April 5, 2024 • 53 mins
While there are some who find it hard to let go, there are also those who easily discard things. In this episode, Jen and Jill learn from Carleigh Bodrug of PlantYou deliciously simple yet creative ways to repurpose food in hopes of reducing our food waste and being intentional about meal planning.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Episode three ninety five Creative Ways to Reduce food waste
with Carly Bodrug of Plant You.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts,
Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my
name is Jill, and we are super excited for this episode.
Carle Bodrug is plant You on Instagram and TikTok and
with over seven million followers, she for almost exclusively for
(00:49):
maybe the past year, has talked about how to reduce
food waste.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And all those statistics. I'm like, oh my gosh, there's
so many numbers, so much goodness. But also what stands
out is just how good she is. I follow her
on Instagram and beautiful pictures of food that look so amazing,
but then also these incredible tips about how to make
sure you get the most of your food and cooked
(01:15):
really tasty meals. So this is just an incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah and all, and this food is made from food scraps,
things you and I would throw away. Carly is repurposing
in not just really delicious but pretty easy ways. And
so she has a new book out called scrappy Cooking,
and she is sharing some of the highlights with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Which is perfect because when we pulled you all in
our friend letter, you all said that the thing you
waste the most is vegetables, like by a land slide.
Almost sixty two percent of you who answered that poll
said it's vegetables. So how perfect that we have Carly
here today to talk about specifically vegetables, how to not
(02:05):
waste them, how to cook them in a yummy way,
how to repurpose and utilize even parts of vegetables that
we thought we should be throwing away.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
So this is it's just so good.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
But first, this episode is brought to you by Treasure,
the opposite of waste and garbage, and a treasure is
what you are. And if you want more people telling
you in different ways about the treasure you are, then
get the front Letter. Right now, we're podcasting to you
(02:41):
in your ears about how great you are, and we're
writing to you in the email the Friend Letter about
how lovely you are, what a treasure you are, and
also Freebie's savings Tips spending hags. So if you want
to get all of those treasures for yourself, because You're
(03:02):
a treasure Frugal friendspodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Treasure, that is what you are. All right, That's all
we can legally sing. All right. Carly doesn't really need
an introduction, because if you've ever wondered about reducing food waste,
you probably already follow her on Instagram or TikTok. But
she is a New York Times bestselling author already. Uh
(03:25):
and she has a new cookbook out. She's self taught,
plant based, and she's literally famous for her simple take
on low waist vegan recipes. Uh. And so we had
such a good time chatting with her, So without further ado,
let's do it. Carly, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast.
(03:49):
We are stoked to have this conversation.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
I could not be more excited to be here. Thank
you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I'm I'm beyond thrill because we're talking about food, but
we're also talking about reducing food waste, which I'm realizing
is becoming one of my biggest areas of concern and
potentially like just a heightened awareness that I really can't
let things go. It mighty be teetering on the edge
(04:19):
of like really unhinged, but I really can't stand it.
And I think that just from following you on Instagram,
You've got so much to offer. But I'm so excited
to really like dive in and give this conversation to
our audience.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So can we start there?
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Can we talk.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
About food scraps, ideas for repurposing food? How do you
come up with new ideas to people just like have
to be brilliant or are there like somethings consider.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Their hope for the rest of us.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
You know what, whenever I talk about food waste, I
like to start by sourcing a statistic, and that's that
thirty to forty percent of the entire US food supply
ends up in landfills. And what is the most shocking
about that is you would think that the majority of
it comes from grocery stores or retail landscapes, but it
actually the biggest percentage is in homes, so in consumer homes.
(05:18):
So it's a real problem not only for our planet
because that food ends up in landfills and then produces
methane gas, but for our wallets. We're talking about saving
money on here, and if thirty percent of your food
is going in the garbage can, it is an astronomical
amount of money that we are just throwing down the drain.
(05:42):
So that's the number one thing I like to start with.
Can anybody reduce the food waste? The answer is absolutely yes.
So it was probably about two years ago. I, as
a food blogger, had always been cognizant about food waste.
I'm plant based, one of the main reasons being for
environmental reasons, and it just when I learned that statistic
(06:03):
about food waste, it was hard to wrap my head around.
And because I'm constantly testing recipes, we have so much
food coming into the home and I have to be
really cognizant of this from a financial perspective, and also
that I don't want to be wasting things. And I
threw up an orange peel candy recipe one day, not
thinking much of it, and I remember I kind of
(06:23):
put my phone down, as I do when I post
a reel. I'm like, I don't want to see how
people are reacting to this real way. Came back to
it a couple hours later and it had like a
million views, and that was my first video to ever
go mega viral, and I'm like, wait, people care about this,
And so I think I've done one hundred scrappy episodes
(06:44):
since and now written a cookbook on the subject. But
when we think about scrappy cooking, I think people's minds
go to orange peel, eating orange peels, eating banana peels,
which is all fun and dandy, But in reality, what
lowist cooking is about is utilizing what you have in
your kitchen, making sure things don't go to waste. And
(07:05):
the easiest way, in my opinion, to do that is
to be strategic about meal planning, so making sure you're
not over buying, and then number two, having a repertoire
of meals that you can interchange vegetables and produce items
in like, for example, we make a curry every week
where we're interchanging the vegetables that we have in our
(07:27):
fridge to make sure that you're using everything up so
it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't have
to be scrappy to the extreme.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I can commiserate with this, Karly, because when we first
started the Frugal Friends podcast and probably still now, people
assume that we're going to tell them that they need
to have reusable toilet paper, that were going to be like.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That far to that crazy, but the piper and cupons, but.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There is an attainable portion of this. We can find
some version of a radical middle in this where it
doesn't include us, just like gnawing on banana peels, but
we can just be a little bit more planful. But
I also love this because it's not just about the environment,
which is a big eie, but for a lot of
(08:14):
us that's not always on the forefront. It's good to
remind ourselves of that, but we're often going to be
more motivated in the day to day on how is
it benefitting made just to be realistic about humans and
so to not waste the money on the food that
you bought, but to also stretch the days that you're
(08:34):
consuming the food that you bought because you've been able
to be planful and buy interchangeable ingredients and then maybe
follow people like you to get more creative.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Yeah, a lot of my ethos is also tied to
eating healthy and eating more plants, whatever that looks like
in your life. And I really think that eating a
low wast diet per se ties into this conversation about
healthy eating, because I think a lot of us buy
a whole bunch of vegetables at the beginning of the
(09:08):
week really well intentioned, and then your week gets busy,
our lives go crazy, as most of us do, and
then at the end of the week, you're staring your
fridge and you've got that box of wilting spinach. So
if we can all be more intentional about our planning,
not only are we going to reduce our environmental impact,
but we're going to eat healthier and we're going to
(09:28):
also reduce food waste and save money. So it's all
like it's a win win win to start thinking about
your food waste.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, everybody who's ever tried to, you know, quote unquote
eat healthier has had that. I personally, that's why I
buy so much frozen produce now, Like, yes, I try
to buy frozen whenever I can, because I know by
midweek I'm not the same person I was on Sunday
when I made the good meal plan. And that's why
(09:58):
I also like try make more realistic. I try to
think about the person I'm going to be on Wednesday
when I'm making my Sunday meal plan. This is Wednesday, Gen,
Like Wednesday Gen is done, Wednesday, Jen's tired. I get
a second win on Thursday. But Wednesday Gen is tired.
I am.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
This is so great because I'm the exact same way,
and I think people look and you guys are probably
as hosts of this podcast, people look at you this
like perfect kind of monolith of like zero waste living
and doing everything perfectly. And in reality, I've created these
systems for myself because I am that person. Like Wednesday,
(10:41):
Carly is like I'm getting uber eats, like I can't
I can't this week. So you have to kind of
have that foresight to think, Okay, what is midweek Carly
going to do? Am I really going to eat this
like three heads of broccoli that I'm buying on Sunday
thinking that I'm going to be like super healthy this week?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Right?
Speaker 5 (11:03):
And I wanted to point out that one thing people
think about frozen vegetables and fruit is that it has
less nutrients than your fresh stuff, and that is actually
it's actually the opposite. So oftentimes frozen vegetables and fruit,
because they're harvested and then frozen right away, rather than
being put on a truck traveling to your grocery store
and being bought, they often maintain more of the nutrients
(11:27):
than the fresh stuff, especially in a place like Canada
where I am, where a lot of the food is
being shipped in, So there is absolutely no shame in
relying on frozen produce and if not, it's going to
save you money and help you eat healthier. So fun tip.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, yeah, that's me. I'm trying to just be healthier.
That's so true. I also wanted to point out because
you eat a plant based diet, and I love the
episode that we had with plant based on a Budget.
That was another one of my favorite Appalthoy.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Yes, one of my best friends love her.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Oh she is so great. But we had a recently
we did a survey of our audience and we had them,
we had them chance, gave them a chance to like
just open feedback, and one of the girls was like,
I just feel like nobody's talking about how tofu is
a great source of protein and it's so much cheaper
than meat, and nobody's talking about it. And I just
(12:22):
want to apologize to that listener because all like, eating
plant based is a great way to save money. I
know this is not like a you know, plant based episode,
but you mentioned it, and it is such a great
way when you take out the most expensive part of
the meal, you're left with the most nutrient dense and
(12:43):
least expensive parts.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
For some reason, there's the stigma around plant based or
what a lot of people like to call vegan eating,
that it's super expensive. And I think it can be.
If you go to the grocery store and you're one
to one replacing your chicken or your meat with like
a processed plant based meat product that has that is
very expensive. But if you're relying on whole foods, your beans,
(13:09):
your grains, your tofu, in reality, it can be a
lot less expensive than eating animal products. Even cheese, as
I've heard, is very expensive. And I remember when I
was not vegan, the most expensive thing on my grocery
bill week after week with like with chicken. And this
isn't to say you can't ever eat animal products again,
(13:31):
I just think it's if you're wanting to reduce your
grocery bill, it can be a really great way. And
then to focus on whole foods rather than processed foods. Again,
when for your health? When for when for your wallet
as well?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yes? Okay, so in your kitchen and in your grocery shopping, Like,
what are the things you feel help you best reducing
in food waste. I know we had kind of mentioned
not of buying and buying interchangable, but how do you
act that out? How do you do that practically?
