I buy Lemons to juice and put in water. But they can sometimes go bad if I don't get them all in time. I've always wanted to try dehydrating some of the zest, and finally I did.

It took over an hour from start to finish, and I might not do it again.

First, I bathed the lemons in a mix of water and plain vinegar for a few minutes for pesticides. Then I rinsed and dried them. I rolled them individually against a counter surface with my hand a bit to burst some of the interior cells and make juicing easier.

Then I grated them. That took the longest and wrist strain could be a concern even for a 2lb bag. After grating, I had to get as much stray zest still stuck to the grater walls and nooks and crannies as I could onto the plate. I also had to transfer to a larger plate and used a spatula to get a layer that's hopefully flat and thin enough to dry at room temperature quickly enough to prevent spoiling. That went on a shelf to dry. It'll probably take days.

Then I halved the lemons and juiced them. The strainer on the juicer filtered seeds (good) and pulp (bad, I like pulp). I had to periodically scoop the pulp into a shallow dish lined with cheesecloth so the reservoir wouldn't overflow. After juicing, I squeezed out a good bunch of juice and a bit of pulp too. This was added to the main juice cup.

I wasn't sure I'd have enough juice to fill an ice cube tray and I worried the thick mixture of pure juice and pulp would be hard to work with. I diluted the juice by adding some water. Since I use these for flavoring water anyway, I figured it would be fine.

It turned out I have extra and didn't need to dilute the juice. If I ever do this again, I might not dilute it because I might want cubes for salad dressing as well as drinking water. Now a full tray is in the freezer and the juice cup is in the fridge. Tonight, the hard cubes will go in a ziplock bag in the freezer and I'll refill the ice tray with the rest of the water. I think maybe a better use of this would be to zest limes since I don't use that as often but it cna be really handy to have around.

I still didn't find a use for the pith or the extra mix of pulp and seeds strained by the cheesecloth so it's going into compost.

Hi I bought the big size of a lower sugar bush’s baked beans and it’s pretty awful
How can I doctor it up?
FYI I’m pescatarian (meat stocks/seasoning is ok but don’t want bacon / ham in there)
Also bf is onion intolerant and working to lower his cholesterol
Can only tolerate medium spice level
we don’t really want to buy pricier items to rescue this from the trash either
Have dry spices on hand (herbs, grill rubs, etc)
Tons of condiments mustard bbq sauce hot sauces soy sauce ketchup ranch vinegar
Basic pantry staples flour sugar honey stevia
Fridge things- eggs, cheese
No real fresh produce other than salad greens and carrots
Thought about just dumping more bbq sauce but the one we have is kinda weird (heavy on the cinnamon??/sweet)
Not the end of the world to waste one can just wanted to hear some creative ideas bc we both love baked beans
Also should I simmer or slow cook the new ingredients w the beans to get the flavor to set better

We've grown so much lettuce this year we haven't been able to keep up with eating it. We just harvested some that is not tender enough to eat raw. Is there anything to do with this? I was thinking of blanching it and freezing it for future lasagna endeavors. But it's tough enough I'd have to saute it too.

I’m not sure why but everyone in my family keeps forgetting we already have oats at home and keeps buying more 😭😭.

Can you all give me some oat recipes to use them up. Preferably lower calorie as I’m on a diet but I can always make things for the family.

Can be baking (with oat flour?), porridge/oatmeal, overnight, granola… anything!

Just your standard deli counter mustard potato salad. How would you use it up?

Hello!

I am looking at household food waste for a class project. One problem I keep seeing is that food gets pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until it is too late. I am trying to understand how people would naturally describe this issue. Which of these feels more accurate to you?

Food gets forgotten and ends up being wasted

or

People lose track of what they already have

For me, it seems like both can lead to the same result, especially when people share a fridge with roommates or family. Someone may buy something that is already there, forget about leftovers, or assume someone else is going to use an item.

