WASTE NOT, WANT NOT

In Cat­alo­nia, where food is a sa­cred af­fair, wast­ing it might be con­sid­ered a minor crime. Yet, de­spite most peo­ple’s love of every last morsel of es­cali­vada, food waste still per­sists like an un­in­vited guest. Why? Well, some­times our culi­nary eyes are far larger than our stom­achs.

The sta­tis­tics paint a sober­ing pic­ture. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports pub­lished else­where in this issue, Cat­alo­nia is said to waste around 35 kilos of food per per­son per year. That’s a hefty amount, es­pe­cially for a cul­ture that tra­di­tion­ally prides it­self on zero-waste recipes. So what’s going on?

Barcelona boasts some vi­brant mar­kets, such as La Bo­que­ria or El Mer­cat de Sant An­toni. Here, you’re sur­rounded by cas­cades of or­anges, piles of gleam­ing olives, and sausages that look like works of art. And like all art, they’re hard to re­sist. A sim­ple trip for two toma­toes some­how ends with you buy­ing three types of fuet, two ar­ti­san breads, half a kilo of clams and a pa­paya (even though you don’t re­ally like pa­payas).

But all of this has a cost. Mar­kets move fast, and pro­duce that doesn’t sell may be thrown away by the end of the day. Al­though, as this issue re­ports, food-res­cue ini­tia­tives work to re­dis­trib­ute these goods to those in need, much still slips through the cracks. It’s a bit ironic that a coun­try so fiercely proud of its cui­sine some­times doesn’t quite know what to do with it all.

As for su­per­mar­kets, they play their own guilty part in this story. Many peo­ple are scared of any­thing with a date even slightly be­yond its “best be­fore,” and stores love to nudge this anx­i­ety along.

As for local tra­di­tions, the calçotada is one ex­am­ple of where Cata­lan culi­nary en­thu­si­asm can go awry. Cata­lans gather in the win­ter to con­sume stacks of calçots, charred to per­fec­tion over an open flame. A good time is had by all. But here’s the thing: calçots are in­cred­i­bly fill­ing, and can be quite messy too. The only per­son who’s fin­ish­ing all of theirs is the self-ap­pointed chef, who con­vinces every­one else to have “just one more” when they’re al­ready full. And so, if not dis­carded im­me­di­ately, the left­overs from a good calçotada may sit in the fridge for days, then grad­u­ally “dis­ap­pear” be­cause let’s face it, no­body wants cold, limp calçots for a mid­week lunch treat.

And sal­ads? Well, they’re prac­ti­cally de­signed to waste away. No one can re­sist buy­ing fresh veg­gies at the mar­ket, but they don’t stay fresh for­ever, and wilt­ing let­tuce can only be re­vived so many times. In­evitably, we end up with “good in­ten­tion greens” – all the in­gre­di­ents of a nice healthy salad that you meant to make but never did. Not to men­tion broc­coli, as­para­gus, green beans and the like, which also start to lose their ap­petis­ing crunch­i­ness after a few days of con­fine­ment in the fridge.

So what’s the so­lu­tion? Well, one thing I try and do as much as pos­si­ble is freeze meals when I’ve made too much of some­thing, and then make sure I use it as an­other meal within a week or two. And also freeze meat be­fore it reaches its ex­pi­ra­tion date, and then use it as soon as it has de­frosted. It takes a min­i­mal amount of plan­ning, but we’re all ca­pa­ble of that.

We could also try a lit­tle harder to cook what we’ll ac­tu­ally eat and eat what we’ve ac­tu­ally cooked, some­thing I freely admit I need more prac­tice at. So smaller serv­ings, re­pur­pos­ing left­overs and ju­di­cious use of the freezer might be a good place to start.

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