A Great Resource for Using Every Last Bit -- IKEA Scraps Book (free to download or just browse)

I wanted to share a resource that has a lot of great ideas for getting the most out of your groceries. It's the IKEA Canada's The Scraps Book:A Waste-Less Cookbook. It's free to download or just browse. It may take several seconds to load. But patience is a virtue. There are roughly 200 pages of ideas and recipes for using every last bit, from the obvious of using bruised fruit to the not so obvious of using banana peels to make "bacon" (p.27) or chutney (p. 57) or in a chocolate-banana peel cake (p.155). 

There's a recipe for watermelon rind pickle (yes, I make these that, too --- post in this link). There's also a recipe for watermelon rind jam (p.29). Now that's something I haven't tried, but surely will. You may be surprised (as I was) that corn silks are edible. There's a recipe for frying those yellow silks on p. 41. And I found another recipe for using radish leaves -- a garlicky, cheesy green risotto (p. 71). 

Remember last summer when we talked a bit about using carrot tops? Well, this booklet has a recipe for chimichurri that uses copious amounts of carrot leaves instead of the usual parsley (p.99) Did you know that the peels from winter squash are edible? Turn to page 107 for a skillet dish that uses squash and potato peels.

How about getting more use from spent tea bags (p. 173) or used coffee grounds (p. 13)? IKEA's got you covered.

If you have an ingredient that you'd like to find a use for, no need to read the whole booklet. There's a handy index at the back that's organized by ingredient name (p. 211-213)

Some ideas are old hat for many of us, such as using the leaves and tops of celery. But many other ideas are fresh and new.

This free booklet is filled to the brim with useful ways to use foods that we might otherwise throw out. I know, I sound like an advertisement for IKEA. I'm just enthusiastic to share what could be a good tool for many of us as we try to keep our grocery spending down and/or get the most out of gardens this summer. 

Happy reading!

A good friend passed this on to me, knowing that I am trying to get all I can out of what we grow and buy. I'd like to be a good friend, too, and pass this on to you.

Scratch Cupcake Donut Holes Courtesy of My Daughters

This past Saturday was the community garage sale in my area. There will be more garage sales throughout the summer, but this was the big one. I went out for a little bit, but I was feeling tired so only looked at a few sales. I did buy some brightly colored paper napkins to use for picnics and bbq's this summer, still in the sealed package, 50 cents/package. My daughters went to many, many sales. The came home with wrapping paper (25 cents/roll), clothing, a knick-knack or two, and a deep fryer, still in the factory-sealed box. They saw the fryer early in the day and told me about it. We used to have a fryer and I stopped using it because it was more fried food than we should eat, it wasted oil, and it was a mess every time I used it. I told my daughters they'd have to supply the oil if they bought this. (My experience has been that a lot of oil is wasted when deep frying.) They agreed and bought the fryer for $5.

Their first frying project was donuts. They knew they wanted cake donuts, but they didn't want the fried batter mess that can come with pouring batter into hot oil (a lot of burnt crumbly bits after frying). So they had this idea to fry some baked mini muffins. 

They then baked yellow cupcakes (scratch recipe, no papers, non-stick muffin pan sprayed with cooking spray) in the oven. After baking and cooling, they popped the cupcakes into the hot oil in the fryer for a couple of minutes each. Afterward, they glazed them with a homemade chocolate glaze and added sprinkles, chopped nuts, and coconut. They look like donut holes, don't they?

I wasn't expecting them to be that much like donuts, but they really, really were. I was impressed. They were crispy and cake-like. I tried my hardest not to eat too many of them. But like I said, these were good, and well you know how good intentions can sometimes end up.

I did ask one daughter, after the fact, if she would change anything. She said that now she wishes they'd tried frying a little of the unbaked batter (not baked cake) just to see how it would have turned out. She doesn't know if she'd prefer one over the other, but would like to see for herself the difference. Maybe we'll have another batch of donuts soon? I mean, for the sake of experimentation, of course.

Anyways, just some of the kitchen fun going on in our house this past weekend.