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Yeah, this is a great question and something I think
a lot of people ignore in the process of reducing
food waste. And the number one tip I have for
people is careful and intentional planning. So I try to
grocery shop just once per week, which is a feat
considering a recipe test for my living.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
That tip in itself is strong, is difficult, practical and difficult.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Yeah. So I typically grocery shop on Sundays, which is
a popular day for people, and I try to keep
my work week Monday to Fridays. So I say take
half an hour an hour if you have it, sit down,
if you have a family, sit down with your family,
if it's just you, sit down with a piece of
paper and a pen. It doesn't have to be fancy.
(14:52):
Make a grid Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. And this doesn't have to be super rigid,
but think about what you want to eat for the week.
So maybe you're having pasta one night and you're gonna
prep overnight boats for breakfast, and then build that out
leave some flexibility. If you're somebody who often goes out
(15:13):
to eat or orders in, it's important to make it
leave for a little spontaneity in there, and then from there,
once you've built out a meal plan per se, I
like to tell people to start then making a grocery
list from that meal plan, So you're gonna look at
your vegetables that you need, your grains that you need,
and then before you head to the grocery store, shop
(15:34):
your fridge and pantry because oftentimes you're gonna have things
like rice and catch up and can tomatoes often oats
that you're gonna need anyways, and then this prevents over buying.
You can also before you even do this, take a
quick scan of your fridge in pantry to see what
items you have and build out that meal plan based
(15:56):
on items that you have to use up. But planning
is going to be your number one thing heading into
the grocery store. Without a plan, you're almost guaranteed to overbuy.
Food marketing is genius, and if you don't have a
list in front of you, you're going to be picking
things off the shelf that you don't need and spending
money that you don't want to.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Okay, sub question for you on this one. If somebody
is like that all sounds good, but they're really kind
of starting from ground zero and they don't even know
what recipes could be made with what they already have
on hand, or what they'd need to add to the list,
or how to even find food that their family's going
(16:40):
to eat. Do you have any thoughts on where somebody
could start with that. They're like, okay, sure, I'll set thirty.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Minutes aside, but like, how do I do that?
Speaker 5 (16:50):
It's a great question because as a food blogger cooks
for a living, it's hard for me to zoom out
and realize, like, that's where I was at seven years
ago hundred percent. So the biggest there's so many free
tools online that are at our disposal. I like to
tell people to hop on Pinterest and search the terms
(17:11):
like twenty minute meals. If you're somebody who is vegan,
you can search twenty minute vegan meals, twenty minute weeknight dinners,
and then compile a list of what looks good to you. Oftentimes,
families will have recipes that they love and kind of
cycle through so you can kind of look at what
you typically eat in a week and maybe build off
(17:32):
of that. But if you're starting from ground zero, you're
not a big cook. Pinterest is your friend, as well
as Instagram and other social media sites, and looking for
things that can be put together quickly. Often really easy
recipes if you're somebody who works a nine to five,
for example, would be croc pot recipes. So being able
(17:53):
to put everything in a crock pot like the night
before or in the evening and set it and forget
it or what they call dump meals are really really
valuable in this case. And then utilize your freezer. So
if you are starting from scratch and you're prepping a
big pile of chili, and say you live on your
own and you're like, h I don't want to have
chili for like the next ten days, utilize your freezer.
(18:17):
Freeze it in individual serving sizes, and then you're saying
thank you to your future self by having meals already
prepped that are healthy and delicious and going to help
you reduce your waste.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yes, I love super cubes for that. I was gonna say, yes,
those are great, not a necessity but they are fantastic
for freezing that stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So now that we've kind of talked about how to
start from ground zero, now we're kind of moving into
two toh one.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
What to do with your food?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Can you tell us a little bit about your favorite,
your top scrappy cooking recipes when we're really now we
know what we're eating, but we're really at this food
reduction point, how do you approach that? What are your favorites?
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Yeah, so there's lots to have fun with. I always
tell people if they're buying broccoli every week and they're
paying by weight and then they're throwing out the broccoli stem,
that is again throwing money in the trash. Broccoli stems
are completely edible and they're actually really delicious. And I
have a couple of ways to use broccoli stems in
my new books. So one of them is broccoli stems
(19:30):
summer roles. So we're a huge fan of summer roles
in this house. And that's just making sure rice paper
is wet and plow making sure you can roll rice
paper rolls with rice noodles and your veggies, and then
instead of throwing out your brocoli stems, you can cut
them into match sticks, almost like carrots, and put them
(19:53):
in in the summer roles as well. And I also
have a delicious like mango peanut sauce for dipping in
the book. So good. But one other thing you can
do with broccoli stems that will do almost weekly is
I'll make like a one pot vegan mac and cheese.
And I love broccoli and mac and cheese, but I'll
I'll also grate the stems right into the broccoli mac
(20:14):
and cheese, and it's almost like a graded carrot replacement.
And then the third thing you can do chop them
up and just throw them in a stir fry. So
that's one thing to be thinking about. If you're a
big broccoli eater, you will surely love broccoli stems. You
have just have to peel off that tough outer layer.
Probably my favorite recipe in the book is called Sunday Sauce,
(20:36):
and it's just like a bolonaise kind of ragu and
it's a delicious recipe where literally, this is what I
was talking about fridge raid. So we have a whole
bunch of recipes in the book that are have like
a fridge rayed icon and what this means is that
you can basically use any of the vegetables in your
fridge and interchange them to go into a recipe. But
this one is particularly good for it nice. Yeah. And
(21:00):
so what this one is is basically you add some
lentils and then whatever veg so I mean, like mushrooms,
bell peppers, onion, garlic. You name it into a food
processor to make like a veggie ground, or you can
chop by hand, whichever one is accessible to You throw
that into a pot and saute it with some tomato
(21:22):
paste and then add dice tomatoes and spices, and it
makes just a beautiful sauce that can freeze, go over pasta,
or be used as a race, as a base for
a whole bunch of recipes.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I love that. I think especially for people who are
starting out, that can be one of the biggest hang
ups is this recipe looks really good, but I don't
have all the ingredients on hand, and I don't have
time to run out. So I guess I can and
I'm just gonna get takeout or I'm just gonna go
out to eat or do something quick and simple by
convenience buying. Convenience versus oh, I could just sub this
(22:00):
for something else that I have, and I think that
that courage it feels like a big barrier for a
lot of people to kind of step into this. I'm
gonna disobey the recipe and I'm gonna use something that
the recipe isn't calling for. Who knows if it's gonna
taste good. So I love that you've got a recipe
(22:20):
that's helping to give that permission.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Well, any of this.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You could, and it helps to kind of Okay, somebody
who knows what you're talking about is telling me that
I can do this, and that's so helpful.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I know.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Permission is like the thing that you kind of need.
Like I love looking at recipes on blogs and reading
the comments. Someone's like, can I sell this for this
if I if I don't have eggs for these scrambled eggs,
can I use something else if I have an egg allergy?
Like I love Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
But then also they'll go like too far. They'll be like,
you know, these ricotta pancakes are awful because I subbed
her for like potatoes, and it's just like that's because
that's completely not thet So like having permission of like
these are you know kind of these are the parameters
in which you can like alter this and it's still
(23:14):
be delicious.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
That's a whole huge goal of mine. I love to
teach people the fundamentals of cooking so they feel confident
enough to make those changes in their home. Like even
something as simple as we have a vegan omelet in
the book, and again it's a kitchen raid recipe. You
can use whatever veggies you want in the omelet, but
unless you're giving people permission to do that as the
(23:39):
person who created the recipe, I think people feel very
bound to it, right, and then if they don't have
the ingredients for that, the last thing I want somebody
doing is going and buying a whole bunch of indescript
ingredients that they don't normally cycle through in their home,
and now we're wasting food. So I think I probably
have about twenty five kitchen raid recipes in there, where
(24:00):
a whole basis of them is being able to interchange
the vegetables, which in essence to me is the is
how you reduce waste is by being really flexible and
making sure that you're using up what's in your fridge
in pantry.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yes, another thing about broccoli stems, so as someone with
a child who likes broccoli one day and then the
next day hates it and doesn't eat it, like boiling
those and like putting them in a sauce, either like
a mare and arrow where you can't really see it,
like just blending it up so it's so, you know,
(24:37):
so ingraded in there, he doesn't know it's in there,
or a muffin where it's like, oh, this is a
green muffin. This is very fun and it's got chocolate
chips or maybe a green So I haven't actually tried
it at like making the sauce green. It is a
way that I've got because I accidentally bought they sell
you could just buy broccoli stems frozen, and actually bought
(25:00):
those ones, so we had to come up with creative
ways to use it. So that's a way to get
your kids to eat broccoli stems without knowing it.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
One other recipe you hip in there off of the
back of that that I want to mention is in
the book. I have something called a scrappy pesto and
it's really again an interchangeable recipe, and I'll just kind
of run down it right now. But you can use
basically any greens you have, and I like to encourage
people to use something like radish tops beat greens, which
(25:34):
you might not you might normally discard, and then you
blend that with some basil if you have it, cash
us nutritional yeast, garlic, and a little bit of salt,
and it makes just the most amazing pesto sub that
can be used on anything. It can be frozen, it
can be used as a pasta sauce, it can be
used as a dip, and it's super delicious. And if
(25:54):
you're somebody who has trouble getting through greens, having that
in your repertoire is going to save you a lot
of waste.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah. I have never used my beat greens before. My
father in law has a farm and sometimes we'll get
beats from there, and I've never used the greens before,
but what a great way just when you're making the beets,
just you know, put the greens aside and make a
little sauce. Put it in the freezer.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Another thing you can do with beat greens is make uh.
