s a staple that we sit down, everything is on mute and we connect over our food. Even before that, we connect with buying our food. We connect with making our food. And I think that that helps to get a lot of buy-in. It is hard to get kids to eat some stuff.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (07:02.972)
But I do feel like if they are involved in the start to finish of supper, it gets a little bit of extra buy-in from them. yeah, suppertime in our house is somewhat sacred that we come together over food. Yeah, we’re the same. We insist on sitting at the dinner table. Still, like my kids are teens now and we still make a point to sit down at the dinner table so that we’re actually looking at each other and speaking to each other. And it’s not people just…

grabbing food when I mean, we still have to do all the sports and all that. it is, yeah, it’s really important to us as well. So I just never thought about that lost connection before that that particular point. So when did it click for you that food waste wasn’t just environmental is also financial? Well, we have we have a monthly grocery budget. And the monthly grocery budget is is what it is. So it’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole.

You make it work within your parameters. if it’s, I don’t want to say if it’s done right, but it can be done really fun and getting creative. then on the like that’s at the beginning end of it, but at the end end of it, being creative with your food waste is actually really fun. Yeah, I agree. I like seeing what I can bake into other things, but yeah, what I can sneak onto people’s plates in my home without them realizing.

It’s all about the immersion blender. Yes. We’ll come on to talk about that too. what are you currently spending each month for your family for? So our goal is $200 a month and that can fluctuate between 200 and $300 a month. our goal is $200 a month. Ma’am. I know. I know. I so my personality, I like track things, like Excel sheets.

I like to know where all of my dollars are going. So I budget very tightly. And so our food purchasing is trapped. Do you also have the spreadsheet of like what the unit price is for everything at every store? I do. Yes. So I have a spread. So the food rescue app is a big component of saving on food waste. And then the spreadsheet is another big component of saving on food.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (09:23.668)
prices. So I have the like say cheese, I have all the brand names, I have the store, I have the price per 100 grams, I have the sale price and the regular price. And that really helps reduce impulsive purchases that if I’m out and it says sale, sometimes it’s not actually cheaper than what it is at another store. And I can factually check it and make a plan based on that. This is is queen shit. I need to maybe get a copy of that spreadsheet because I just I’m going to be perfectly honest. Like I’m a big like

food waste person at home, but at the store, I’m just kind of on vibes. I have it for bulk items for sure. Like, you know, I’m a bulk barn girly, so I have it for that, but everything else, I just sort of, like I said, like I have a rough idea of a meal plan. I do a meal plan, but in terms of actually, so I just, mean, like I said, I have two teenage sons and we’re definitely spending way more than that right now, like the sheer eggs.

I’m not allowed to chickens. anyway, the backyard chickens does help with the eggs. That is a huge savings. am lucky there. Alas, my suburb does not allow chickens. It failed at the last attempt to put it through town council. not an HOA town, but that is the vibe. I’m sorry to hear. Yeah. So maybe in the future, I’m going to keep attending my town council meetings. They love that.

Because it’s also self-sufficiency. They’re great for manure, they’re great for eggs, they’re great for turning over soil. No, chickens are great in so many facets. And for mitigating food waste on the other end. Yes, they eat scraps, they get rid of bugs. We had a pest control company come and knock on the door and I was like, I have pest control under control, thank you. My ladies, yes. There is not a tick in sight.

Okay. So that’s actually a real concern here in York region is that we have like tick warnings on the heads of all of our trails and that sort of thing. So I’m going to put that in my back pocket. Oh yeah. So as you mentioned, one of the biggest pieces of your strategy is food rescue. And I think that can maybe sound a little more extreme than it actually is. We are not talking about dumpster diving. I picture it like sweet little babies, sweet little babies, sad victory. will help you.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (11:47.861)
Yeah, but I think when I say food rescue, I’ve had a couple people be like, do you mean like dumpster diving? Which is fine. And that’s a thing, but that’s not what we’re talking about. So when you say food rescue, what does that actually mean? So there are apps that offer food that is soon to be best before at a discounted price. And usually it’s in like a chain grocery store. So you go in there, you purchase on the app, schedule your pickup or

has a pickup date you go in and you pick up your food and it’s cheaper than regular. So at our local stores, and I’m sure it’s the same for you too, there’s like a bunch of like big fridges sort of near the customer service area. And so on the app, it’ll say like, your pickup is in fridge three. then, so we go up to the person at the desk and they’re like beep, beep, beep, beep. And then they retrieve it for you and give it you. It’s, it’s very exciting. I love getting my box of random produce. So

So fun. It is thrilling. I got a radish yesterday that I’ve never eaten and it’s become like this. We’ve been talking about this radish for two days. Is it a watermelon radish? No, it’s a daikon radish, but it has now spiraled into this cultural learning moment. Like we homeschool, so we’re able to then talk. We looked at the map. We talked about culture. We talked about traditional ways that it is cooked and ways that we can cook it.

We’ve been talking about this radish for two whole days. That’s awesome. It’s really cool. All because it came in this, I got a giant bag. It was so hefty. It was like ripping as I was carrying it. I got this giant bag of produce for five bucks. had like two heads of celery, two heads of lettuce, all these things in it and this special radish. I love that. Cause then yeah, again, it’s creative. Like what do I actually make with this? How do I use this instead of just like,

I think when we see things in like the array of global summer and the produce section, we just really glaze over things that we don’t know what they are. Yeah. And it wouldn’t kind of force us to think about like, well, what is this? What does it taste like? How do I cook it? What do I do with it? What if I try it? What if I love it? Exactly. Yes. When did these apps become part of your grocery routine? I have been using them for a year and a half. Mr. Hyped at Home.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (14:08.501)
also uses them. I just looked at my flash food. Flash food is one of the apps that we’ll talk about and I joined it in 2019. I was like, okay. And it’s really cool because it’ll show you like how much money you’ve saved and all of those kinds of things. I’m just looking at mine right now. So my all time savings are $2,600, but that is somewhat inaccurate because like those produce

bags, they’re straight up five bucks. Like it doesn’t say how much you’re saving. So the value of those produce bags is hidden. And that’s really where most of our food waste is coming from, is from fresh produce. Yeah. also, I read a stat on… Oh, she came with notes. Okay. Yes, I did. I also read a stat on love food, hate waste. And they said that 47 % of food waste is at the household level.

