Bake bread.
Eat bread.
2-3 days later… stale bread.
Half a loaf left hmm.
I tried making bread pudding but I used a 2 quart 8 inch dutch oven… apparently too deep for this; it needs shallower. Plus I made twice the quantity and twice the cook time doesn’t seem to do what I intend; the top burns and the inside is a sickening goo. I’ll put it in the toaster oven and see if I can make it edible as I go.
So, you have stale bread. What do you do with it, besides throw it out? I keep my bread in a paper bag out of the fridge so it dries before mold can take hold; it lasts a couple days if you keep the cut end uncovered. I find it stays softer and moister in plastic; however it can also go moldy in the same amount of time if it’s warm or humid, and besides it still tastes stale and has a not-so-pleasant texture after a couple days even if it’s not drying out.
I’m liable to steal these if I ever write a book. In some religions, the wasting of food is an abomination unto God; I’d imagine any significant amount of philosophy study or basic meditation will draw a person to the same conclusions as they naturally contemplate the nature of waste eventually, whether they want to base this on God or gods or health of the spirit or ethics or logic of economy (wasted time, effort, money, material) or just plain common sense. In my writings on philosophy, I would likely make that point quite clear.
Honestly, what sense does landfilling food make? Don’t tell me the seagulls need to eat too. They can find clams just fine, that’s why they’re seagulls and not landfillgulls.
So how do you deal with food that is or is about to go bad? Wasted cooked food (mashed potatoes → potato pancakes, potato bread, etc; baked beans → [tomorrow’s breakfast[/a])? Fruit that’s getting a bit soft?
I’m less interested in a huge dissertation on the theory of mulching eggshells and zucchini skins for compost; although zucchini skin for zucchini bread is a good idea. Food to food is preferable: you put a lot of time and energy into raising animals and crops, and while recycling that energy back into the crop is good and efficient in terms of resources (if you’re not using any imported fertilizer i.e. just crop rotation, then this is self-sustaining and doesn’t cause external resource drains), it’s still wasted human labor and wasted land. Arguably, if your self-sustaining farm could support itself without recirculating compost into the land, then you’re also wasting output that could have gone to feed hungry people-- even in the best case scenario, directly converting waste food to more food is the most favorable venue.
