我們要學會愛我們的剩飯剩菜

我們要學會愛我們的剩飯剩菜

Who cares if it's monotonous or 'weird'? It's time to fight wasteful food habits.

誰在乎它是單調(diào)還是怪異呢?是時候與浪費食物的習慣作斗爭了。

Last week I wrote about the new report on food waste published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report found that 27 million tons of food are thrown away each year in the United States, and that households, surprisingly, are responsible for the greatest proportion of food waste.

上周，我寫了一篇由自然資源保護委員會(NRDC)發(fā)表的關(guān)于食物浪費的新報告。該報告發(fā)現(xiàn)，美國每年有2700萬噸食物被扔掉，令人驚訝的是，家庭是食物浪費的最大比例。

CC BY 2.0. Dave Miller -- Sometimes the best meals are random assortments of leftover foods.

Nearly a quarter (23%) of that household waste is 'prepared foods and leftovers.' Thirty-five percent is considered 'inedible parts' and 5 percent is oil/grease, but the remaining 37 percent is a mix of produce, baked goods, meat and dairy, snacks, and dry food -- in other words, foods that, ideally, would not go to waste.

將近四分之一(23%)的家庭垃圾是“熟食和剩菜”。35%被認為是“不能食用的部分”，5%是油或油脂，但剩下的37%是農(nóng)產(chǎn)品、烘焙食品、肉類和奶制品、零食和干糧的混合物——換句話說，理想情況下，是不會被浪費的食物。

In a world where hunger is still a reality for many, and there is concern about how to feed a growing human population, this quantity and source of food waste is very disturbing. As the Washington Post reports, this finding "defies conventional wisdom about the sorts of foods consumers waste — and represents a major obstacle for environmentalists and anti-food-waste campaigns."

在這個世界上，饑餓仍然是許多人的現(xiàn)實問題，人們擔心如何養(yǎng)活不斷增長的人口，這種食物浪費的數(shù)量和來源是非常令人不安的。正如《華盛頓郵報》所報道的，這一發(fā)現(xiàn)“顛覆了關(guān)于消費者浪費食物種類的傳統(tǒng)觀念——代表了環(huán)保主義者和反浪費食物運動的一個主要障礙。”

Dana Gunders of the NRDC believes there is a cultural aversion to eating leftovers; it's likely a remnant of the psychological shift that occurred in the 1960s with the advent of refrigeration. No longer were people in a hurry to finish off dishes that they knew would keep. The problem has only gotten worse with easier access to prepared foods and their ever-plummeting costs. Food is so cheap and plentiful that nobody worries about where and how they'll get it.

自然資源保護委員會的Dana Gunders認為，人們對吃剩菜有一種文化上的反感;這可能是20世紀60年代冷藏技術(shù)出現(xiàn)后出現(xiàn)的心理轉(zhuǎn)變的殘余。人們不再急于吃完他們知道會保存下來的菜。隨著現(xiàn)成食品的容易獲得和成本的不斷下降，這個問題只會變得更糟。食物是如此的便宜和豐富，沒有人擔心在哪里和如何得到它。

Gunders thinks that the stigma associated with eating leftovers needs to be addressed most rapidly, more so than focusing on "improving consumers' food literacy and kitchen skills." This is about getting Americans to accept that eating leftovers is a good idea, that monotonous meals are a part of life, and that it's immoral to throw good food away. (The morality argument was effective during the World War years, when minimizing food waste was a big part of government propaganda campaigns. There's no reason why it couldn't work again.)

Gunders認為，與吃剩菜有關(guān)的污名需要盡快得到解決，而不是專注于“提高消費者的食品知識和廚房技能”。這是為了讓美國人接受吃剩菜剩飯是個好主意，讓單調(diào)的飯菜成為生活的一部分，讓他們接受扔掉好食物是不道德的。(這種道德觀點在第二次世界大戰(zhàn)期間非常有效，當時最大限度減少食物浪費是政府宣傳活動的一個重要部分。沒有理由它不能再次被提起。)

credit: WWI Poster

Gunders makes a good point, but I think cooking skills -- or, lack thereof -- still have much to do with it. Many American home cooks have lost the ability to use up their leftover ingredients. Reheating a meal and eating it all week long is one thing, but knowing how to turn a motley bunch of sad, lone ingredients into dinner takes practice, skill, and a pinch of determination.

Gunders的觀點很好，但我認為烹飪技巧——或者缺乏烹飪技巧——仍然與此有很大關(guān)系。許多美國家庭廚師已經(jīng)失去了烹飪吃剩的食材的能力。把一頓飯重新加熱，吃上一整個星期是一回事，但知道如何把一堆令人傷心、孤獨的配料變成一頓飯，需要練習、技巧和一點點決心。

Fortunately, a number of celebrity chefs are trying to change the image of leftovers and inspire people to embrace them. Take Anthony Bourdain's new documentary film, "Wasted," and Dan Barber's pop-up restaurant in London, WastED, earlier this year that used only waste ingredients and many big names to create high-end feasts. Massimo Bottura is another outspoken advocate for breathing new life into unloved ingredients, saying, "We don’t need to produce more; we need to act different."

幸運的是，一些名廚正在努力改變剩菜的形象，鼓勵人們接受它們。以安東尼·波登的新紀錄片《浪費》為例，還有丹·巴伯今年早些時候在倫敦開的快跳餐廳《浪費》，這家餐廳只用浪費的食材和許多大牌來打造高端盛宴。馬西莫·博圖拉是另一位直言不諱的倡導(dǎo)者，主張為不受歡迎的食材注入新生命，他說，“我們不需要生產(chǎn)更多;我們需要采取不同的行動。”

Despite the glamour and star-studded support these days, the essence of using leftovers is, in fact, a return to the humble past. La cucina povera, or peasant cuisine, is where our home-cooked meals need to go in order to incorporate leftover or neglected ingredients. We need to stew, braise, and boil these items to tastiness. By looking to old recipes, and the ways in which our grandmothers cooked (sadly, the grandfathers were usually absent from the kitchen), we will find inspiration for using the stems, leaves, and slightly-off foods that might otherwise get tossed in the trash.

盡管如今有這么多明星的支持和魅力，但使用剩菜剩飯的本質(zhì)實際上是回歸到過去的謙卑。La cucina povera，或稱農(nóng)民烹飪，是我們的家常菜需要用到的地方，以便將剩余的或被忽略的食材加入其中。我們需要把這些東西燉、蒸、煮到味道好。通過尋找舊的食譜，以及我們的祖母烹飪的方式(遺憾的是，祖父通常不在廚房)，我們會找到靈感，使用莖、葉和一些可能會被扔進垃圾的食物。

Here's to the food of the poor, which, hopefully soon, will be seen as the food of the wise.

為窮人的食物干杯，希望它很快就會被視為智者的食物。