It’s that box of lettuce that we forget about in the back of the fridge, the peppers that go soft. Yeah. So it has this whole journey before it gets to us, all these intentions and efforts, and then it comes to us and then it’s wasted. Yeah. And usually not intentionally. No. No, I am not out there buying a zucchini to let it liquefy in my fridge. Like I just, and this is where meal planning comes in and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, but like we got to be the person we think we are at the grocery store.

And that’s where the planning piece comes in. So when you’re on these apps and you’re looking at what’s available, what peaks your interest or what are you looking for? So I’m looking for what can I make with it first? And then how can I use that as structure in future meals? if I look at, we love a pork butt, like a pork roast, because

I don’t know what that is. I’ve been a vegetarian for 30 years. So I’m just like nodding politely. like, I don’t know what that is. But it’s a, I’m so sorry. It’s a big piece of pork. We like to throw it in the slow cooker because then it becomes really moist and you can make six different meals out of it so that it’s not, it’s not the same style of meat for five days because that gets boring really quickly. whether it’s pork or whether it’s potatoes,

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (16:26.997)
because there’s always potatoes on there, but you can only eat mashed potatoes so many days in a row before they’re dry or before you’re absolutely sick of mashed potatoes. So I try to look at it and think of how can I use, how can I cook this once and then use it as structure in upcoming meals? Or how can I preserve this? And my go-to’s are either the freezer or dehydrate and then blend and then fortify other meals. I will never pass on mushrooms because I sneak those into everything. Things like tomatoes.

those like really nutrient dense things, I jump on those very quickly because they’re easy to preserve and then sneak in to food. Yeah. I’m also, I am a big believer in vegetable powders. So when I can get like the five pound, 10 pound bags of carrots, I put all of those in the dehydrator. And then I again, fire them through the Vitamix and now they’re powder. And I just put a spoonful in the smoothie. I put a spoonful in the spaghetti sauce, whatever it is. You can just add these things in.

It is a way you can sneak in things for your kids. But I also sneak in things for myself. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I just wanted to share my banana story here too, because this was one where you were like, my God, I never thought to do that. Where this was just at my grocery store has like a rack right in the produce section of things that are about to go off. I don’t know why they do this. It drives me crazy, but they just, they put it on a little tray and they wrap it in cellophane, like plastic wrap. like, okay.

I guess it’s to differentiate it from the regular produce. makes me crazy, but this is where food waste- An elastic wouldn’t work? It’s just like, I just can’t think about the plastic because I’m doing the food waste thing. Do know what mean? And I can get at least one more use out of the plastic wrap. It’s fine. But so when I go to Farm Boy, which is a subsidiary of Sobe’s, shout out to Nova Scotia, Sobe’s, they have the rack. And so I can get like-

eight pounds of bananas for two bucks. And they’re the bananas that are like, I can’t make that much banana bread. Yeah. Like I just can’t. So I slice them up and I freeze them flat on a cookie sheet. And then I just throw them in a huge Ziploc bag. And now I have bananas for smoothies for a month or two. It blew my mind. One time I got 40 pounds of bananas off FlashFood for five bucks and 40 pounds of bananas.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (18:53.523)
like it was bananas. So I peeled bananas for a couple hours, but then I put them in the Ziploc baggies, but it turned into like a brick of bananas. Yeah. Yeah. So the cutting them and sheet freezing them, sheet pan freezing them is so smart. sheet pan freezing is the real MVP of freezing produce. And we’re just like going willy nilly on the tips here, but I just, do that with all of the fruit. have a whole.

tray of spinach happening right now. Again, I just got spinach off of the rack. It doesn’t look great, but it’s going to disappear in the Vitamix. So I don’t really care. And again, I just like washed it, chopped it up and it’s on a freezer or a baking sheet in my freezer right now. And then you just cram it into a bag. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like 32 cents. So, again, so nutrient dense. Okay. So we did one of our go-to rescue finds. another one that I love doing is yogurt.

And we’ll talk about this in a second, the difference between best before and expiry dates. But my youngest eats yogurt, like it’s his life force. And I’m fine with it. So if I can go get like two liters of yogurt, that’s going to quote expire in three or four days, it’s going to get eaten in three or four days. Or I can just freeze what’s left in an ice cube tray. Yes. And so smart. And then once you get the yogurt, if it’s plain, you can then keep your eye out for milk that’s on there for

before, about to be best before. And you can make your, you can make more yogurt in the crock pot. Which I haven’t attempted. it’s so easy. And it’s so good. So if you have yogurt, can, it opens the world of opportunities for making more yogurt. I don’t know why I’m so like, I’m a bit gun shy on fermenting. Like I make kombucha and that’s fine. And I’ve only exploded one bottle and that was on me. I forgot to burp it. But I’ve taken a workshop on fermenting. I just really need to.

pull the trigger on that. Cause you know, I’m a big canner. I don’t know what. just put it in the slow cooker and like wrap it up with a blanket after it’s only like three steps. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It’s very easy. It’s very cute. You like tuck it in for can happen is that it doesn’t work. And I got all the ingredients for like $3. So, right. Yeah. Okay. So this is at the household level, but we also have to talk a little bit about what’s happening in the system at the grocery store level, especially with produce because it’s cosmetic standards that reject.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (21:16.021)
perfectly edible food because it’s too small or it’s lopsided or it’s just not pretty enough. And the like that rigid supply chain really creates surplus that has nowhere to go. Yeah. And this is where I really love a service like Odd Bunch. It’s called here in Canada where it’s like boxes. It’s like a CSA box sort of like same sort of idea where it’s just again, like a box of random produce. They’ll tell you what’s in it week to week so that you know sort of

kind of what you’re getting. You can order different sized boxes, but it’s just imperfect produce that gets delivered to your house. And so it’s just a box of discounted quote unquote ugly produce, but it still tastes like an apple, even if it’s a weird bumpy apple. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I heard this week from somebody on Instagram about pumpkins that weren’t picked because the stems were too short to make like jack-o-lanterns.

my goodness. So they just rot in the fields. Yes, but a can of pumpkin puree is like $10. One pumpkin can make multiple cans. Like again, it’s such a disconnect. Pumpkin is really easy to do in your instant pot or your slow cooker. Yes, it is. I did it my stove. Yeah. I freeze them. So with pumpkin, I just get so excited.