I don't know if you guys have ever made kale chips,
but they're shockingly delicious. But I have a pa beat
chip recipe and it's really simple, Like you just toss
your beets with a little bit of olive oil and
nutritional yeast and seasoning, pop them in the oven, and
they make a delicious, like crispy chip similar to kale chips.
(26:42):
So don't toss your beat greens.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
They're god feeling so inspired.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, kale chips are good. I like kale, but even
for people who don't like kale, kale chips are really
where it's at, and all chips are where it's at.
A couple more like commonly scrapped, commonly thrown away scraps.
What are some of your favorite recipes?
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Okay, I'm gonna whirl through some for you. So number
one canned chickpeas the liquid in it it's called aqua faba.
This is the most amazing vegan egg white substitute and
the craziest thing. When you beat it with like a
hand whisk, it will create a meringue. So you can
make like mini meringue cookies. You can use it as
(27:27):
an egg white substitute in something like a cake. So
I have a cake recipe that uses the aqua faba
for eggs, and you can also use it to bread things,
so like if you were to bread your tofu, you
can use it as the egg bas replacement. Pickle juice,
pickle juice, don't throw out your pickle juice. I know
a lot of athletes like to drink pickle juice, but
(27:47):
pickled juice it makes an amazing marinade for tofu. If
you want like a almost like a pickled chicken kind
of vibe, that's great. And then also in soups, I
have like a dilly pickle or so soup in my book,
and deal pickle chips so good. What's another one? Banana
(28:09):
peel bacon. You can eat banana peels. This is one
that like people are very apprehensive about. You want to
scrub them, and you can make banana peel bacon shockingly delicious.
And then if you're not a banana peel bacon fan,
you can make mushroom bacon, which is just unreal. And
then finally, the number one most wasted food I bet
(28:29):
you guys would never guess is actually bread because we
just buy so much and then it goes hard really easily.
So if you had.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
It not here, no way.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, you a big maybe are.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
You a big bread fan, Jill?
Speaker 3 (28:43):
You love it, it gets demolished. I love that it's
here one minute, gone the next.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
But the rest of us want to hear.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
How yeah, So if you have bread, that's we don't
We don't want you eating mold. So I want to
preface this by saying, everybody, if something is showing signs
of like real spoilage and has a scent to it,
it needs to be composted or discarded. But if your
bread is just like gone hard or a little bit
a little bit like not edible in its form, you
(29:15):
can actually make bread crumbs so easy. You just added
to a blender or food processor with a little bit
of spices, you've got amazing bread crumbs for a whole
bunch of things. Or number two, I love to make
this like vegan French toast castrole. So you just tear
it up, add it to a casserole dish with like
a custard made of coconut milk and vegan yogurt, and
it is so good. Rebake it. It will be soft
(29:37):
again and pillowy and delicious.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yes, the French toast castrole is a go to for me.
I love it.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
I love cruton.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Bread. Yeah, I love me too.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I love bread in all the ways so good. I'm
in my sour dough era now too, so I am
in control of how much bread I can have in
my And it's wild.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
We've been a wild Yes, you know what else is wild?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Every single time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
We all benefit from it. Never goes to waste. The
bill of the.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
Week, that's right, it's time for the best minute of
your entire week.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Maybe a baby was born and his name is William.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died
and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Fust bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Bill of the week, Carly. Every week we yell, we
yell at our guests and ask them to share with
us their favorite bill of the week. We'd love to
hear yours.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
As soon as I saw this question, what immediately came
to my my mind. I used to work at a
hospital and there was this man. He was an angel
named Bill, who was the maintenance man for the hospital.
And this guy deserves Bill of the week every week.
He was just the most like he would do anything
(31:16):
anything that you needed done. You get Bill on the phone,
and he had just like Dad energy and he could
fix absolutely anything. So that's my bill of the week
rather than a bill that I have to pay. I
like to think.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah Bill at the hospital, Ye Bill for anybody. Dad energy.
I love Bill, Dad energy.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Fix anything, gem of a human kind. This is what
we're learning about Bill's people named Bill. Anytime somebody calls
in and talks about a person they know named Bill,
they're always saw of the earth, human being, just this
great individual. And yet never have we ever right we're
(31:58):
encroaching on four hundred episodes had a person named Bill
call in themselves. And you know what I'm realizing right now, Jen,
is because we don't attract that, we.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Don't dragsaults of the earth.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
So.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
Kind human topics you can fix. I think this is.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
It's because ninety five percent of our audiences women, Jill.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Jen.
Speaker 7 (32:26):
Okay, okay, if you're the reason, if you're listening, if
your name is still and somehow you've you've decided you'll
grace us with your presence by listening, please please call
in and just.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Say I'm Bill, it's me Hi, I love I'm the treasure.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
It's me or you know, any anything else.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We're here for it for overthpodcast dot Com, slash Bill.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
And now it's time for Round you. I love the
sound of We have worked really hard to perfect these
sound effects over three hundred and ninety five episodes.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
We can't we can't do it all. We don't have
professional sound effects. Now we have our homegrown voices. Yeah,
we got to use our We're on a budget here,
all right. We can't hire out these sound effects.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
All right. So for the Lightning Round this week, we'd
like to hear what is your most quote unquote creative
dish you've ever created. Carly bonus points for you, specifically
if it was a fail.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
But because it's.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Jen's Vulnerability Round and she likes hearing about.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Hearing about failure in the Vulnerability Round, I love also
hearing about success. You could give us, you can give
us both.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Yes, okay, I'll give you. When I was testing recipes
for my first book, most creative recipe was my buffalo
cauliflower wings. They are so delicious in anybody who tries
them loves them, and they're actually wrapped in rice paper,
which makes like a flaky meat like skin so good.
So that was like a brain wavelength, and I created
(34:12):
them with my dad. But during the testing for my
first book, my first book was entirely oil free, and
we were trying to create a brand muffin recipe. Had
to have gone through ten rounds of brand muffins, and
every single one was like hard as rock, to the
point like if you threw it at somebody, it would
it would do damage.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You catch a charge?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
So they never ended up in the book, but those
would be the it's.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Hard to bake without without oil, yes, yeah, without really
dense fat.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
I don't even know a lot about baking. I don't know,
like why I know that. Neither do documentary the salt fat, acid, fire,
acid heat. Yes, I watched that documentary once. Man, good, Okay.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's so great. I love buffalo cauliflowers, but they are
so fantastic. I've never heard that rice paper, so yeah, right,
well done.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
I love that. I love that it's a texture thing, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
It's nice and crispy, and then like the soft cauliflower
on the outside that's like been melted in buffalo sauce.
Just delicious.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And then you can reuse the rest of those little
rice papers for some broccoli stick spring summer rolls. Yeah,
I just you reused exactly. I look at you, look
at you. I'm listening.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
I'm as right, John, what are you what you've got?
Speaker 1 (35:42):
So maybe not the most creative, but this week okay,
so we're our house is under renovation, so we had
to I have half a kitchen, and so half of
my kitchen had to go into the pantry. So I
forgot about some things that I bought because I just
had to when the guy. The guys don't give me
any notice and what they're gonna work on. So they're like, oh,
we're going to take this wall out today, and I'm
(36:04):
like getting everything into the pantry. So I had onions
in there for weeks. One of them started sprouting something,
so I was like, I have to use these onions today.
And I happened to have a can of lentils that
i'd had probably a year because I don't know why
I bought hand lentils, Like every recipe I used just
(36:27):
uses the raw, but I had a can of lentils
for a very long time, never could use them. So
I made a like a lentils and rice. I think
it's muhadara. I'm butchering the pronunciation. But I rice, lentils,
caramelized onions, and I made that Sunday.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
That sounds great, But also the words that you used
to describe it made me concerned that everything was expired
that you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Know, Okay, no, nothing was expired. The bad parts of
the onions got thrown away, and I used just the
good parts of the onions, the parts that did not
smell or were not you know, weren't black or sprouting,
and and yeah, and the lentil, the cannon lentils was
(37:18):
still good.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Thrown some rice so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yeah, okay, my example is not plant bassed.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
But I am so proud of myself for this. I
got to partake in this one and it was good.
It was a wind.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Did you I gave this to you?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
You get you either gave it to me or I
saw it.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Okay, So I think I ate it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Maybe I was probably so proud I was giving it
out to everybody, anybody.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Walking down the street.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
So I had just an array of leftovers, small amounts
and random like one rib, two meat balls, to cooked potatoes,
and then I had some eggs and oh stuffing. I
had some a handful of leftover stuffing random. But I
(38:12):
refused to throw these things out. But all these things
are left over from meals that we had been eating
so much already that week, so I I could not
stomach it for myself or for my husband. So I
decided I'm gonna make pancakes out of all of this
instead of throwing away. So I just pulled it all out,
(38:34):
threw in a couple of eggs to congeal it, added
some flour, and I fried those puppies up like a pancake.
And let me tell you, I served it then with
like a jam.
Speaker 5 (38:48):
So they were like savory, like a savory shrinner pancake, a.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Savory pancake with jam. You could choose jam or sour cream.
They were them. Eric loved them. That's my husband. He's like,
oh my gosh, you need to make these again. I'm like,
it's not can't happen. It's never gonna happen again, because
this was a wild surprise.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I love that pancake.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Good for you, weed nothing. Yeah, this is how deep
down the rabbit hole I have gotten. Bro, I'm just
throwing everything in, mashing it together and calling it pancake.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Feeding it people.
Speaker 5 (39:27):
That's when I saw this.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
I love that. I just saw this on social media.
