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Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea has made very clear its grand ambition to become an entirely circular business by 2030. This plan has recently taken shape in its approach to cuisine, via its aim to cut its restaurants’ food waste in half by the end of next year. The recent release of The Scraps Book: A Waste-Less Cookbook, dedicated to making meals out of the food fragments that we typically leave behind, adds to the effort. There are plenty of ingredients to go around: The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 30 to 40 percent of the country’s food supply, or about a pound of food per person each day, gets thrown out.
The book, which is available to download for free, brings together top chefs from across North America, including Toronto’s Adrian Forte and British Columbia’s Trevor Bird, as well as foodies such as Michigan-based writer Lindsay-Jean Hard, who contribute a total of 50 recipes that transform food waste into tasty, and often striking, easy-to-prepare fare. You might whip up pancakes made from yesterday’s wild rice for breakfast, indulge in a soup of wrinkled mushroom dumplings for lunch, and end the day with a tangy lasagna filled with overripe tomatoes, wilted greens, and sour milk. There’s also snacks, such as a banana-peel-and-bruised-apple chutney to dip prawn skewers into, and a D.I.Y. section that gives practical advice for building a backyard compost and growing new plants from old vegetables such as fennel and cabbage. There’s even a recipe for meatballs, too—a variety that reworks fruit and vegetable pulp, mushy apricots, and parsley stems into a treat you’ll likely never want to toss in the bin.