Not a visual medium, but if you can see the way my eyes just bugged out of my head. when I cook my pumpkins after Halloween, I freeze them in muffin trays because if you freeze it level in a muffin tray, it’s about a half a cup. And then you can just check them in like whatever else you’re making. Like if you’re making pumpkin bread or muffins or whatever, you’ve already got it pre-measured to half a cup. So smart. So when we’re buying this Imperfect produce and or using the food rescue app,

What do we think that signaling back to the grocery chains? That there’s a demand for it. There’s a home for it. There’s a place for it. There’s a need and a want for it. I think there’s a momentum building and an interest building of people wanting to save on their grocery bill and becoming more open to pumpkins with shorter stems and eating an apple that isn’t that perfect image of an apple.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (23:40.073)
Because I even see on the food rescue apps, the perfectly imperfect bags of potatoes, apples, lemons, limes. I think it’s showing a demand and a need for that. Yeah, some of the brands are selling, like I know in superstore they’re selling, they have their own like imperfect branding now. So it’s interesting that those are popping up on flash food as well. Yeah, yeah, they’re not getting picked over at the already reduced price.

and then they’re reduced further on the food rescue app. Something I’ve noticed about these apps are things that are about to expire, which I’m doing big air quotes on that. and I mean, that’s things like eggs and milk and hummus and things like that, which is awesome. But can you differentiate for us the difference between an expiry date and a best before date? I think best before has more leniency. It might be the freshest before.

but you can still eat it after the best before date and use the test. Does it smell okay? Does it look okay? Like you’ll know, but something that’s expired, I would proceed with a little bit more caution. I find the expiry things are more on like quote unquote fresh foods, like things that have to be refrigerated. Yes, again, I smell it. Like I’m comfortable going a couple of days past the expiry date, but a best before date has to do with quality.

and not safety. So when you’re going through things that are in your pantry and it says best before March 1st, it’s fine. Like if it hasn’t been opened, it’s probably fine. Especially if it’s not opened. And especially if you’ve kept it in the fridge or kept it sealed. Just have a look and maybe you have to cut one end off or maybe one stock of the celery isn’t so fresh, but the rest is still very good. I think maybe this is controversial, but best before dates remind me a little bit about like

planned obsolescence. know, like, I don’t think these chips are going to kill me. know, again, it’s expiry dates and best before dates mean different things is the point that I’m trying to make there. So yes, they do. And just use your best judgment. Yeah. And like you just mentioned, I really love that rescue shopping changes how we define good food. Yeah. So how has that changed what you define as good?

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (26:02.501)
Like those bags of apples when I turn it into applesauce or apple butter You would never know when consuming it and enjoying it that this apple was not a perfect sphere You would not know that the stem of my pumpkin pie pumpkin was too short It’s it’s the the image of this produce does not equal the quality of it It does not equal the enjoyment. It does not equal the

opportunity come together over it. does not equal the savings. The cosmetic appearance of this produce is only that. We kind of need to get over it. The best example I can think of is like really nice looking plump red strawberries from California or whatever in January that tastes like nothing. Yes. And the inside is white. Yeah. Yeah. Or tomato in the wintertime here in Canada that

Tastes like nothing. But it looks great. Yeah, it looks fantastic. And it makes me feel like, I don’t know, it’s just, there’s that weird disappointment as well, because we’re not supposed to have all of this food all the time. So when we can get it in season and we have a plan for it, then I can be pulling out my tomato sauce in February from tomatoes that I grew. yeah, I guess that’s the point. Saving money only works if you have a plan for what comes next. Yes.

So I feel like where most of our food rescue efforts fall apart is, or even our shopping efforts is like I said, when we get home. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s tricky because I do talk a lot about meal planning, but then you do score like a really great rescue deal. I’m thinking of your 900 bags of, English muffins. And so you also have to think on your feet and work it into your like weekly or long range planning.

Like we write on top of the freezer with a dry erase marker, but our freezer is already so big. Yeah. And that’s where I was this week. We did all the, so we scored, we saved like $40 and we spent like $20 on English muffins and bagels. the best way for me to keep those fresh is in the freezer and then take them out as we use them. But last week I scored this box of tomatoes.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (28:16.245)
for $6. It was a giant box of tomatoes. And normally I would just bag those and put them in the freezer, but my freezer was full. So I decided to can them and then dehydrate the tops and then blend those up into a powder to then fortify other food. So I had to think about, how am I going to deal with this score? And I have been told before, Brock is like, no, you don’t have time for that today or tomorrow to deal with it. Because usually with these scores, you do have to have a plan pretty quickly. Otherwise it…

Like the bananas might be a little bit too brown. Yeah. Or the tomatoes, might mold before you get a chance to deal with them. And then I think it ends up in the spiral of almost like guilt and shame of, no, this food is being wasted. And I think the exact same thing happens with leftovers. That guilt and shame of, I meant to do that. I meant to eat that for lunch the next day. Yeah. Cause we’re all busy. We’re all doing 9,000 things. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know,

We were talking about this in the DMs about you made a comment about people wanting to know what to do with tomato paste. Yes. And I said, have a tomato paste story. And so now is the time. So you mentioned cutting off the tops and making tomato powder and that sort of thing. every year we can, oh God, like five or six bushels of tomatoes that we get here from a local farm and we get about a hundred liters of passata out of it. Great. And I usually, share it on Instagram. It’s like a whole thing. It’s Tomatotown.