But it was like, like they called it a mcgriddle muffin,
so they were throwing like a like a pancake mix
in with just just whatever they were using, like a
breakfast meat, some cheese. But you could really do like
whatever leftovers you had and throw it all into a
(39:51):
muffin tin. Yeah, and make little little pancake muffies. Wow aside, Yeah,
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
And when when you start doing this, I think that's
what I love you. You kind of break the barriers
and you feel empowered to get more and more creative
as you're going. At least when you just get one
win and there might be a lot of veils in there,
but you get one win and then you're like, oh man,
I can try new things and keep going.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, which I feel like Carly, on your social media profiles,
like you give so many accessible ways to break into
that little barrier, Like you can go to your profile
and just scroll down and see like, oh my gosh,
I have that in my fridge right now, click on
(40:42):
it and see like what to do with it it's
and just get that little win really quickly and then
feel like, oh my gosh, like I don't have to
throw away as many of these scraps maybe as I am,
or when my kid doesn't finish their meal, I don't
have to throw it all in the trash.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
Yeah, it's really it's really all about what Jill said.
It's gaining confidence in the kitchen is a huge piece
of the puzzle here. And once you realize that cooking
the steaks are low, it's supposed to be fun. It
doesn't have to be this massively intimidating thing that you
have to be perfect every time at It takes the
pressure off because then it's gonna get easier and you
(41:23):
can you can literally throw anything into pancake mix and
it's going to turn out.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
What a great key takeaway from this episode. I truly
believe that to be true. And if you gain nothing else,
I think you've walked away with a really great money
saving habit.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
So Carly, people are gonna want more from you. Let's
just let's tell them where to find everywhere.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, you can find me on any social media
network other than maybe Snapchat. I plant you. I haven't
gotten on there yet, But play wio you and everything's there.
And if you're interested in my book, it's scrappycookbook dot com,
but you can find it through my profile as well.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
We are so so so excited for this book. This
is definitely one I want to have on hand, just
to have the index so I can go through whenever
I have a scrap, like, just hit the chapter, hit
fridge rates all that. So Carly, thank you so so
so much for hanging out with us.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
This has been a blast. Thank you. I have so
much gratitude for you guys having me on. It's been
so much fun, and I hope people enjoy the show.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Agreed, so fun.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Oh my gosh, I am so excited for this. I
don't I don't have cookbooks, right, this is a thing
I do not. I don't actually have many books. I'm
a Kindle library person. We know this, yes, but I
am so excited to have a physical copy of this cookbook.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
This will be something you pull out.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yes, yes, it's a reference guide.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah, well okay for me, I'm excited about this because
I think I would love to cook more veggie forward
plant based forward. But so many of the recipes what
I'm accustomed to what I'm used to is not that,
and that's my barrier to making tofu or tempe or
(43:27):
really going wild with the veggies. I just don't know
what I don't know, and so I think people like
Carly helping to kind of here's the things you don't know,
just do it, here's the recipe, make it. Because we
were talking about this in a recent episode two about
farmer's markets and how wanting to get more if I do,
(43:48):
if I am buying meat, wanting to know where it's
coming from, recognizing that the way that our animals are
harvested is just like we're not actually getting even the
nutrients from animal products we think we are.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Because of that's a whole other soapbox, but.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
It's making me want to learn more about what to
do with veggies, how to get the protein that I
need from these things. But just feeling like this is
so much work and time and energy to discover these things,
and so to have resources and a cookbook from someone
like Carly is so exciting. Yeah, me too, Well, I'm
(44:24):
in a molist's kitchen.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
It kind of reminds me of the episode that we
did with Cassie Joy Garcia. She wrote the cookbook Cook Once,
Eat Twice, where that's primarily protein focused. This is essentially
the same thing. You're taking a produce, an item of
produce that you'd usually use part of and throw the
rest away, but instead you can cook once and use
(44:50):
the one piece of produce in two diverse ways. And
so I think it's not an either or. I think
even if you eat meat, this is a fantastic way
to to incorporate more micronutrients into your diet because so
many good vitamins and minerals are lost in the pieces
(45:10):
of the produce that we throw away or produce that's
like a little not as good as it once was,
that we don't know what to use it for now.
I think we lose so much of that. And if
your goal is to cook healthy and you want that,
you know, your Sunday and your Wednesday person to be
(45:32):
the same. I think this is just a great like
cook once, Eat twice sort of thing. That episode we
played it back in February of last year to eighty seven.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Lovely well, thank you all so much for listening. We
hope this was just as fruitful for you as it
felt for us. Many of you know that we have
a newsletter called the friend Letter that goes out three
times a week all you Treasures, where we're talking about
what's for free that week, giving savings tips and life
(46:06):
hacks to help you save money spend better. We want
to give a shout out to one of our friends
for sending a response to the friend Letter, because again,
it is an email, and you can respond to that
email and it comes to our inbox. This is from Liz,
who said I started listening to Frugal Friends when I
was trying to pay off my student loans and did
a call with Jen years.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
Ago debt Gone. Hey, Jen.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
The membership was critical for me keeping focused, and I
loved all the challenges on the portal. I love all
the podcasts, but I'm generally catching up. Just want to
say thanks for all you do. Wow, Liz, you intersected
with us all the ways you could possibly.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yes, Liz, I'm so excited to hear this. Your debt
is gone from I probably only took calls with a
couple like maybe like five people, So yes, Liz, I
remember you. You are treasure amazing.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Liz. Thanks for sharing that, and thank you all for
listening again. If you want this Friend Letter if you
want to be able to respond to us, you want
in on all the tips and resources we're handing out
to you for free three times a week Frugal Friends
podcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yes, and if you're interested in the membership list talked about,
we're revamping it. But you won't find that out if
you don't get on the friend letter. See you're exciting.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. I had something
(47:47):
that I wanted to talk about on the after show,
and now I can't remember it because I'm so like
repurposing food.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
I think it was repurposing food because Eric doesn't like leftovers.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Oh yes, okay, that was it. You are a whiz
at using up all of your food. Uh, you're the best.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
Chet is She.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Is a cheese whiz. And this is with a partner
who does not eat leftovers.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
I mean, yeah, I don't want to paint him to
be this like I refuse kind of person. He's definitely
grown leaps and bounds over like okay, mind over matter,
but he doesn't prefer to eat the same thing constantly
over and over again. And I haven't complained about that either,
because it has kind of forced creativity for me and
(48:37):
made cooking a little bit more gamified. And I've embraced that.
And before you get on me about traditional gender roles
in our carriage, it isn't agreed upon thing because he
is literally building my house and doing lots of other
things that I'm like, I will feed you, yep. If
(48:58):
you will climb on the roof and figure out how
to fix the electricity, then yes, I will feed you dinner.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
There are unique divisions of labor in every relationship, but
I think a lot of people use not liking leftovers
or not liking like microwaved food, or having a partner
that doesn't like it will use it as an excuse
to cook less. Yeah, and like my sister in law,
she also does not like leftovers. And it's not like
(49:26):
a get over it and eat them sort of thing,
because I've heard people say that. Yeah, but it is like,
you shouldn't be forced to live your life in a
way where you're just like forcing yourself almost every day
to eat food you don't like. Like, that's no way
to live. But that is an opportunity to get creative,
(49:49):
not a death sentence for your budget.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Yeah, I think it's an invitation to really enjoy your food.
I think that people who really embrace leftovers, they don't
have a high priority on enjoyment of food. They've maybe
got their focus on other things. And that's great too,
But I think for really both Eric and I, we
really enjoy food. We want our food to taste good,
(50:12):
we like trying new things, so I think this kind
of blends with that. And so some of the things
that I will do in that regard is if I
do make a big meal and we like it, sometimes
I'll just freeze it. So it's not that I'm getting
super creative. It's just that we liked this, but we're
(50:33):
not gonna want it again tomorrow, so I'm gonna throw
it in the freezer the leftovers as a kindness to
myself in a month from now, when I can pull
it out again and serve it exactly as is. But
then there's also other ways of being able to repurpose
the food that you have then made. So a lot
of times I will focus on some of my bases
(50:56):
of things, so like a potato or a rice or
a post stuff, I might make additional and then I'll
be able to serve those things with other things. So
I've got extra rice, and that was a let's say,
some version of a chicken and rice. Now I've got
more of that, and maybe even with that same chicken,
doesn't even matter what the sauce was, I'm making a
(51:17):
fried rice with it now. Or I made up a
lot of potatoes and it was the side of a dish,
and now it's going to go on top of tacos,
and the next day it's going to go on top
of a bed of lettuce as a salad. So just
finding ways to reincorporate some of these ingredients and maybe
even what was the main part of one dinner is
(51:40):
now the side dish of another. Something I did recently
this week was, I mean, we love charcuterie, but I
had gotten mozzarella tomato, and then I have this like
balsamic glaze. So that was a salad we like chopped
up the mozzarella and tomato on a bed of lettuce.
Speaker 4 (51:57):
And then the next day.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
We had that with basil, just the mozzarella, tomato, balsamet glaze,
some salt, and basil as a part of a charcooterie board.
So it's similar flavors but yet a different experience. I
think is the way that I've tried to kind of
gamify it.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
That's I love that. I love that I learned from
you in the way that you cook food.
Speaker 4 (52:23):
Oh yeah, okay, I do.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Because I'm still not super creative.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
But you're a very good cook. I like eating your food.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Oh, thank you. It's something I have learned to tolerate.
It's still not something I love. I don't think I
don't necessarily enjoy cooking as a hobby, but I do
love to like the food that I'm eating. Yeah, I love.
(52:53):
I love that to enjoy the food. Yeah, but I
will eat leftovers. I can't. I need it more than
one day. Oh, like that's my limit. So but it's
not that I don't value the taste. It's that I
more value efficiency and less dishes. Yeah, and everyone knows
(53:14):
that about me.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
And we can all find ourselves somewhere on that spectrum
and then create a plan and an eating schedule that
works for us. Yeah, it's not going to look the
same for all of us. It just is, you know,
sharing our stories and other people's stories to help inspire
others in finding what's going to work for you and
giving that permission. So like, be creative, have fun with it,
(53:37):
Gamify it, Yes, Enjoy the food you eat, love to
like it, love.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
To like it. And now I'm hungry, so I'm going
to eat something I like,
Episode three ninety five Creative Ways to Reduce food waste
with Carly Bodrug of Plant You.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life here your hosts,
Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome to Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my
name is Jill, and we are super excited for this episode.