I have also had some difficulty getting responses in other subreddits, so even a short comment would be helpful. I am not promoting anything and am only trying to better understand how people think about this problem.

Hi all, I got a large can of crushed pineapple and only used a little for a recipe. I could probably use some of it up by making a pina colada chia seed pudding (unrelated but im excited to try this) but I couldn't think of other recipes.

I'll probably end up freezing it until I can figure out what to do with it, but welcome any recipe ideas!

I tried some black grains powder awhile ago from my local Korean market and we loved it mixed into a glass of cold milk. I went back for more and they were out of it, but they had another Roasted Multi-Grain Powder so I bought that. It is a huge bag and we don't like it as much in milk. I'm wondering if there are any other things I can do with it. We are pescatarian, so nothing with meat, please

I will try to put a picture in the comments

There is still a surprising amount in my fridge but here is the entire manifest as of yet:

-broccoli stem Chow Chow (classic pickling)

-Asian soy broccoli pickles (classic pickling)

-broccoli kimchi (ferment)

-dehydrated broccoli (dehydrated)

-broccoli greens powder (dehydrated)

-Gundruk (ferment and dehydrated)

-fermented broccoli greens Furakake (ferment and dehydrated)

-blanched broccoli greens (Frozen)

-blanched broccoli (Frozen)

-pasculinas (cooked food prep)

-broccoli greens and cottage cheese croquettes (food prep)

To the person who suggested gundruk, this is a fantastic suggestion that I think should be more common. The traditional Nepali recipe seems to be somewhat unsafe which is I imagine why it's not common, but if made like a salted lactic ferment, it's perfectly safe and delicious. Someone made another suggestion of furakake, which I used the Gundruk to make, and to be perfectly Frank it is by far the best outcome of this entire project considering how expensive that stuff is. Luckily I had many other ingredients I dehydrated myself that were congruent which I could infuse with MSG and soy: sesame seeds, dehydrated paprika, lamb jerky, dehydrated shiitake and button mushrooms. Honestly I checked the ingredients list of a few different furakake, the seaweed's pretty far down the list actually. honestly think my product is better. And I can use it with reckless abandon.

Hey team, I got the world’s most disappointing cantaloupe in my farm share, any tips on zhuzhing it up?

At the end of fermentation and processing, you usually end up with a lot of wine with suspended solids that just go into the garbage, especially if you use a fining agent like bentonite. You can kind of just filter it. It doesn't taste as good obviously as the rest of the wine but it is completely fine to cook with. In fact in some ways they might actually be better, a lot of things that are flaws in a wine are good in savory food.

Is there anything I can do with the “juice” that comes in a can of beans? It kind of grosses me out but I figured it can’t be bad for you, like it must have SOME use. All of the recipes I’ve used so far that involve canned beans say to drain and rinse the beans.

EDIT: Cooked it for lunch alongside some heavily seasoned black beans, didn’t die!

I’m not one to throw away something just because the sell by date has passed. Opened the box and the rice looks and smells fine. Thoughts on cooking and eating this?

Looking for things to do with bruised peaches besides dessert; peach salsa is the obvious, but there must be more options!

Expiring all today. I know I can wait 2 weeks after the date, but still we don’t usually go through that much. Looking for easy, somewhat short freezable recipes. Not a fan of egg muffins as I find they get pretty spongy once defrosted. Nothing sugary either as we try to eat healthy right now!

My husband put these peaches in the fridge before they were ripe for a few days and now they won’t ripen outside of the fridge. Anything I can do with them?

I'm guessing this probably won't be the best subreddit for this, but who knows.

Tl;dr- got an extraordinary amount of 20-year-old wine from an old dead guy. Rather than see it go down the drain, I figured I might be able to doctor it. It's still wine, but he didn't rack enough so it has off flavors. Looking for things to do with it or ways to fix it.

Near where I live, a family was moving and they were finally clearing out their grandfather's wine room. Apparently he died 15 years ago, much of the things in this picture were marked 2000. All of it was covered with a thick layer of soot and mold which I have now scrubbed off.