One year I showed composting all of the skins, because we have a machine that removes all the skins and seeds. And people got real mad that I was composting them, which that’s still like a perfectly good way to use food was to create more soil for my garden. whatever. So I took it to heart as I do. And the next year I was like, okay, I’m going to make tomato paste out of them. And I did not have a dehydrator at this point, so I had to do it in the oven.

It smells so bad. It smells so bad. And it took like 10 hours. So you have to like, it’s hard to explain. You have to like, I don’t know, like blend up all, had to remove all of the seeds from like the massive amounts of skin that I had. So whatever. So I dealt with that. And then you have to like blend it up and then spread it out on a tray. And then you have to keep like

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (30:38.197)
moving it and dehydrating it, quote, the oven at like 200 degrees. It took like 10 hours and I got maybe a jar of tomato paste. Oh no. So concentrated too. Never again. Now what I do is I just dehydrate the skins in my dehydrator and then I grind them into powder, which you can use just like tomato paste. that was my, this is my tomato paste drama. But I think the real question that was being asked was if you have a can of tomato paste.

can you do with it? You can’t possibly use a full can. It’s the stupidest way to package it. But also, and I tried this back in the day, I would buy it in glass for like at a premium. It’s more expensive, but then you can’t get through it fast enough and it goes back in the fridge. So instead what I do if I have that is I just take a tablespoon of tomato paste, like just scoop it out and again, freeze it on a tray. Yeah. A tablespoon at a time.

And then once it’s frozen, then you can throw those in a bag and then you can just grab a tablespoon at a time. So make tomato paste if you want. It stinks. But now you know. It is shocking how bad it smells when you boil down tomatoes or dehydrate them. They don’t smell like tomatoes. It’s shocking. But all those tops that I cut off the tomatoes before I boiled them, they can them, I dehydrated them through the whole thing into the Vitamix stem leaf, the whole top. And when you blended it, you couldn’t.

tell what was stem and what was leaf. So why would I waste my time cutting that off? Why would I waste the nutrients in the leaves? It’s all blended up. You can’t even tell the difference. And then I can use that in other food. Yep. I just throw it in. If I’m using a can of our crushed tomatoes, I’ll just throw in a couple of spoonfuls of the tomato powder that I made. And it works as a thickening agent the same way that tomato paste does. Yeah.

They’re asking how to use tomato paste and you can boost anything savory soups, chilies, pasta sauce, ground meat. I also read that you can put it into hummus or like add it to mayo to make a dip. I never thought about that. Because it’s so concentrated, which is part of the challenge of using it. Okay. This is the tomato paste-o-soad. I love that.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (32:53.717)
So we have store all this food. We don’t always have time to be canning. We don’t all have doomsday prepper, dehydrating machines, which I found one on Kijiji and it’s still like my greatest secondhand purchase to this day. I love it. But again, all this shit just takes time. It just does. So most of us are just keeping food in our fridge, like on a weekly basis. And so in our previous episode, we talked about how plastic actually traps moisture and speeds up rot.

So can you explain what’s happening there and then how breathable storage such as a beeswax wrap can change the game? So like you said, the single use plastic wrap, saran wrap, it’s not breathable. So does it traps moisture? Think of like a cucumber or a pepper. You go to use it again and the end is all slimy and it’s, it is off putting, it is off putting. So beeswax wrap, my beeswax wraps are made with a cotton fabric, 100 % cotton.

On that cotton is Nova Scotian beeswax, sustainably sourced pine rosin from fallen wood, and then a little bit of jojoba oil to keep it nice and malleable. And then with that, you get the trifecta of antibacterial, and it helps to inhibit bacterial growth. But the superstar of it is that it’s breathable, so it doesn’t trap that moisture. You can put it on the end of a cucumber, take the cucumber out a week later, and still eat it, because the end is not sloughing off all.

all. You know the one is disgusting. I have forgotten peppers in there for a while, found it and it’s not slimy. So that breathability is really good for keeping your food fresh. find that most you get, I don’t know if this is the right word for it, but like a little scab, which is also not the best word. Do you know what I mean though? Or you can just slice that little piece off. Like if I wrap up an apple in it, I can just slice off ever so thinly that piece where it’s browned and the rest of the apple is still.

Perfectly fine. Yeah. Same as the cucumber. Yeah. And also I just wanted to give a huge shout out to Chelsea’s wraps, which are the, I kissed all the frogs. They’re the best ones in the entire world. Thank you. And they are also so multipurpose in the kitchen. So I use them as a jar funnel. I use them to open jars. I put it underneath this like stupid cutting board that I have that slides everywhere. So it’s like a no slide grip. It’s they’re insanely multifunctional. They last

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (35:20.981)
forever. And then when they start to not look so great, I can cut them up and use them as twist ties, which you also make from offcuts. I do. All my fabric scraps become twist ties and they’re nice, juicy, long twist ties that actually work and you can put them in the freezer. You never have to fight with an elastic on a bag in the freezer again. Are those stupid clips which you can’t ever find or? I pinch my fingers on those and I’m so sick of the little metal.

Like bread twist ties use them once cut your finger at the second time. I’m sick of that So the beeswax wrap twist ties you can just keep reusing them. Yep I have some on my desk the last ones that you sent me I have them in a little bowl on my desk and I think I told you this and I just smell them Because they smell so good. Thank you. You’re like, I can’t smell beeswax anymore girl, but I can’t I did a workshop and I went to a school on Friday and talked about like

entrepreneurship and all these things that I made a beeswax wrap and showed them and they’re like, this smells so good. And I’m like, does it? I can’t feel anymore. There are worse things to be nose blind to. Yeah. And again, I use them on cheese. I use them on the end of my bread. I wrap my produce in them. Gosh, what else? around the tops of berries. Yeah. Yeah. I think like pretty much anything that you would use plastic wrap for and more.

I like them for those hard to cover things as well. Like we got a cantaloupe in a food rescue box and the cantaloupe is a pretty hefty piece of fruit. I don’t have saran wrap to cover that. I don’t have a Tupperware to cover that. So I was able to cover it with a beeswax wrap. I’d still see the bottom of the cantaloupe. So I can easily identify what is in my fridge to be eaten next as well. Yeah. That’s one of the criticisms that I’ve heard of beeswax wraps is that you don’t know what’s in it, but you overcome that very quickly once you start using them.