Carle Bodrug is plant You on Instagram and TikTok and
with over seven million followers, she for almost exclusively for
(00:49):
maybe the past year, has talked about how to reduce
food waste.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And all those statistics. I'm like, oh my gosh, there's
so many numbers, so much goodness. But also what stands
out is just how good she is. I follow her
on Instagram and beautiful pictures of food that look so amazing,
but then also these incredible tips about how to make
sure you get the most of your food and cooked
(01:15):
really tasty meals. So this is just an incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah and all, and this food is made from food scraps,
things you and I would throw away. Carly is repurposing
in not just really delicious but pretty easy ways. And
so she has a new book out called scrappy Cooking,
and she is sharing some of the highlights with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Which is perfect because when we pulled you all in
our friend letter, you all said that the thing you
waste the most is vegetables, like by a land slide.
Almost sixty two percent of you who answered that poll
said it's vegetables. So how perfect that we have Carly
here today to talk about specifically vegetables, how to not
(02:05):
waste them, how to cook them in a yummy way,
how to repurpose and utilize even parts of vegetables that
we thought we should be throwing away.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
So this is it's just so good.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
But first, this episode is brought to you by Treasure,
the opposite of waste and garbage, and a treasure is
what you are. And if you want more people telling
you in different ways about the treasure you are, then
get the front Letter. Right now, we're podcasting to you
(02:41):
in your ears about how great you are, and we're
writing to you in the email the Friend Letter about
how lovely you are, what a treasure you are, and
also Freebie's savings Tips spending hags. So if you want
to get all of those treasures for yourself, because You're
(03:02):
a treasure Frugal friendspodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Treasure, that is what you are. All right, That's all
we can legally sing. All right. Carly doesn't really need
an introduction, because if you've ever wondered about reducing food waste,
you probably already follow her on Instagram or TikTok. But
she is a New York Times bestselling author already. Uh
(03:25):
and she has a new cookbook out. She's self taught,
plant based, and she's literally famous for her simple take
on low waist vegan recipes. Uh. And so we had
such a good time chatting with her, So without further ado,
let's do it. Carly, Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast.
(03:49):
We are stoked to have this conversation.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
I could not be more excited to be here. Thank
you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I'm I'm beyond thrill because we're talking about food, but
we're also talking about reducing food waste, which I'm realizing
is becoming one of my biggest areas of concern and
potentially like just a heightened awareness that I really can't
let things go. It mighty be teetering on the edge
(04:19):
of like really unhinged, but I really can't stand it.
And I think that just from following you on Instagram,
You've got so much to offer. But I'm so excited
to really like dive in and give this conversation to
our audience.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So can we start there?
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Can we talk.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
About food scraps, ideas for repurposing food? How do you
come up with new ideas to people just like have
to be brilliant or are there like somethings consider.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Their hope for the rest of us.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
You know what, whenever I talk about food waste, I
like to start by sourcing a statistic, and that's that
thirty to forty percent of the entire US food supply
ends up in landfills. And what is the most shocking
about that is you would think that the majority of
it comes from grocery stores or retail landscapes, but it
actually the biggest percentage is in homes, so in consumer homes.
(05:18):
So it's a real problem not only for our planet
because that food ends up in landfills and then produces
methane gas, but for our wallets. We're talking about saving
money on here, and if thirty percent of your food
is going in the garbage can, it is an astronomical
amount of money that we are just throwing down the drain.
(05:42):
So that's the number one thing I like to start with.
Can anybody reduce the food waste? The answer is absolutely yes.
So it was probably about two years ago. I, as
a food blogger, had always been cognizant about food waste.
I'm plant based, one of the main reasons being for
environmental reasons, and it just when I learned that statistic
(06:03):
about food waste, it was hard to wrap my head around.
And because I'm constantly testing recipes, we have so much
food coming into the home and I have to be
really cognizant of this from a financial perspective, and also
that I don't want to be wasting things. And I
threw up an orange peel candy recipe one day, not
thinking much of it, and I remember I kind of
(06:23):
put my phone down, as I do when I post
a reel. I'm like, I don't want to see how
people are reacting to this real way. Came back to
it a couple hours later and it had like a
million views, and that was my first video to ever
go mega viral, and I'm like, wait, people care about this,
And so I think I've done one hundred scrappy episodes
(06:44):
since and now written a cookbook on the subject. But
when we think about scrappy cooking, I think people's minds
go to orange peel, eating orange peels, eating banana peels,
which is all fun and dandy, But in reality, what
lowist cooking is about is utilizing what you have in
your kitchen, making sure things don't go to waste. And
(07:05):
the easiest way, in my opinion, to do that is
to be strategic about meal planning, so making sure you're
not over buying, and then number two, having a repertoire
of meals that you can interchange vegetables and produce items
in like, for example, we make a curry every week
where we're interchanging the vegetables that we have in our
(07:27):
fridge to make sure that you're using everything up so
it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't have
to be scrappy to the extreme.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I can commiserate with this, Karly, because when we first
started the Frugal Friends podcast and probably still now, people
assume that we're going to tell them that they need
to have reusable toilet paper, that were going to be like.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That far to that crazy, but the piper and cupons, but.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There is an attainable portion of this. We can find
some version of a radical middle in this where it
doesn't include us, just like gnawing on banana peels, but
we can just be a little bit more planful. But
I also love this because it's not just about the environment,
which is a big eie, but for a lot of
(08:14):
us that's not always on the forefront. It's good to
remind ourselves of that, but we're often going to be
more motivated in the day to day on how is
it benefitting made just to be realistic about humans and
so to not waste the money on the food that
you bought, but to also stretch the days that you're
(08:34):
consuming the food that you bought because you've been able
to be planful and buy interchangeable ingredients and then maybe
follow people like you to get more creative.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Yeah, a lot of my ethos is also tied to
eating healthy and eating more plants, whatever that looks like
in your life. And I really think that eating a
low wast diet per se ties into this conversation about
healthy eating, because I think a lot of us buy
a whole bunch of vegetables at the beginning of the
(09:08):
week really well intentioned, and then your week gets busy,
our lives go crazy, as most of us do, and
then at the end of the week, you're staring your
fridge and you've got that box of wilting spinach. So
if we can all be more intentional about our planning,
not only are we going to reduce our environmental impact,
but we're going to eat healthier and we're going to
(09:28):
also reduce food waste and save money. So it's all
like it's a win win win to start thinking about
your food waste.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, everybody who's ever tried to, you know, quote unquote
eat healthier has had that. I personally, that's why I
buy so much frozen produce now, Like, yes, I try
to buy frozen whenever I can, because I know by
midweek I'm not the same person I was on Sunday
when I made the good meal plan. And that's why
(09:58):
I also like try make more realistic. I try to
think about the person I'm going to be on Wednesday
when I'm making my Sunday meal plan. This is Wednesday, Gen,
Like Wednesday Gen is done, Wednesday, Jen's tired. I get
a second win on Thursday. But Wednesday Gen is tired.
I am.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
This is so great because I'm the exact same way,
and I think people look and you guys are probably
as hosts of this podcast, people look at you this
like perfect kind of monolith of like zero waste living
and doing everything perfectly. And in reality, I've created these
systems for myself because I am that person. Like Wednesday,
(10:41):
Carly is like I'm getting uber eats, like I can't
I can't this week. So you have to kind of
have that foresight to think, Okay, what is midweek Carly
going to do? Am I really going to eat this
like three heads of broccoli that I'm buying on Sunday
thinking that I'm going to be like super healthy this week?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Right?
Speaker 5 (11:03):
And I wanted to point out that one thing people
think about frozen vegetables and fruit is that it has
less nutrients than your fresh stuff, and that is actually
it's actually the opposite. So oftentimes frozen vegetables and fruit,
because they're harvested and then frozen right away, rather than
being put on a truck traveling to your grocery store
and being bought, they often maintain more of the nutrients
(11:27):
than the fresh stuff, especially in a place like Canada
where I am, where a lot of the food is
being shipped in, So there is absolutely no shame in
relying on frozen produce and if not, it's going to
save you money and help you eat healthier. So fun tip.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, yeah, that's me. I'm trying to just be healthier.
That's so true. I also wanted to point out because
you eat a plant based diet, and I love the
episode that we had with plant based on a Budget.
That was another one of my favorite Appalthoy.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Yes, one of my best friends love her.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Oh she is so great. But we had a recently
we did a survey of our audience and we had them,
we had them chance, gave them a chance to like
just open feedback, and one of the girls was like,
I just feel like nobody's talking about how tofu is
a great source of protein and it's so much cheaper
than meat, and nobody's talking about it. And I just
(12:22):
want to apologize to that listener because all like, eating
plant based is a great way to save money. I
know this is not like a you know, plant based episode,
but you mentioned it, and it is such a great
way when you take out the most expensive part of
the meal, you're left with the most nutrient dense and
(12:43):
least expensive parts.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
For some reason, there's the stigma around plant based or
what a lot of people like to call vegan eating,
that it's super expensive. And I think it can be.
If you go to the grocery store and you're one
to one replacing your chicken or your meat with like
a processed plant based meat product that has that is
very expensive. But if you're relying on whole foods, your beans,
(13:09):
your grains, your tofu, in reality, it can be a
lot less expensive than eating animal products. Even cheese, as
I've heard, is very expensive. And I remember when I
was not vegan, the most expensive thing on my grocery
bill week after week with like with chicken. And this
isn't to say you can't ever eat animal products again,
(13:31):
I just think it's if you're wanting to reduce your
grocery bill, it can be a really great way. And
then to focus on whole foods rather than processed foods. Again,
when for your health? When for when for your wallet
as well?
