Of Cabbages and Strings

Anyone who wants to reduce food waste has several options to explore. A common first step is to make the most of food scraps that cannot be eaten, and to keep them out of the landfill.
Compost is easily the best-known option, but it’s restricted by the fact that meat, bones and other animal products can’t be put into the compost pile or used for vermiculture. Bokashi composting is a little more flexible in this regard, but it has to be buried after fermentation, and before adding it to the rest of the compost.

The scraps and leftovers from animal products, thankfully, can still be put to use in the garden.

How to Reuse Milk

Milk is a source of calcium. We could argue about whether it’s the ideal source of calcium until the cows come home. But it does provide calcium, which plants crave. (Do not feed your plants Brawndo.) Calcium improves the uptake of nutrients from the soil, which in turn improves their growth and the effectiveness of any other fertilizers you put on your plants. Therefore, it’s a great way to put the nutrients in milk to use when the milk is no longer fit for human consumption.

Unlike us, plants can handle milk that has gone “off.” They live in dirt full time, and have happy relationships with all kinds of microbes that would cause us considerable suffering if we had the same exposure. You can apply milk to your plants straight from the jug, so long as you water it down to decrease the amount of sugar. Just stick your unfinished milk container under the faucet until it’s full, cap it, shake it to mix, and pour it around the base of your plants. My pumpkins loved it…until Squash Vine Borer did them in.

I’m still sad about it.

How to Reuse Meat

So you can’t compost meat, unless you use bokashi fermentation first. (Which is an option worth looking into.) It also can’t go into a worm bin. You can, however, use meat to make liquid fertilizers. The best known example is probably fish emulsion, which is a great source of nitrogen and phosphorus for plants. There are probably as many recipes for fish emulsion as there are fish in the sea, but the base components are the fish, dry organic matter, and water. Then the container is covered, and the mixture allowed to sit and rot. When I did it, using some freebie lox that had gotten funky, I chopped it up to increase surface area for microbes to work, stuffed it in a jar with dry grass, added water, and let it sit to putrefy.

This, admittedly, foul-smelling process quickly breaks down the fish into a nutritious sludge with lots of nitrogen and phosphorus. It can also be used to break down other meats. Anyone who collects and cleans bones by maceration is already familiar with the process, and may know from experience that plants greatly benefit from the drained maceration water. The process is also a good deal quicker than composting, taking about a week at most for household meat scraps.

As a side note, flies are attracted to the smell of putrefaction. They will take interest in the emulsion. I found that keeping the emulsion in a closed jar, and then submerging the jar in a larger container of water was enough to keep them away. The flies are still interested in the smell, but they won’t be able to lay their eggs on anything. Rather, they will just drown.

The water doesn’t seem to interfere with the process of putrefaction, though you will have to pull the jar out and “burp” it every few days, to release the gases that are generated by the process. It smells terrible.

That’s nature for you.

How to Reuse Bones

The obvious first step for making the most of bones is to make stock. But after stock, bones don’t have any other use in the kitchen. Thankfully, bones can also be turned into fertilizer. The process is absurdly easy, because you can just take your used stock bones, scrape the remaining meat and gristle off (which you can eat, though it will be a little bland), and then stick them in the oven to dry. After drying, they only need to be smashed and thrown in a blender to powder them.

This is a great thing to do during the fall and winter. You’re generally not planting anything in the garden, but you’re probably doing a lot of cooking. Speaking for myself, I tend to use cooking as an excuse to warm up the house–including a lot of roasting, and sticking the bones in my slow cooker for stock. That means a lot of bones, and a lot of time to stockpile bone meal to work into your soil once it thaws.

Bone meal is a slow-release source of phosphorus, so it’s worth working into the soil before anything is planted. Much easier to do, when you have a ton of it ready to go.

Vegan food doesn’t always satisfy our expectations, if we’re accustomed to eating food made with animal products. To that end, here’s some advice on feeling better about eating plant-based foods, even if the majority of your diet isn’t plant-based. A lot of people can benefit from a Meatless Monday.