We try to keep systems in place to help reduce our food waste as well. So like we have a whiteboard where it’s the eat next. And then we keep that food that’s the eat next at the front of the fridge. Okay. We have a plate that’s the use this up plate. Yeah. Yeah. And you can also just leave stuff on your counter. So we have a huge cutting board on our counter and we just leave like the apple that I was just talking about. I only used a half an apple making one of the kids lunches today. It’s in a beeswax wrap and it’s just sitting.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (37:43.673)
on countertop right now because I need to remind myself to eat it for lunch. There you go. If I put it in the fridge, to me, I have no object permanence, so it’s gone. So I just leave it on the cutting board and that’s okay. Yes, it is. So I think we kind of touched on this a little bit, yeah, you got to have a plan. And sometimes, yeah, I mean, you just have to go buy the seat of your pants too and think, but also just share it with people. Like you got…

all those zillions of bags of English muffins, for example, but I can do the same thing with, do you have two good to go? We do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So with that one, you can also get like day old bagels and muffins and things like that from like Starbucks and Tim Hortons and things like that. And so we’ll just grab those and then I’ll drop some off at my in-laws. Yeah. I do that with lemons. I have lemon friends. We don’t use a lot of lemons here, but I have friends that use a lot of lemons. Sharing my lemons. Exactly. Share it.

So you have started a new series on Instagram, which I’m obsessed with, and I think it should be a TV show. It is called Savoring Sustainability, Snacks, Scraps, and Garbage Meals. What is a garbage meal? I love a garbage meal. So I try to think of a garbage meal as a way to use those leftovers. It is repurposing food in a way that I see it as an ingredient.

rather than like just a straight up leftover and it’s one and only form. So those flash food boxes that have a variety of things, how do I use those in a garbage way? And some of the tips are so small, like when my kids eat their toast in the morning and they don’t eat their crust, I’ll keep that crust, I’ll store a whole bunch of it, I will cut it up, toss it in butter, put a little brown sugar and cinnamon on it, maybe air fry it for a second or like.

throw it into a pan on the stove and fry it for a second. my gosh. Now we have cinnamon toast bread cubes. Like, and they are mind blown over it. Right. Cinnamon croutons, they don’t eat their pizza and they’re still the crust because they never eat their crust. I’ll use some tomato paste. I’ll cut it up. You use some that tomato paste, air fry it, throw some cheese on it, air fry it again. And now we have pizza bites like mind blown. So those ways of like, I’m trying to see what

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (40:05.787)
would be going into compost, how do I make it circular? How do I repurpose that one more time before it leaves my house? This is part of that 63 % could have still been eaten. Right. so the pizza crust one, I saw someone do this on Instagram once and now I’ve done it for years, which is make it into croutons. Yes. Delicious. It’s so good. So good. So these things that like, it might be a preference. Cool. If you don’t like crust, but.

now it’s an ingredient for something else. Definitely. I also, I make them into just bread crumbs. Yes. Yeah. Which is also fine. And you can just leave your crusts out on the counter overnight and they dry out that way. You don’t have to be doing a whole thing in the oven. You can just leave it out. I have bread crusts sitting on my big cutting board right now. Just like the two little bread butts that I just chopped into cubes and they’re just sitting on a plate. Yeah. The ends too. You don’t have to waste those. They’ll be fine for salad for dinner tonight. Exactly.

It just has to become, it has to become a habit just like everything else, right? Like I’m not asking everyone to go out right now and save every single thing from the compost bin. Like composting is fine. It’s fine. If that’s what you have the capacity for right now, that’s amazing. Just chuck it in the compost. But if you want to get a little more use out of it, there’s a way to reuse almost anything. And the most obvious one for me is I save all of my vegetable scraps, like all the peels and the…

garlic paper and onion skins and stuff like that in a bread bag in my freezer. And when that’s full, then I just make my vegetable broth. It is so easy to make vegetable broth. that fruit broth, the fruit juice. So on Instagram, somebody saved all their fruit scraps. Yeah, like from the kids lunch boxes and things like that. half-eaten nectarine, the apple core, the orange stuff. And they kept all of that in their freezer, I’m assuming. And then they ended up boiling it and straining it and they made…

You called it fruit broth. You’re like, what are we calling this fruit soup? I’m like, that’s fruit broth. think normal people call it juice. Yeah. But speaking of juice, like we have a juicer and sometimes we’ll use our excess fruit to make juice. I save the pulp and then having those vehicles for secretly using that food waste in. So we use it for muffins.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (42:27.033)
Or I’ll dehydrate it and then blend it up. And now I have fruit powder to fortify a smoothie with. Or put it in oatmeal or- Put it in oatmeal. Yeah. having those ways, like egg bites, wraps, having muffins, stuffed peppers, having those ways to secretly put the food waste into something, it was very handy. I heard this term recently that I was like, shit, that’s me. I was asked to speak on a panel about being eco-frugal. Yes.

Oh, I love that episode. never heard that before. I loved that episode. Was that the things I don’t buy anymore? Yes. Yeah. I was like, let me think about this. And I had a really hard time coming up with things I don’t buy anymore because I’ve built the habit. Yeah. Right. So it’s like, just work on one thing at a time. If there’s something that you’re going to take away from this episode, it’s what is something that I’m throwing away every week and how can I mitigate that? So if you’re not getting through the box of lettuce, it’s okay to not buy the box of lettuce anymore.