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yes? Okay, so in your kitchen and in your grocery shopping, Like,
what are the things you feel help you best reducing
in food waste. I know we had kind of mentioned
not of buying and buying interchangable, but how do you
act that out? How do you do that practically?
Speaker 5 (14:05):
Yeah, this is a great question and something I think
a lot of people ignore in the process of reducing
food waste. And the number one tip I have for
people is careful and intentional planning. So I try to
grocery shop just once per week, which is a feat
considering a recipe test for my living.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
That tip in itself is strong, is difficult, practical and difficult.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Yeah. So I typically grocery shop on Sundays, which is
a popular day for people, and I try to keep
my work week Monday to Fridays. So I say take
half an hour an hour if you have it, sit down,
if you have a family, sit down with your family,
if it's just you, sit down with a piece of
paper and a pen. It doesn't have to be fancy.
(14:52):
Make a grid Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. And this doesn't have to be super rigid,
but think about what you want to eat for the week.
So maybe you're having pasta one night and you're gonna
prep overnight boats for breakfast, and then build that out
leave some flexibility. If you're somebody who often goes out
(15:13):
to eat or orders in, it's important to make it
leave for a little spontaneity in there, and then from there,
once you've built out a meal plan per se, I
like to tell people to start then making a grocery
list from that meal plan, So you're gonna look at
your vegetables that you need, your grains that you need,
and then before you head to the grocery store, shop
(15:34):
your fridge and pantry because oftentimes you're gonna have things
like rice and catch up and can tomatoes often oats
that you're gonna need anyways, and then this prevents over buying.
You can also before you even do this, take a
quick scan of your fridge in pantry to see what
items you have and build out that meal plan based
(15:56):
on items that you have to use up. But planning
is going to be your number one thing heading into
the grocery store. Without a plan, you're almost guaranteed to overbuy.
Food marketing is genius, and if you don't have a
list in front of you, you're going to be picking
things off the shelf that you don't need and spending
money that you don't want to.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Okay, sub question for you on this one. If somebody
is like that all sounds good, but they're really kind
of starting from ground zero and they don't even know
what recipes could be made with what they already have
on hand, or what they'd need to add to the list,
or how to even find food that their family's going
(16:40):
to eat. Do you have any thoughts on where somebody
could start with that. They're like, okay, sure, I'll set thirty.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Minutes aside, but like, how do I do that?
Speaker 5 (16:50):
It's a great question because as a food blogger cooks
for a living, it's hard for me to zoom out
and realize, like, that's where I was at seven years
ago hundred percent. So the biggest there's so many free
tools online that are at our disposal. I like to
tell people to hop on Pinterest and search the terms
(17:11):
like twenty minute meals. If you're somebody who is vegan,
you can search twenty minute vegan meals, twenty minute weeknight dinners,
and then compile a list of what looks good to you. Oftentimes,
families will have recipes that they love and kind of
cycle through so you can kind of look at what
you typically eat in a week and maybe build off
(17:32):
of that. But if you're starting from ground zero, you're
not a big cook. Pinterest is your friend, as well
as Instagram and other social media sites, and looking for
things that can be put together quickly. Often really easy
recipes if you're somebody who works a nine to five,
for example, would be croc pot recipes. So being able
(17:53):
to put everything in a crock pot like the night
before or in the evening and set it and forget
it or what they call dump meals are really really
valuable in this case. And then utilize your freezer. So
if you are starting from scratch and you're prepping a
big pile of chili, and say you live on your
own and you're like, h I don't want to have
chili for like the next ten days, utilize your freezer.
(18:17):
Freeze it in individual serving sizes, and then you're saying
thank you to your future self by having meals already
prepped that are healthy and delicious and going to help
you reduce your waste.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yes, I love super cubes for that. I was gonna say, yes,
those are great, not a necessity but they are fantastic
for freezing that stuff.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
So now that we've kind of talked about how to
start from ground zero, now we're kind of moving into
two toh one.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
What to do with your food?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Can you tell us a little bit about your favorite,
your top scrappy cooking recipes when we're really now we
know what we're eating, but we're really at this food
reduction point, how do you approach that? What are your favorites?
Speaker 5 (19:08):
Yeah, so there's lots to have fun with. I always
tell people if they're buying broccoli every week and they're
paying by weight and then they're throwing out the broccoli stem,
that is again throwing money in the trash. Broccoli stems
are completely edible and they're actually really delicious. And I
have a couple of ways to use broccoli stems in
my new books. So one of them is broccoli stems
(19:30):
summer roles. So we're a huge fan of summer roles
in this house. And that's just making sure rice paper
is wet and plow making sure you can roll rice
paper rolls with rice noodles and your veggies, and then
instead of throwing out your brocoli stems, you can cut
them into match sticks, almost like carrots, and put them
(19:53):
in in the summer roles as well. And I also
have a delicious like mango peanut sauce for dipping in
the book. So good. But one other thing you can
do with broccoli stems that will do almost weekly is
I'll make like a one pot vegan mac and cheese.
And I love broccoli and mac and cheese, but I'll
I'll also grate the stems right into the broccoli mac
(20:14):
and cheese, and it's almost like a graded carrot replacement.
And then the third thing you can do chop them
up and just throw them in a stir fry. So
that's one thing to be thinking about. If you're a
big broccoli eater, you will surely love broccoli stems. You
have just have to peel off that tough outer layer.
Probably my favorite recipe in the book is called Sunday Sauce,
(20:36):
and it's just like a bolonaise kind of ragu and
it's a delicious recipe where literally, this is what I
was talking about fridge raid. So we have a whole
bunch of recipes in the book that are have like
a fridge rayed icon and what this means is that
you can basically use any of the vegetables in your
fridge and interchange them to go into a recipe. But
this one is particularly good for it nice. Yeah. And
(21:00):
so what this one is is basically you add some
lentils and then whatever veg so I mean, like mushrooms,
bell peppers, onion, garlic. You name it into a food
processor to make like a veggie ground, or you can
chop by hand, whichever one is accessible to You throw
that into a pot and saute it with some tomato
(21:22):
paste and then add dice tomatoes and spices, and it
makes just a beautiful sauce that can freeze, go over pasta,
or be used as a race, as a base for
a whole bunch of recipes.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I love that. I think especially for people who are
starting out, that can be one of the biggest hang
ups is this recipe looks really good, but I don't
have all the ingredients on hand, and I don't have
time to run out. So I guess I can and
I'm just gonna get takeout or I'm just gonna go
out to eat or do something quick and simple by
convenience buying. Convenience versus oh, I could just sub this
(22:00):
for something else that I have, and I think that
that courage it feels like a big barrier for a
lot of people to kind of step into this. I'm
gonna disobey the recipe and I'm gonna use something that
the recipe isn't calling for. Who knows if it's gonna
taste good. So I love that you've got a recipe
(22:20):
that's helping to give that permission.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Well, any of this.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
You could, and it helps to kind of Okay, somebody
who knows what you're talking about is telling me that
I can do this, and that's so helpful.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I know.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Permission is like the thing that you kind of need.
Like I love looking at recipes on blogs and reading
the comments. Someone's like, can I sell this for this
if I if I don't have eggs for these scrambled eggs,
can I use something else if I have an egg allergy?
Like I love Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
But then also they'll go like too far. They'll be like,
you know, these ricotta pancakes are awful because I subbed
her for like potatoes, and it's just like that's because
that's completely not thet So like having permission of like
these are you know kind of these are the parameters
in which you can like alter this and it's still
(23:14):
be delicious.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 5 (23:18):
That's a whole huge goal of mine. I love to
teach people the fundamentals of cooking so they feel confident
enough to make those changes in their home. Like even
something as simple as we have a vegan omelet in
the book, and again it's a kitchen raid recipe. You
can use whatever veggies you want in the omelet, but
unless you're giving people permission to do that as the
(23:39):
person who created the recipe, I think people feel very
bound to it, right, and then if they don't have
the ingredients for that, the last thing I want somebody
doing is going and buying a whole bunch of indescript
ingredients that they don't normally cycle through in their home,
and now we're wasting food. So I think I probably
have about twenty five kitchen raid recipes in there, where
(24:00):
a whole basis of them is being able to interchange
the vegetables, which in essence to me is the is
how you reduce waste is by being really flexible and
making sure that you're using up what's in your fridge
in pantry.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yes, another thing about broccoli stems, so as someone with
a child who likes broccoli one day and then the
next day hates it and doesn't eat it, like boiling
those and like putting them in a sauce, either like
a mare and arrow where you can't really see it,
like just blending it up so it's so, you know,
(24:37):
so ingraded in there, he doesn't know it's in there,
or a muffin where it's like, oh, this is a
green muffin. This is very fun and it's got chocolate
chips or maybe a green So I haven't actually tried
it at like making the sauce green. It is a
way that I've got because I accidentally bought they sell
you could just buy broccoli stems frozen, and actually bought
(25:00):
those ones, so we had to come up with creative
ways to use it. So that's a way to get
your kids to eat broccoli stems without knowing it.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
One other recipe you hip in there off of the
back of that that I want to mention is in
the book. I have something called a scrappy pesto and
it's really again an interchangeable recipe, and I'll just kind
of run down it right now. But you can use
basically any greens you have, and I like to encourage
people to use something like radish tops beat greens, which
(25:34):
you might not you might normally discard, and then you
blend that with some basil if you have it, cash
us nutritional yeast, garlic, and a little bit of salt,
and it makes just the most amazing pesto sub that
can be used on anything. It can be frozen, it
can be used as a pasta sauce, it can be
used as a dip, and it's super delicious. And if
(25:54):
you're somebody who has trouble getting through greens, having that
in your repertoire is going to save you a lot
of waste.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah. I have never used my beat greens before. My
father in law has a farm and sometimes we'll get
beats from there, and I've never used the greens before,
but what a great way just when you're making the beets,
just you know, put the greens aside and make a
little sauce. Put it in the freezer.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Another thing you can do with beat greens is make uh.
