Anita: We hate waste. And if that resonates with you and you feel the same way, then you're gonna love this episode because today we're sharing three simple ways to reduce waste on a whole food plant based diet.

 I've gone to the store, I bought all this beautiful delicious produce. And then not too long afterwards, I look in my fridge and lo and behold, it's not looking happy. It's drooping, it's getting brown. And I hate that. There's nothing worse than the feeling of, I bought this food and I'm not being a good steward if I don't use it up before it goes bad. We've all been there. But we want to take steps and help you to take this step so that this doesn't happen to you anymore. So today we are sharing three very simple ways to reduce waste on a whole food plant based diet.

Now, one thing I want you to think about with when it comes to waste is chopping your vegetables. When you chop up vegetables to use in soups and stews or main meals, no matter what you're making, you always have waste. You've got the ends of the onion, the peels of the potatoes. You've got the onion skin, celery leftovers, carrot shavings, garlic skins, any veggie trimmings or pieces you have leftover when you're cooking something.

Friend, do not throw those away. Save them in a bag or a container in the freezer to boil up a flavor filled broth once the container is full. This is so simple to do and it can be done in an Instant Pot in a matter of minutes by simply adding those leftover vegetable pieces to water and cooking them. You may want to season the broth with whatever spices you enjoy, like parsley and thyme and bay leaves.

Listen, if you don't know which spices you should have on hand, go back and listen to the episode before this one. You are not going to believe how simple it is to grow fresh herbs in your own home, even if you're not a gardener. You've got to hear that episode.

Jarrod: It's episode 293.

Anita: It's a game changer but so is using your veggie scraps to reduce waste. So you've got this bag, this container of veggie peels, pieces, trimmings, 

Jarrod: There's still nutrient content in it. You look at the potato skin, there's still minerals that is actually in potatoes where the bulk of the iodine is,

Anita: And a lot of that is going to come out into the water when you boil it to make your broth. So you season your broth with those spices, whichever ones you have on hand, parsley, thyme, bay leaves allowing them to cook with the water and the veggie scraps for extra flavor.

You can even add in things like bits of tomato paste as well. Just think about which recipes you want to use the broth in when you add these spices. Like I normally cook this and that and the other and I would love to use broth in it. Adjust your spices according to that or you can always add them after the fact.

One word of caution though, It's best to avoid the strongest tasting veggies like cruciferous, that being broccoli, cabbage, things like that that taste really strong, even turnips. Then once your vegetable broth is made, all you need to do is freeze them in containers for use when you're cooking larger meals or in ice cube trays to use when you're making things where you'd need a smaller amount of broth such as stir fries or sauces and things like that. You can just pop one or two ice cubes at a time out to add to your dishes when you freeze them in small portions like that. 

Jarrod: Yes. Especially if you season it and make it a little more concentrated. I was just sitting here thinking, what if we made plain rice and you had some leftover, you heated it, but you wanted to have some flavor and you have some broth. Maybe you could then add it to that for simple flavor booster for something you already have on hand.

'cause we love repurposing meals, love repurposing ingredients, and just making things easier. 

Anita: And tastier. that's where this comes in. We're saving the waste. It makes us happy. It brings us joy because we're not wasting these extra parts of the veggies that were typically thrown away.

Now, we're saving them. We're reusing and repurposing them. I love Jarrod's idea here of using it in rice. But what if, when you're making a large batch of rice, like in your Instant Pot, you didn't use water. You used the broth you had frozen.

Jarrod: I like that idea even better because it infuses the flavor into the rice.

Anita: Absolutely, and it will make the rice so good. 

Jarrod: That's next level. 

Anita: I think your tip is about reheating because sometimes if you add a little bit of liquid to your rice when you reheat it, it keeps it from being brickley. It makes it moist. It makes it taste delicious. And I love that idea of adding just one of the cubes or a piece of a cube to your rice dish.

So you're heating that up. You get that extra flavor in there. It's a great boost of flavor. I love that.

Jarrod: Especially if you just want something a little different. , I don't know that I've ever gotten tired of leftovers. I'm just not genetically wired that way. I just, I love what I love and I'll eat it forever.

Anita: Till it's gone.

Jarrod: But some people don't like leftovers. They want something a little different, and this is a great way to be able to achieve that.

But still to mix it up and still be able to use some of these concepts of maybe making a larger pot of rice, freezing some of it so that it makes that next meal a little bit easier. Makes doing leftovers easier, makes the time in the kitchen less

Anita: But you know, I have never loved the flavor of vegetable broth from the store.

It's almost like they put something strange in there. It just does not taste right. And so this is gonna give you more of a real home cooked, homemade flavor. And again, you can get those spices and seasonings that you want into the broth as well. You have more control over that.