You know, those types of things are like, have a plan to freeze it or meal plan for the week or whatever it is. But the thing that’s bugging you right now, that’s the thing to work on. We’re not asking you to save every single bite of uneaten food. But the part that’s impacting your budget is the thing to work on. And I’ll link it at the end, but I have a, like, it’s like a 50 page workbook on mitigating food waste in your kitchen that has all of the strategies that we’re talking about today.

laid out for you in steps. So we’re kind of going really, here. All those systems. For your garbage mail, I call them stuff in the fridge dinner. Yeah. There was like the whole girl dinner thing that happened on the internet. But for me, it’s basically just, we just call it stuff in the fridge dinner. So tonight is like super sports night. Someone’s got to be somewhere at six and someone’s going to be somewhere at seven and somewhere at 40 foot. like a whole thing. have basketball and soccer and hockey.

for the three of them, I’m just gonna sit in my pajamas and watch my shows. Perfect. You know what I mean. So that’s when we have our stuff in the fridge dinner. So before we started recording, I wrote down what we have in the fridge. So there’s like some random salmon that my father-in-law dropped off, cause they will make extra and then he’ll drop off whatever extra they have that they’re not gonna get through because again, I have two teenage sons who…

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (44:48.377)
our compost bins in and of themselves. I have some leftover Palak paneer that I made. We did tofu souvlaki last night. So there’s all the fixings for that. There’s some leftover pasta, just stuff like that. So what we’ll do for our leftover nights is everybody just sort of picks something. I’ll probably do the souvlaki. My older one will do the salmon, whatever. Or we do little bits of everything, like a little

like a little scoff plate. Yeah. Yeah. We call it a picky plate. Yeah. You posted something like that last night. Yeah. Yeah. That was our lunch. Yeah. It was just like a little bit of this, little bit of this, little bit of this, little bit of this. Yeah. Yeah. That way nobody gets bored. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so we, I think my parents called it like fend for yourself night. So same sort of thing. Right. But again, it requires the buy-in and the involvement of everybody in the house of

Let’s all stand in front of the fridge and see what we have and what are we doing with this tonight? And then tomorrow is my grocery day. So the fridge is empty by the time I go grocery shopping. you intentionally schedule a leftovers night or does it just sort of happen? Just kind of rolls. It’s ever rolling and we don’t have a grocery day. We’ll pick up the staples, but primarily I go to the food rescue apps.

And then we just eat what’s available every now and so there’s like, we eat what we want. We eat what’s available and we have preferences, but most of the time we eat what’s available. Imagine that. And the buy-in of like, you know, we go to the grocery store and they have to carry the seven cucumbers out of the grocery store and then when they come home, they’re like, I’m going to eat this one. Like the involvement I think helps so much. Yeah, that’s huge. remember, gosh, I was really…

little, like eight or nine. And I first got like an alarm clock in my room, like a little radio alarm clock. And David Suzuki was on the CBC talking about the importance of science education. And the thing that he said that stuck with me for the remainder of my natural life is kids need to know that water doesn’t come from the tap. And they need to know that food doesn’t come from the grocery store. And that’s been like my guiding principle.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (47:11.023)
ever since. Did I mention that to him when I met him last weekend? No, I did not because I blacked out and I couldn’t remember my own name. That’s amazing. I still can’t even, I can’t talk about it. It’s so cool. But even to put like on the other end of it, if you go and tour your local organics facility, where the compost goes and you see the vastness of it.

Like ours is water neutral, has all this technology, like it’s cool, cool, cool. But you see the sheer volume of it to see where it has to go when you put it in the compost bin. It makes you think twice. Yeah. And I think that we don’t think about that either. It’s like, well, I put it in the compost, so that’s great. And it is great. That’s great. It’s being diverted from the landfill, but it still has to go somewhere and something still has to happen to it.

in order for it to become compost. It’s very different from the pile in your backyard. It requires a ton of heat and water input and all that. believe Halifax was the first municipality in Canada that had a green bin program. Is that right? I think you’re right. Cause when I moved there in 98, they had it and I was like, well, what is this? But then London, Ontario just got it like last year. Wow.

Isn’t that wild? Like so many folks still don’t have municipal compost pickup and that’s such a bummer. There are other things you can do. Chelsea and I were talking about this off mic. I need to do like a five part series on all the different ways that you can compost at home, in your home or in your community. But if you don’t have access to it right now, don’t worry about it too much. We’re going to mitigate it before it hits the trash can. So, okay. Let’s return to the plan here.

What are your favorite ways to build meals from scraps? like, what are your go-to? You mentioned having like a structure, like, okay, I have these potatoes or I have this pork butt. it is. Just the odds and ends that folks might overlook that you can actually build a full on meal out of. Yeah. So things like the potatoes. Potatoes are the backbone of the society. They are. And potatoes, listen, I am a…

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (49:27.047)
potato advocate, chickens first and then potatoes. I love a potato, sweet, white, whatever it is. So a mashed potato, doesn’t have to be mashed potatoes for five days because they do dry out. Even if you have it sealed and covered correctly, by like day three of potatoes, mashed potatoes, you’re done with it. But you can use them, you can either fortify them with other things, mash a carrot and blend it into it.

Now it’s a new color. Now it’s a new texture. Now it’s a new flavor. Put some of those dehydrated mushrooms into it. Now it’s a deeper profile with more nutrients and a new flavor. You can use it as a soup thickener. Pull out a broth in the morning, throw it in your slow cooker, and you can use it as a soup broth to make a soup. Turn it into a fish cake. And who cares if it’s not fish? Turn it into a chicken cake.

some kind of protein in there and turn it into a little cake. And those are so fun to make. You can do a fried potato cake, just straight up potato and cheese, fry it and it’s delicious. Shepherd’s pie. Shepherd’s pie is a really good one for sneaking garbage in. Leftover spinach, like the daikon radish, I could shred that and put that in there. So like by garbage meal, mean, look in your fridge and see, okay, what needs to be eaten? Throw that into the shepherd’s pie.

Use that in the base layer. doesn’t always have to be weird soups. It doesn’t have to. No, no, you throw it into the shepherd’s pie. You can also use mashed potatoes in the breads and buns in the dough. Makes it so moist. Turn it into gnocchi. I’ve seen someone do that before. Sounds intimidating. Apparently it’s very easy. using it as an ingredient in a new meal or using it as a new fun meal and use a cookie. Like if you’re making a potato cake, use a cookie cutter.