The first, and probably most important thing, is…

Manage Your Expectations

Nothing–not a single thing–can perfectly replicate what animal products do.
Yeah. I said it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because they are lying, or they haven’t had animal products in so long that they’ve lost perspective.

You can never totally replace any of these with a vegan substitute. You can only come close. It’s better to enjoy plant-based foods by appreciating them for what they are.

To be fair to vegan food, you can sometimes get close enough to be satisfied, which is the goal here.

Understand How Animal Products Work (So You Can Substitute)

Vegan substitutes should be picked based on the main function of an animal-derived ingredient that they’re trying to replace. For example, aquafaba (bean water, either from the can, or what’s left after cooking) whips like egg whites, and you can use it for spongecakes, or really convincing vegan french toast.

But you can’t crack open a chickpea and fry it.

Though you can mash cooked chick peas, add a bunch of nutritional yeast, a little black salt if you have it, plenty of onion and garlic, and get yourself a good vegan scramble.

Similarly, a lot of dairy substitutes don’t quite behave like dairy, and while many of them come really close, you may ultimately have to pick one particular dairy substitute based on a specific property. Soy milk isn’t as fatty as coconut milk, and isn’t always the best choice for sweet treats. Conversely, coconut milk won’t whip quite like soy milk, because fat interferes in the formation of all those tiny bubbles. You need protein to keep it together.

If you know the primary purpose that an animal-derived ingredient serves in a recipe, you will be more able to find a satisfactory vegan substitute. Is the egg a binder, a leavener, moisture, or a protein? Knowing this matters when you’re swapping out eggs.

Add Fats

If something is “flavorful,” that tends to mean that the dish has a higher amount of fat. Beef and pork are more flavorful than chicken, bacon is considered more flavorful than almost any other cut of pork–and the difference is how much fat is in it.

Fat is not the healthiest thing to eat, but it has an important place in good cooking and there’s nothing wrong with us for liking it. It’s calorically dense, it has a pleasant texture, and it’s filling. We are designed to enjoy eating fats.

But plant-derived foods tend to be very low in fat. And I suspect this is a big part of why a meatless dinner might not feel quite as filling as one with meat in it. But this is true of meat-based dinners, as well. Chrismas ham will fill you up faster than Thanksgiving turkey.

So, you will have to add fat in some way. Are you making a vegetarian stir fry? Serve it with peanut noodles, because peanut butter adds fat. (And a little extra protein, though you probably need less than you think unless you’re a weightlifter.) Use a saturated, plant-based fat like coconut oil for frying your vegan french toast. Make a nice olive oil and lemon sauce for a bean and pasta salad.

Some people eat more plants so that they eat less fat. Naturally, this tip won’t apply to them. But for those of us who usually eat meat and want to cut back, or who are making plant-based food for someone who tends to eat meat, fat is a really important factor to consider.

Bend the Rules, Stretch Your Animal Products

Unless I am cooking beans for something light, like salads or falafel, I cook them in stock. The majority of the stocks I make are from bones left after eating meat.

That is neither vegan, nor vegetarian, but it means I get an extra meal or two out of a meat purchase. If your goal is to save money, it means having to buy meat less frequently, while still enjoying the taste. On top of that, bone-in meat tends to be cheaper, so you are getting far more value out of your meat this way. If you’re reducing your meat intake because you want to reduce suffering (an honorable goal!), stretching your meat purchases like this also means eating fewer animals.

I can get about two or three meals out of the meat from a roasted chicken. If I turn the bones into stock, I can cook a big batch of beans and get a few more meals out of her. That can be almost a week of food from one bird, if you play your cards right. I took my Christmas ham even further, turning it into stock, then soup, then scrapple and hoppin’ John.

You can do this with more than just stock. Saving bacon grease to use later not only saves perfectly good ingredients from being wasted, but will also enhance anything you cook in it. You can also save beef fat, or pan-fry chicken skin to make chicken cracklings and Schmaltz. You are still saving money, and you are still eating fewer animals.