But you're also getting that added benefit of reducing the waste that were things that were throwing away that could be used like Jarrod just said has that nutritional content as well that we would be missing out on all those nutrients that we're throwing away. So make your veggie stock.

And the second simple way to reduce waste is to add your leftovers to everything but the kitchen sink recipes like soups or one pot meals. So if you're not like Jarrod and you think, I don't want to eat that same thing over and over again, you can take that leftover that you have Or piece of a meal or leftover ingredient and get it into sauces and stews and chilies or grain bowls.

That's such an easy way to use up your leftovers. Grain bowls are grains plus a legume plus a vegetable plus a sauce and if you don't have the power and plants cookbook yet and you're thinking I don't know how to make sauces or I need new sauces that taste good, I share some great dressings and sauces in there for you.

Go to poweronplants.com/cookbook and get that. That's poweronplants.com/cookbook. These are the easiest tested tried and true sauces and recipes that we use on a regular basis.

Jarrod: And people love'em, we hear all the time how they love the sauces. 

Anita: Sauces can change everything for you. And so you look at these grain bowls and you think I can get my leftover in there. It could either be a leftover grain, a legume, a vegetable, a sauce, or a compilation of meals that I can put the side of my grain bowl, add it in with a sauce, and it's just going to taste great.

Or you can get your leftovers into stir fries, even soups. Again, soups, stews, chilies, all of these are simple tasty dishes that you can adapt to the items in your fridge or your pantry that need to be used. You know, I think about our friend Karry. She always says, I want to shop more from my pantry and my fridge. And this is one of the ways that you can do that. It's such a clever concept. She blew my mind the day she said that to me. I was working with her and she said, you know, Anita, I just want to be able to pull something from my pantry and fridge and use it instead of always having to run back to the store.

And that's what we're going to show you how to do, how to set up your pantry and fridge for success inside our upcoming course. But right now you can start shopping from your fridge and she's already doing this . I love seeing her just bloom and grow and do these things and you can too.

Start today by repurposing your leftovers in dishes that you're making in these simple ways. We've just shared with you

Jarrod: And the big idea here, because you may be hearing, shop from my pantry, , why is that significant? Because what you're doing is you're going from being recipe guided, saying I have this recipe and I must have these ingredients, like, oh, I'm out of this one or two things, so I can't make it, or I've got to go to the store.

You're changing your focus to what do I have on hand? How can I use that to prepare a meal? And so many times. You use unrecipes. We talk about that all the time. Have unrecipes or grain bowls where I take these few elements and then put them together. They're not concrete written on paper. You just say, I've got this grain, I have this bean or legume, I have this sauce, I have this vegetable or whatever else to add to it.

And think in your mind, , these flavors actually would be quite good together. Okay, a meal is served. I have lunch. I have dinner. But you didn't have to rely upon a recipe for things that you do or don't have. You've taken what you have on hand. You've adapted that to a meal now that you're going to sit down to and enjoy, but done it very easily and quickly.

Anita: You just hit the nail on the head there. You can throw so many leftovers and even vegetables that will soon be going bad, they're on the verge of going south, into these types of dishes and create what we lovingly call unrecipes. Meals you can throw together when you don't even have time for a recipe or bandwidth for a recipe.

The unrecipes that you come up with are just as important as those base recipes, like the Power and Plants Cookbook recipes that we share with you. You need both of these things in order to thrive with plant based living. The unrecipes you come up with using leftovers might quite possibly become some of your new favorite dishes.

And you know, we're all about finding your new favorites.

And strategy number three.

This one is going to blow your mind if you use the item that I'm about to tell you about. I do not remember how I discovered it, if I discovered it on my own, if I saw somebody else do it, but it changed the game for us when it comes to mixed greens. Do you ever buy the boxes of mixed greens that are pre mixed, the big boxes, like if you have a big box store like Costco or Sam's or something like that. They may carry it in your regular store, but the big boxes of mixed greens, they can save you so much time being pre washed, all mixed together, so you're getting a variety of nutrients, they taste amazing, and you just fill your salad bowl with them, and then you add other stuff, but what happens to that big box of greens?

Without fail, every time, the water condenses on the lid, and there it sits and drips back onto your greens. And when the water drips onto the greens, the greens go south fast. They're wilty, they're slimy, they're gross. And this can happen in a matter of a couple of days.

So if you're not eating a lot of them very quickly or you don't have a lot of people in your family, you're going to be so irritated because every time you buy that box of greens, you're going to have to throw away a portion of them because they're not going to be usable. They're going to be slimy and gross.