Make a star shaped potato cake. my goodness. Riveting. Like how exciting. You want a Christmas tree potato cake? Let’s do it. Great. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Let’s do it. Why not? Why not have fun with your food? Play with your food. It’s actually fine. your food.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (51:39.889)
Did you have any other leftover questions? know that you put up a question. my gosh, just went right for notes. Chelsea put up a question box on Instagram about like, what questions do you have for leftovers? So I’m really excited to chat about some of these. Okay. We talked about the tomato paste and the other one was broth. And the thing that they have in common is that they’re both strong. They have like a high concentration of flavor. diluting them and using them as a seasoning.

and new things. So for broth, can make risotto, a savory oatmeal, gravy, braising for vegetables, chili, scrambled eggs. You can just add it to your pasta water. Add it to your pasta water. Again, I freeze it in the muffin trays so that I have those little half-cup ones. And then I can just chuck it in if I’m making rice or if I’m boiling pasta. Like it’s just a little…

A little something extra. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. It’s a little, little zhuzh. But it just gives it a little bit more flavor and you’re just constantly keeping these nutrients cycling. think, I think people are afraid of just straying from linear broth as for soup. Yeah. And it is okay to look in your fridge and be like, can I throw that in here? It is okay to have fun with your food. Can I put this broth in my omelet?

Or can I put this broth? Can I put it in when I’m frying my vegetables? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I add water to the onion garlic situation all the time. Because if I want them softer and more translucent, that’s another way that you can just chuck in a little puck of your vegetable broth. I got these things for Christmas. I desperately, desperately wanted them. So I asked for them for Christmas. I got influenced.

by Emmy Lucas, who is sustainably vegan on Instagram and YouTube. I was like, I actually want to purchase something. Happens once a year. Super cubes. Somebody asked on Instagram the other day about these. So what super cubes are, is they’re like silicone trays. And so I got the ones that are one cup and then the ones that are half cup.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (53:48.359)
No wait, maybe it’s one cup and two cups. It doesn’t matter. They come in different sizes. You can use them as baking trays too. I use them for the freezer. I was freezing a lot of things in glass, which is fine, and you can do it. But what I’m noticing, since I’ve been doing this for 10, 15 years now, is that the glass is breaking a lot more. So I’m starting to have too many casualties.

to continue doing that. we do a lot of, we cook a lot of beans from dry, like we get our beans in bulk out bulk barn, and then we cook them in like different spices and whatever, chickpeas and all of that. And then we freeze them. And then this is to, then you don’t have to have cans with like all the salt and everything. But they’re pre-done with like, these are our like Chipotle beans and whatever. So I got these super cubes. And so you freeze them, they’re like little rectangles, and then you can just pop them out really easily because they’re silicone.

And then you can just stack your rectangles in like a reuse Ziploc bag. That was the question. into the milk crates that I have in my freezer. Yes. And so I have like these little files of all my beans now. But you can also get them in like two tablespoon sizes and things like that. So that’s perfect for your vegetable broth or your tomato paste or whatever. And I always have a super cube in use pretty much since I got them.

So if you’re thinking about like, how am going to freeze all this stuff? And I previously had an ice cube tray that I just got at the thrift store that was like a hideous color. And I knew that that was the freezing stuff one, but it cracks because it’s it’s rigid plastic, right? So I’m really into these super cube things for the freezer. I don’t bake in them. I still feel weird about that. I’m sure it’s fine. It’s just my…

I think. And I would make sure stuff is cooled before I poured it in too. That would be me. Yeah. just use, have like my baking trays. It’s fine. This is more for the freezer, but it’s perfect for stuff like this. You can, and they have a zillion recipes. You can do your like shepherd’s pie thing, like right in the super cube and freeze it and then just pop out your lunch. Cool. So I’ve done that. I’ve made like, I make huge batches of soup.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (56:00.615)
And then because I’m freezing them in these like one cup sections, I can just go down to the freezer in the morning. So I work from home, pull out my one cup of potato leek soup that I got. Like I got like 80 leeks, not 80, but like the size of my head, kind of elastic bandwidth of leeks. I made all this potato leek soup, put it in my super cubes. And now I can just go downstairs and take my brick of soup and put it in a bowl on my counter. And then I can just microwave it at lunch. That’s amazing. Right. So.

A tool like that is really useful in so many ways for food rescue. Yeah. Yeah. Really can’t stress that enough. I don’t have an affiliate link, I do love them. Right. But I will put a link to it in the show notes because they are, they’ve been such a useful tool. I’ve only had them for three months and I’m evangelizing them this hard and I don’t buy anything. That’s really cool. Someone asked if I use them and I haven’t used them yet, but they asked how to store them.

But you put them in Ziploc baggies. the actual frozen bricks. I was like, they just stack up. You just put them in the cupboard. you mean the actual bricks. So in my freezer, we have, I like a chest freezer. So it’s really annoying to get to stuff at the bottom, but you can stack milk crates inside of your freezer. So we have four milk crates inside of the freezer and like the big deep part of it. And then each one has like a purpose. So we have like a bread one.

And then the boys have their meat one, and then there’s a fruit one, and then there’s the brick one now. And so we just, yeah, like I said, you can just put the little bricks side by side and then slot it down into the milk crate. That’s amazing. It’s like a little filing system of beans, which is my dream. Yeah, it is dreamy. Yeah. And then I mentioned earlier on the top of the chest freezer, we just write what is in each milk crate.

with a dry erase marker on top of the chest freezer. I think those systems are so valuable in reducing the food waste because it’s organized. You know what’s in there. And we’ve all lost stuff at the bottom of the freezer before. You don’t know what it is anymore. Because again, we are all putting things in our fridge and freezer with really good intentions. And life just happens constantly, ceaselessly. And we forget about our plan. We forget about what’s in there.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (58:22.063)
And we don’t mean to. So just by tweaking some of our systems, we can really save ourselves a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. And food waste. 100%. Yeah. As a parent, has that helped you redefine what is a good enough dinner in your house? I’m really surprised online when people say they never eat leftovers. Yeah. I can’t wrap my brain around that. So how do you communicate that to your kids?