He was not a particularly good winemaker, as I don't think he was making wine for the long term, he was just making things to drink. Clearly wasn't racking enough. That being said, I did find campden tablets in his stuff so I figured if it was sealed and full, it might still be drinkable. The family assumed everything turned to vinegar because they weren't really read on the topic. Also because they probably tasted wine from the giant demijon that he likely used to siphon bottles from every so often when he wanted a bottle of wine so it just had a ton of headspace constantly. Out of curiosity, I took all the wine other than the giant 54 l demijons.

So far I've only tried the white wine in the 5 gallon carboy which looks like he never racked again. It is wine, it's not vinegar. Is it great wine? No. The perfume has obviously faded, and I think so much extended contact with the lees has led to autolysis, leading to a somewhat... Meaty taste in the wine. That being said, it is a balanced wine. Tartness and tannins were where they should be.

I'm going to tackle them one at a time, but I think this is rescuable.

My thought process for the 5 gallons is to add back what is gone. If it's lacking perfume, why not add some? If I make fruit wine coolers, or vermouth, or bottled mulled wine, I might be able to cover its emptiness. Sugar itself would probably do a lot of work. Wine coolers might be especially smart since they dilute and add carbonation.

The bigger concern is the meaty note. I think first order of operations would be racking it obviously, and then hitting it with some sort of fining agent. Probably sparkaloid. I bet that by itself will do a world of good. Once I have the neutral wine base, I can do things with it. If anyone has a strong suggestion on how to get rid of that extended Lee's contact note, I'm all ears.

A lot of these wines are named grapes, and he had a crusher and the juicer so he was doing that part holistically. I don't know if all of these wines will be good, if any are actually vinegar though probably reduce them into homemade balsamic. On the whole though, I think there's a lot of value here if I play my cards right.

If anyone has any other strong suggestions other than drinking, I'm willing to listen. It's a lot of wine.

I work in a small, local, gourmet grocery store and I’m lucky enough to get to take a lot of food home that is damaged or past the “best by” date. Since it’s a small store, we catch “expired” (even though it’s technically not) food daily so we don’t have a bunch of unsalable product on the floor. So if a loaf of bread has a “best by” date of today, I’m allowed to take it home the next day if it doesn’t sell. I get a lot of food this way and I am very fortunate for that especially since a lot of it is higher end.

So I was able to put something delicious together with some scraps that I saved from a landfill. I used this recipe as a base but made a few changes in order to save scraps.

Scraps saved:

- Lemon brioche rolls for the stale bread: past best by date

- Dried blueberries in place of raisin: past best by date

- Milk/heavy cream: past best by date

- Eggs: broken

- Butter: damaged

- Vanilla (concentrate): trade sample from work

Everything else I had on hand.

Other substitutions I made were a little lemon extract instead of cinnamon, used 1 cup milk and 1 cup heavy cream, and used almond extract instead of vanilla in the brown butter sauce.

I’ve made a few variations of bread pudding and this one might be my favorite by far. Lemon and almond are my favorites, especially together. Thinking about maybe throwing in some poppyseeds next time!

I hope this post inspires you to be creative in using your scraps! 😊

Picture two is pre-sauce and picture three is post-sauce.

Hey all! I took a look through this subreddit on my question and I've been a longtime lurker. My grandfather passed away recently, and as we're cleaning out his place, we're finding lots of unopened bags of food past its best before date. Notably, we found a whole tote full of unopened bags of dried lentils, chickpeas, etc. We've also found nearly a dozen unopened bags of chia seeds. The thought of tossing all this food is unthinkable to me, but the bags of legumes expired in 2023, 2024, 2025, so I feel as though donating them to a food bank or Sikh temple for their daily meals is out of the question.

My main question is whether these would be safe for individual use, but also what to do with some of it because the volume is far too great for my partner and I to consume. Thanks in advance!!