Susan's Savour-It!: Waste Not. Use Up What You Got...

"We must preserve and respect the very food that fuels us. Waste not. Use up what you got!"-- Susan

Save Food. Save Lives. It's Out 🤗... A cookbook on sustainable and cultural food recipes has been published that culminates a year long effort on fighting climate change by reducing food waste in food workshops conceived by The Arab Community Centre of Toronto in partnership with the LiveGreen project at the City of Toronto.

Here are a few excerpts from the cookbook including my recipe pages.

Last summer, I was invited by @acct_savefood @acctonline to host a Food Waste workshop incorporating tips, recipes and creative leftover ideas from Asian cultures. This initiative aimed to build community and teamwork around cultural and knowledge exchange on curbing food waste. An important topic dear to my heart.

When I think about Asian cuisines and our behaviours around food, it is the epitome of nose to tail eating. Eat everything. Waste nothing. Cheap off-cuts are available in Asian markets, meat is often extended to feed and give more and leftovers are repurposed for another delicious dish.

In my menu, I offered various techniques to encompass this philosophy.

To talk about preservation, we made Korean cucumber kimchi using ingredients such as fish sauce and salted shrimps to ferment and flavour. Everyone got to take home a little jar as flavours optimize after a few days of melding.

Too much herbs? Make it last longer by wrapping in a damp cloth, placing into a bag and into the crisper. Make a sauce with a bunch of chopped cilantro, mixed with fish sauce, garlic, chillies, lime and oil for a table condiment. Save the stems for soup.

Buy salmon trimmings if you don't mind picking out bones and enjoy the crispy skin after panfrying for a cheap protein dish. Extend the meat by adding crumbled tofu for a handheld favourite- salmon tofu cakes! Double the protein but not double the costs!

Salmon Tofu Cakes

Turn leftover produce bits, odds and ends into a noodle stir fry!

Dried beans and rice are pantry staples. They store a long time. Make red bean black sticky rice coconut soup with tapioca pearls for a cheap and cheerful dessert.

Red Bean Tapioca Dessert

Many of these ladies experienced Asian food for their first time and in unison exclaimed they will certainly be making them for their families! A Win 🥰

As part of another ACCT summer event I was invited to, was to supervise a fantastic graduation lunch cook off we had with a cohort of ladies for the 'Amal Project' (Amal=Hope)- a program designed to assist newcomer women in integrating into Canadian society and forming friendships across cultures.

Feast your senses on this gorgeous and delicious menu of the Arab and Sub-Suharan Africa. So impressed how humble staple ingredients came together to create extraordinary flavours and textures, that were taste-bud blowing 🔥! Take that Harra Osbao (translates to burned his finger) dish- it is essentially cooked lentils and pasta, pumped with cascading rows of crunchy fried pita chips, aromatic garlic cilantro oil and crispy fried onions (on repeat)... soooo 😋😋😋❤!

Oh, and the burned finger dish name you ask?... it originated when a cook put their finger in the pot to taste it and burned his finger, hence the name "Harra Osbao" "burned his finger" 😄.

- Spinach Strawberry Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

- Goat Cheese and Zaatar Fatayer

- Himbasha (Eritrean Bread)

- Harra Osbao (Syrian Lentil and Pasta)

- Roz 3a Djej (Chicken with Rice and Minced Meat Pilaf)

- Ethiopian Beef Stew and Injera

- Halawit el Jibn (Syrian sweet cheese rolls)

On the home front... with food prices on the rise, affordable hearty comfort is key for winter meals on the family table and teaching alike in my cooking program with @culturelinkto. I've been using budget proteins such as ground beef, canned tuna, and pantry and produce staples such as canned tomatoes, pasta, rice, barley, beans, pulses, and potatoes, onions and leftover veggies to cook up big satiable meals on rotation.

American Beef Goulash (Beefaroni)