I don't know if you guys have ever made kale chips,
but they're shockingly delicious. But I have a pa beat
chip recipe and it's really simple, Like you just toss
your beets with a little bit of olive oil and
nutritional yeast and seasoning, pop them in the oven, and
they make a delicious, like crispy chip similar to kale chips.
(26:42):
So don't toss your beat greens.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
They're god feeling so inspired.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, kale chips are good. I like kale, but even
for people who don't like kale, kale chips are really
where it's at, and all chips are where it's at.
A couple more like commonly scrapped, commonly thrown away scraps.
What are some of your favorite recipes?
Speaker 5 (27:04):
Okay, I'm gonna whirl through some for you. So number
one canned chickpeas the liquid in it it's called aqua faba.
This is the most amazing vegan egg white substitute and
the craziest thing. When you beat it with like a
hand whisk, it will create a meringue. So you can
make like mini meringue cookies. You can use it as
(27:27):
an egg white substitute in something like a cake. So
I have a cake recipe that uses the aqua faba
for eggs, and you can also use it to bread things,
so like if you were to bread your tofu, you
can use it as the egg bas replacement. Pickle juice,
pickle juice, don't throw out your pickle juice. I know
a lot of athletes like to drink pickle juice, but
(27:47):
pickled juice it makes an amazing marinade for tofu. If
you want like a almost like a pickled chicken kind
of vibe, that's great. And then also in soups, I
have like a dilly pickle or so soup in my book,
and deal pickle chips so good. What's another one? Banana
(28:09):
peel bacon. You can eat banana peels. This is one
that like people are very apprehensive about. You want to
scrub them, and you can make banana peel bacon shockingly delicious.
And then if you're not a banana peel bacon fan,
you can make mushroom bacon, which is just unreal. And
then finally, the number one most wasted food I bet
(28:29):
you guys would never guess is actually bread because we
just buy so much and then it goes hard really easily.
So if you had.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
It not here, no way.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, you a big maybe are.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
You a big bread fan, Jill?
Speaker 3 (28:43):
You love it, it gets demolished. I love that it's
here one minute, gone the next.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
But the rest of us want to hear.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
How yeah, So if you have bread, that's we don't
We don't want you eating mold. So I want to
preface this by saying, everybody, if something is showing signs
of like real spoilage and has a scent to it,
it needs to be composted or discarded. But if your
bread is just like gone hard or a little bit
a little bit like not edible in its form, you
(29:15):
can actually make bread crumbs so easy. You just added
to a blender or food processor with a little bit
of spices, you've got amazing bread crumbs for a whole
bunch of things. Or number two, I love to make
this like vegan French toast castrole. So you just tear
it up, add it to a casserole dish with like
a custard made of coconut milk and vegan yogurt, and
it is so good. Rebake it. It will be soft
(29:37):
again and pillowy and delicious.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yes, the French toast castrole is a go to for me.
I love it.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
I love cruton.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Bread. Yeah, I love me too.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I love bread in all the ways so good. I'm
in my sour dough era now too, so I am
in control of how much bread I can have in
my And it's wild.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
We've been a wild Yes, you know what else is wild?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Every single time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
We all benefit from it. Never goes to waste. The
bill of the.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
Week, that's right, it's time for the best minute of
your entire week.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Maybe a baby was born and his name is William.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died
and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
Fust bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Bill of the week, Carly. Every week we yell, we
yell at our guests and ask them to share with
us their favorite bill of the week. We'd love to
hear yours.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
As soon as I saw this question, what immediately came
to my my mind. I used to work at a
hospital and there was this man. He was an angel
named Bill, who was the maintenance man for the hospital.
And this guy deserves Bill of the week every week.
He was just the most like he would do anything
(31:16):
anything that you needed done. You get Bill on the phone,
and he had just like Dad energy and he could
fix absolutely anything. So that's my bill of the week
rather than a bill that I have to pay. I
like to think.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah Bill at the hospital, Ye Bill for anybody. Dad energy.
I love Bill, Dad energy.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Fix anything, gem of a human kind. This is what
we're learning about Bill's people named Bill. Anytime somebody calls
in and talks about a person they know named Bill,
they're always saw of the earth, human being, just this
great individual. And yet never have we ever right we're
(31:58):
encroaching on four hundred episodes had a person named Bill
call in themselves. And you know what I'm realizing right now, Jen,
is because we don't attract that, we.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Don't dragsaults of the earth.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
So.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
Kind human topics you can fix. I think this is.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
It's because ninety five percent of our audiences women, Jill.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Jen.
Speaker 7 (32:26):
Okay, okay, if you're the reason, if you're listening, if
your name is still and somehow you've you've decided you'll
grace us with your presence by listening, please please call
in and just.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Say I'm Bill, it's me Hi, I love I'm the treasure.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
It's me or you know, any anything else.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
We're here for it for overthpodcast dot Com, slash Bill.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
And now it's time for Round you. I love the
sound of We have worked really hard to perfect these
sound effects over three hundred and ninety five episodes.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
We can't we can't do it all. We don't have
professional sound effects. Now we have our homegrown voices. Yeah,
we got to use our We're on a budget here,
all right. We can't hire out these sound effects.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
All right. So for the Lightning Round this week, we'd
like to hear what is your most quote unquote creative
dish you've ever created. Carly bonus points for you, specifically
if it was a fail.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
But because it's.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Jen's Vulnerability Round and she likes hearing about.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Hearing about failure in the Vulnerability Round, I love also
hearing about success. You could give us, you can give
us both.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Yes, okay, I'll give you. When I was testing recipes
for my first book, most creative recipe was my buffalo
cauliflower wings. They are so delicious in anybody who tries
them loves them, and they're actually wrapped in rice paper,
which makes like a flaky meat like skin so good.
So that was like a brain wavelength, and I created
(34:12):
them with my dad. But during the testing for my
first book, my first book was entirely oil free, and
we were trying to create a brand muffin recipe. Had
to have gone through ten rounds of brand muffins, and
every single one was like hard as rock, to the
point like if you threw it at somebody, it would
it would do damage.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You catch a charge?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
So they never ended up in the book, but those
would be the it's.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Hard to bake without without oil, yes, yeah, without really
dense fat.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
I don't even know a lot about baking. I don't know,
like why I know that. Neither do documentary the salt fat, acid, fire,
acid heat. Yes, I watched that documentary once. Man, good, Okay.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's so great. I love buffalo cauliflowers, but they are
so fantastic. I've never heard that rice paper, so yeah, right,
well done.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
I love that. I love that it's a texture thing, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (35:16):
It's nice and crispy, and then like the soft cauliflower
on the outside that's like been melted in buffalo sauce.
Just delicious.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And then you can reuse the rest of those little
rice papers for some broccoli stick spring summer rolls. Yeah,
I just you reused exactly. I look at you, look
at you. I'm listening.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
I'm as right, John, what are you what you've got?
Speaker 1 (35:42):
So maybe not the most creative, but this week okay,
so we're our house is under renovation, so we had
to I have half a kitchen, and so half of
my kitchen had to go into the pantry. So I
forgot about some things that I bought because I just
had to when the guy. The guys don't give me
any notice and what they're gonna work on. So they're like, oh,
we're going to take this wall out today, and I'm
(36:04):
like getting everything into the pantry. So I had onions
in there for weeks. One of them started sprouting something,
so I was like, I have to use these onions today.
And I happened to have a can of lentils that
i'd had probably a year because I don't know why
I bought hand lentils, Like every recipe I used just
(36:27):
uses the raw, but I had a can of lentils
for a very long time, never could use them. So
I made a like a lentils and rice. I think
it's muhadara. I'm butchering the pronunciation. But I rice, lentils,
caramelized onions, and I made that Sunday.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
That sounds great, But also the words that you used
to describe it made me concerned that everything was expired
that you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Know, Okay, no, nothing was expired. The bad parts of
the onions got thrown away, and I used just the
good parts of the onions, the parts that did not
smell or were not you know, weren't black or sprouting,
and and yeah, and the lentil, the cannon lentils was
(37:18):
still good.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Thrown some rice so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yeah, okay, my example is not plant bassed.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
But I am so proud of myself for this. I
got to partake in this one and it was good.
It was a wind.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Did you I gave this to you?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
You get you either gave it to me or I
saw it.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Okay, So I think I ate it.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Maybe I was probably so proud I was giving it
out to everybody, anybody.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Walking down the street.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
So I had just an array of leftovers, small amounts
and random like one rib, two meat balls, to cooked potatoes,
and then I had some eggs and oh stuffing. I
had some a handful of leftover stuffing random. But I
(38:12):
refused to throw these things out. But all these things
are left over from meals that we had been eating
so much already that week, so I I could not
stomach it for myself or for my husband. So I
decided I'm gonna make pancakes out of all of this
instead of throwing away. So I just pulled it all out,
(38:34):
threw in a couple of eggs to congeal it, added
some flour, and I fried those puppies up like a pancake.
And let me tell you, I served it then with
like a jam.
Speaker 5 (38:48):
So they were like savory, like a savory shrinner pancake, a.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Savory pancake with jam. You could choose jam or sour cream.
They were them. Eric loved them. That's my husband. He's like,
oh my gosh, you need to make these again. I'm like,
it's not can't happen. It's never gonna happen again, because
this was a wild surprise.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I love that pancake.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Good for you, weed nothing. Yeah, this is how deep
down the rabbit hole I have gotten. Bro, I'm just
throwing everything in, mashing it together and calling it pancake.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Feeding it people.
Speaker 5 (39:27):
That's when I saw this.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
I love that. I just saw this on social media.