This is the simplest thing. Get yourself some of the pick a size paper towels or maybe you think I don't ever use those. I don't want to buy them. If you have paper napkins, all you need to do is set that dry napkin, fold it to the size it'll fit perfectly over those greens, and set it in between the lid top and your greens. Does that make sense? So set it on top of your greens and put the lid back on. Before you put the lid back on, dry it. dry it so it doesn't have any moisture built up on it.

Jarrod: Not with the paper towel you're using.

Anita: Not with that paper a different paper towel. You want to put a dry

Jarrod: there will be that temptation, well I'll wipe it down, now stick it in there.

No, don't do that. That'll defeat the purpose of this will do for you. 

Anita: You will not believe how much longer your greens last. When you try this, you've got to come into PIE and share with us what has happened to your greens and how much longer they're lasting for you. I cannot wait to celebrate this with you because this is seriously celebration worthy. If you hate waste as much as I do and are sick and tired of those greens going slimy and bad, get yourself a pick a size paper towel or a napkin onto those greens, dry off that lid with a different paper towel and stick that on there.

It is a game changer. You are not going to believe how much longer your greens will last. These are the things that make you happy.

Jarrod: And they're, simple strategies. It's not hard, but when you don't know, you don't know. But once you find it or discover it or hear it on a podcast, it changes a lot.

Anita: Or learn it inside a community.

Jarrod: Learn Inside of a community.

Anita: You need to be inside PIE if you're not there. Why are you not there? Do it today. You're going to get every single podcast episode we have and counting becoming searchable for you. All you have to do is put in a word of something maybe you remembered on a podcast or something you're looking for that you don't even know if we've talked about it yet.

Are you wanting to scroll through 275 plus, maybe many more at the time you're listening to this episode to try to find what you need. Or would you like to be able to search it and it will search inside every word we've ever said in a podcast. No, it's not just the titles. And find exactly what you need.

That happens inside of PIE for free. That is at your disposal. Not only that, you'll have brand new friends. You'll have a family that's walking this journey with you. And not only that, a group of believers who's walking this journey, because they want to live their best life.

We want to feel great so that we can fully live our calling in this world so we can feel like chasing our children and grandchildren around, going and traveling to all the places we want to go, ministering and helping people when they need help, and we actually feel like doing it.

And having a new problem like I have today that I did not have 10 plus years ago, where I have to force myself to go to bed at night. Yeah, it's real. , I used to be so exhausted, so tired, I could not wait to drop into bed. Sometimes I would fall asleep before bedtime. That's the kind of inflammation and low energy and pain and things I was dealing with, and it was taking me out of living real life.

Jarrod: It was robbing you of your life.

Anita: It was robbing me of my life and we don't want that for you. It does not have to be that way. Go right now to poweronplants.com/pie and join us inside Podcast Insider's Experience. And we want you to share about how you're adding your paper towel to your greens. Just snap a little picture and upload it and say, Hey, look what I'm doing. Or wait till you've tried it and share how it went. I can't wait to hear how this one little thing changes things for you. It is uh, amazing.

Jarrod: And if you have your own helpful, simple tip, share it in there, too. We love learning more new helpful tips and strategies.

Anita: And to that end, guess what I'm gonna do? I have a bonus tip for you.

Jarrod: Bonus! We love bonuses here.

Anita: We are big on bonuses. So the bonus tip is do not shop when you're hungry or without a plan.

 When you're thinking about reducing waste, you don't want to overbuy. If you overbuy or buy something extra because it sounds good or it looks good, 9 times out of 10, it's going to sit in your fridge or pantry or somewhere and go bad because you did not have a plan for that thing.

Now once you've been doing this for a while, it's a little different because you know those things you use on a regular basis, and you're going to need to have those stocked up, and that makes perfect sense. But don't go hungry because you're going to buy more than you normally would. And don't go shopping without a plan.

And that is going to help you greatly reduce your waste.

Jarrod: Especially with fresh produce, things like dried beans, cans that last for a while, that's not as much of an issue.

Anita: But the fresh produce is going to make all the difference. So to reduce your waste, make stock out of those veggie scraps and use your leftovers in everything but the kitchen sink recipes. Then get your paper towels or paper napkins onto those boxes of mixed greens. And don't forget the bonus, avoid shopping when you're hungry or you don't have a plan. There you have it, three plus simple ways to decrease waste and increase your happiness on a whole food plant based diet.

 Friend, we've loved having you join us today and we can't wait to get to know you more inside Podcast Insider's Experience. You can join us there at poweronplants.com/pie that's poweronplants.com/pie. Have a great week sunshine and we will see you soon.