Here just is what it is. I try to make sure they have one safe food on their plate that I know that they enjoy. And then the rest might be something new or something experimental. I have two benefits. Number one, I know that this is a very short season. Yeah. So and I am just stuck in it. I love this season. So they’re coming with me to the grocery store to pick up the cucumbers. They’re coming with me to pick up the daikon radish and the

the, I have the luxury of homeschooling where we can talk about this radish for two days and look it up and go to the library and look up where it comes from and how other people are using it. And kind of slowing down over our food. Yeah. One day they were fighting and I had 40 pounds of carrots and I was like, now we have a carrot restaurant and they peeled carrots for three hours, no more fighting. So, but then we sheet pan froze it and they were involved in every step of that. So then when they ate it,

We talked about where it came from, how we processed it. It’s that reward driven effort cycle too, right? Like, when you finally sit down to eat the meal that you made, it just tastes so much better because you know exactly how much effort you put into it. Yeah, what we listened to while we made it. So I think there’s so much value in coming together over your food. we love whole food. So those whole vegetables. And then

ways of dealing with it, ways of keeping it fresh. Just try to come together over it. Yeah. So once we tried to say, we rescued it, we stored it, we used what we could, we did our best. There’s scraps that you just can’t do anything with. what happens with that at your house? We have chickens who are not picky when it comes to food waste. You always have to make sure that it’s safe for them to eat what you are giving to them. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (01:00:49.571)
So the chickens get it or the worms get it. We have vermicomposting worms. Same. Yep. Or it goes into the green bin, the organics bin. And then we put it curbside, it gets picked up. This summer I did the master compost and recycler course for the second time in HRM and I got to go toward the new organics facility. So I got to see exactly where it goes and it was riveting. was really cool. It was really cool. Yeah. And so that’s our food.

But I try to give it a second use before it ends up in that compost bin or the chickens or the worms. I try to keep it in the kitchen, try to cycle it through one more time. So when you zoom out and you look at the whole cycle, so we have seed to table to soil, where do you think that folks can really put their effort and their attention? I think everyone’s capacity is going to be different. Yeah.

I think that’s such a personal, one thing I have learned with the beeswax wraps is that food is such a personal thing. How people use their wraps is so unique. It’s so personal and how people use their food and their values around it is so unique. And so I think, I think the message is do what you can with what you can and removing that like shame and guilt of, I should be doing. Yeah.

I maybe one day I will be doing this. Maybe one day, maybe it’s dream, like, bless and release and do what you can and don’t be overwhelmed by it. And like our dehydrator, got it on, there’s an auction website where you can bid on things that have been returned to stores. Our dehydrator has a huge crack in the top, but we got it ultra cheap because it was returned with this crack. Same as our waffle maker has a huge dent in the side of it. Nobody knows.

Nobody knows when they’re sitting at my kitchen table eating their food. So we were able to get that and use it and we were going to use it until it runs into the ground. Yeah. And then it seems like something that we will use. So I’ll get another one because it’s working. So I think whatever systems or whatever choices you can make and make and feel good about them and make and, and do just do what you can do well. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (01:03:10.839)
Absolutely. Start where you are and use what you have. I know I say that every week. That’s like the tagline for the show. it’s whatever thing that kind of strikes your interest in our conversation today, whether it’s like, I didn’t know I could do that with tomato paste or whatever it is. That’s awesome. Just do that. Because these are all habits that take a long time to build up and then just become a part of how you live. And that’s great. Yeah. So before we go,

I’m going to ask you what the one small shift is going to be. So if someone is just downloading their very first food rescue app today, what is sort of the biggest bang for their buck? What should they look for for their very first pickup? I think it depends on what you know you’re going to eat. See something that’s familiar, that you… It has a window, whether it’s a fired or a pest before that you’re comfortable with. You know you can pick it up and use it within that window.

So you feel safe with your timeline and you know how to use it and then branch out and then get experimental. But like the first time that you go to pick up something, maybe you don’t know where the desk is, maybe you’re kind of unsure if you have to show them your app. So the first thing, pick something that’s easy. Do like a low hanging fruit. Oh great, I love gala apples and on this app they’re 90 % cheaper. So we do that one.

And they have stuff from the bakery. if you’re like, oh my gosh, I love powdered donuts. Just go get those. And then you learn how the system. Exactly. You don’t, there’s lots of stuff on there that you don’t even have to do anything with. can pick up and enjoy right away. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I’m going to put links to all of the different apps that we talked about in the show notes and sign up for those because I think you’ll really be amazed at not just what you can find, but they are in your regular grocery store and you can fold those into your trip. Yeah.

Yeah. Chelsea, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you for having me. This is the best. I love this. Yeah. It’s my, it’s my favorite. I love talking to you about everything. All things foodways, compost, dry queens, all of it. Yeah. So where can people find you and follow along with savoring sustainability? So I’m mostly posting it on Instagram. On Instagram, I am Hive2HomeNS.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (01:05:34.434)
I have a website, hivetohomens.com, but I’m on Instagram, Facebook website. All of those. And pick yourself up some wraps, everybody. You will be amazed. Thank you. Thank you again to Chelsea for coming on today to talk about food rescue and showing us how connected all of this really is. Grocery budgeting and climate action are not separate conversations. When we waste less food, we spend less money.

And when we keep our food in use and out of the landfill, we reduce emissions. And again, none of it requires us to do everything. It just requires a little bit more of a plan. So if you want to help building that plan in your own kitchen, from food rescue to storage to leftovers to compost, please check out my beginner’s guide to a sustainable kitchen, which walks you through everything we talked about today, step by step. It’s practical, realistic, and designed to help you stop.

wasting food and throwing money away. You can grab it through the link in the show notes and use the code podcast20 for 20 % off. Thank you so much for listening today. I’m so glad you’re here. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener. Thanks for tuning in to Sustainable in the Suburbs. Every small step adds up and I’m so glad we’re doing this together.

If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainable in the suburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on all the things until next time start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener. This podcast is produced, mixed and edited by Cardinal Studio. For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit http://www.cardinalstudio.co.

or email Mike at mike at cardinalsstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.