But it was like, like they called it a mcgriddle muffin,
so they were throwing like a like a pancake mix
in with just just whatever they were using, like a
breakfast meat, some cheese. But you could really do like
whatever leftovers you had and throw it all into a
(39:51):
muffin tin. Yeah, and make little little pancake muffies. Wow aside, Yeah,
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
And when when you start doing this, I think that's
what I love you. You kind of break the barriers
and you feel empowered to get more and more creative
as you're going. At least when you just get one
win and there might be a lot of veils in there,
but you get one win and then you're like, oh man,
I can try new things and keep going.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, which I feel like Carly, on your social media profiles,
like you give so many accessible ways to break into
that little barrier, Like you can go to your profile
and just scroll down and see like, oh my gosh,
I have that in my fridge right now, click on
(40:42):
it and see like what to do with it it's
and just get that little win really quickly and then
feel like, oh my gosh, like I don't have to
throw away as many of these scraps maybe as I am,
or when my kid doesn't finish their meal, I don't
have to throw it all in the trash.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
Yeah, it's really it's really all about what Jill said.
It's gaining confidence in the kitchen is a huge piece
of the puzzle here. And once you realize that cooking
the steaks are low, it's supposed to be fun. It
doesn't have to be this massively intimidating thing that you
have to be perfect every time at It takes the
pressure off because then it's gonna get easier and you
(41:23):
can you can literally throw anything into pancake mix and
it's going to turn out.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
What a great key takeaway from this episode. I truly
believe that to be true. And if you gain nothing else,
I think you've walked away with a really great money
saving habit.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
So Carly, people are gonna want more from you. Let's
just let's tell them where to find everywhere.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, you can find me on any social media
network other than maybe Snapchat. I plant you. I haven't
gotten on there yet, But play wio you and everything's there.
And if you're interested in my book, it's scrappycookbook dot com,
but you can find it through my profile as well.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
We are so so so excited for this book. This
is definitely one I want to have on hand, just
to have the index so I can go through whenever
I have a scrap, like, just hit the chapter, hit
fridge rates all that. So Carly, thank you so so
so much for hanging out with us.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
This has been a blast. Thank you. I have so
much gratitude for you guys having me on. It's been
so much fun, and I hope people enjoy the show.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Agreed, so fun.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Oh my gosh, I am so excited for this. I
don't I don't have cookbooks, right, this is a thing
I do not. I don't actually have many books. I'm
a Kindle library person. We know this, yes, but I
am so excited to have a physical copy of this cookbook.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
This will be something you pull out.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yes, yes, it's a reference guide.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah, well okay for me, I'm excited about this because
I think I would love to cook more veggie forward
plant based forward. But so many of the recipes what
I'm accustomed to what I'm used to is not that,
and that's my barrier to making tofu or tempe or
(43:27):
really going wild with the veggies. I just don't know
what I don't know, and so I think people like
Carly helping to kind of here's the things you don't know,
just do it, here's the recipe, make it. Because we
were talking about this in a recent episode two about
farmer's markets and how wanting to get more if I do,
(43:48):
if I am buying meat, wanting to know where it's
coming from, recognizing that the way that our animals are
harvested is just like we're not actually getting even the
nutrients from animal products we think we are.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
Because of that's a whole other soapbox, but.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
It's making me want to learn more about what to
do with veggies, how to get the protein that I
need from these things. But just feeling like this is
so much work and time and energy to discover these things,
and so to have resources and a cookbook from someone
like Carly is so exciting. Yeah, me too, Well, I'm
(44:24):
in a molist's kitchen.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
It kind of reminds me of the episode that we
did with Cassie Joy Garcia. She wrote the cookbook Cook Once,
Eat Twice, where that's primarily protein focused. This is essentially
the same thing. You're taking a produce, an item of
produce that you'd usually use part of and throw the
rest away, but instead you can cook once and use
(44:50):
the one piece of produce in two diverse ways. And
so I think it's not an either or. I think
even if you eat meat, this is a fantastic way
to to incorporate more micronutrients into your diet because so
many good vitamins and minerals are lost in the pieces
(45:10):
of the produce that we throw away or produce that's
like a little not as good as it once was,
that we don't know what to use it for now.
I think we lose so much of that. And if
your goal is to cook healthy and you want that,
you know, your Sunday and your Wednesday person to be
(45:32):
the same. I think this is just a great like
cook once, Eat twice sort of thing. That episode we
played it back in February of last year to eighty seven.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Lovely well, thank you all so much for listening. We
hope this was just as fruitful for you as it
felt for us. Many of you know that we have
a newsletter called the friend Letter that goes out three
times a week all you Treasures, where we're talking about
what's for free that week, giving savings tips and life
(46:06):
hacks to help you save money spend better. We want
to give a shout out to one of our friends
for sending a response to the friend Letter, because again,
it is an email, and you can respond to that
email and it comes to our inbox. This is from Liz,
who said I started listening to Frugal Friends when I
was trying to pay off my student loans and did
a call with Jen years.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
Ago debt Gone. Hey, Jen.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
The membership was critical for me keeping focused, and I
loved all the challenges on the portal. I love all
the podcasts, but I'm generally catching up. Just want to
say thanks for all you do. Wow, Liz, you intersected
with us all the ways you could possibly.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yes, Liz, I'm so excited to hear this. Your debt
is gone from I probably only took calls with a
couple like maybe like five people, So yes, Liz, I
remember you. You are treasure amazing.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Liz. Thanks for sharing that, and thank you all for
listening again. If you want this Friend Letter if you
want to be able to respond to us, you want
in on all the tips and resources we're handing out
to you for free three times a week Frugal Friends
podcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yes, and if you're interested in the membership list talked about,
we're revamping it. But you won't find that out if
you don't get on the friend letter. See you're exciting.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. I had something
(47:47):
that I wanted to talk about on the after show,
and now I can't remember it because I'm so like
repurposing food.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
I think it was repurposing food because Eric doesn't like leftovers.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Oh yes, okay, that was it. You are a whiz
at using up all of your food. Uh, you're the best.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
Chet is She.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Is a cheese whiz. And this is with a partner
who does not eat leftovers.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
I mean, yeah, I don't want to paint him to
be this like I refuse kind of person. He's definitely
grown leaps and bounds over like okay, mind over matter,
but he doesn't prefer to eat the same thing constantly
over and over again. And I haven't complained about that either,
because it has kind of forced creativity for me and
(48:37):
made cooking a little bit more gamified. And I've embraced that.
And before you get on me about traditional gender roles
in our carriage, it isn't agreed upon thing because he
is literally building my house and doing lots of other
things that I'm like, I will feed you, yep. If
(48:58):
you will climb on the roof and figure out how
to fix the electricity, then yes, I will feed you dinner.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
There are unique divisions of labor in every relationship, but
I think a lot of people use not liking leftovers
or not liking like microwaved food, or having a partner
that doesn't like it will use it as an excuse
to cook less. Yeah, and like my sister in law,
she also does not like leftovers. And it's not like
(49:26):
a get over it and eat them sort of thing,
because I've heard people say that. Yeah, but it is like,
you shouldn't be forced to live your life in a
way where you're just like forcing yourself almost every day
to eat food you don't like. Like, that's no way
to live. But that is an opportunity to get creative,
(49:49):
not a death sentence for your budget.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Yeah, I think it's an invitation to really enjoy your food.
I think that people who really embrace leftovers, they don't
have a high priority on enjoyment of food. They've maybe
got their focus on other things. And that's great too,
But I think for really both Eric and I, we
really enjoy food. We want our food to taste good,
(50:12):
we like trying new things, so I think this kind
of blends with that. And so some of the things
that I will do in that regard is if I
do make a big meal and we like it, sometimes
I'll just freeze it. So it's not that I'm getting
super creative. It's just that we liked this, but we're
(50:33):
not gonna want it again tomorrow, so I'm gonna throw
it in the freezer the leftovers as a kindness to
myself in a month from now, when I can pull
it out again and serve it exactly as is. But
then there's also other ways of being able to repurpose
the food that you have then made. So a lot
of times I will focus on some of my bases
(50:56):
of things, so like a potato or a rice or
a post stuff, I might make additional and then I'll
be able to serve those things with other things. So
I've got extra rice, and that was a let's say,
some version of a chicken and rice. Now I've got
more of that, and maybe even with that same chicken,
doesn't even matter what the sauce was, I'm making a
(51:17):
fried rice with it now. Or I made up a
lot of potatoes and it was the side of a dish,
and now it's going to go on top of tacos,
and the next day it's going to go on top
of a bed of lettuce as a salad. So just
finding ways to reincorporate some of these ingredients and maybe
even what was the main part of one dinner is
(51:40):
now the side dish of another. Something I did recently
this week was, I mean, we love charcuterie, but I
had gotten mozzarella tomato, and then I have this like
balsamic glaze. So that was a salad we like chopped
up the mozzarella and tomato on a bed of lettuce.
Speaker 4 (51:57):
And then the next day.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
We had that with basil, just the mozzarella, tomato, balsamet glaze,
some salt, and basil as a part of a charcooterie board.
So it's similar flavors but yet a different experience. I
think is the way that I've tried to kind of
gamify it.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
That's I love that. I love that I learned from
you in the way that you cook food.
Speaker 4 (52:23):
Oh yeah, okay, I do.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Because I'm still not super creative.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
But you're a very good cook. I like eating your food.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Oh, thank you. It's something I have learned to tolerate.
It's still not something I love. I don't think I
don't necessarily enjoy cooking as a hobby, but I do
love to like the food that I'm eating. Yeah, I love.
(52:53):
I love that to enjoy the food. Yeah, but I
will eat leftovers. I can't. I need it more than
one day. Oh, like that's my limit. So but it's
not that I don't value the taste. It's that I
more value efficiency and less dishes. Yeah, and everyone knows
(53:14):
that about me.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
And we can all find ourselves somewhere on that spectrum
and then create a plan and an eating schedule that
works for us. Yeah, it's not going to look the
same for all of us. It just is, you know,
sharing our stories and other people's stories to help inspire
others in finding what's going to work for you and
giving that permission. So like, be creative, have fun with it,
(53:37):
Gamify it, Yes, Enjoy the food you eat, love to
like it, love.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
To like it. And now I'm hungry, so I'm going
to eat something I like,
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