“For me, leftovers have 9 lives just like bread:  you make stock from the bones, you make risotto with the stock, you make cake from the risotto. Chicken and rice never dies.”

Food Philosopher Nancy Gershman speaks with Bobbi Marstellar –  food writer, recipe developer,  self-taught chef and the voice behind the food blog, BobVivant.com.

Bobbi Marstellar: “Expendable Edibles; there’s really nothing out there like it. Just the novelty of it alone! Not just something I’m passionate about but I really enjoy this notion of doing pantry-raids (but on the fridge) where I’ll pull everything out that has just 2 days left. I love the challenge. I really connect to how much waste there is in grocery stores and restaurants; and the accountability or responsibility my friends and others should have for what they throw away. It really speaks to me.

I grew up really poor. The notion of throwing together whatever you have, well, I didn’t even think of it as expendable edibles in the least. You looked in the fridge and in the cupboard and stretched things. That was really more the rule than the exception. And that level of resourcefulness to stretch everything you have – that certainly carried with me. Frankly, that’s why I value food the way I do, and also why I get so frustrated everywhere. It’s everywhere! My friends are just a small piece of it. Let me tell you a story. My husband was working with a local university, and they were talking about making these “bio digesters” for their food waste. The amount of food they throw out – we’re talking about tons of food scraps that could run a piece of equipment that would generate substantial amounts of energy.”

Building block foods: pizza dough, flatbreads, tortillas, pie crust and eggs
“I keep around a lot of what I consider to be building blocks which I can then add anything to. We make pizzas and flatbreads every Friday night. I keep pie crust for galettes or quiche in the freezer. I keep on hand a lot of eggs for omelets and frittatas, and also corn tortillas in the fridge. All of these are a blank canvas that I can add anything to, depending on what I have in the refrigerator or canned and preserved.”

Crostinis, savory bread pudding and ravioli for “cleaning up” negligible quantities
“I’ll put all different kinds of fillings into quesadillas, such as leftover pulled pork with yesterday’s roasted squash. How do I know they’ll go together? Some of it is having made it before. It’s also about paying attention. If something goes well on a plate, I can easily throw the same on top of a neutral pizza. It’s experience-based. So many people are afraid to follow their intuition even if they know what they like! Recipes are just inspiration and guidelines that give you techniques. I don’t pay attention to quantities. Cooking should be much easier than what people make it out to be.

I make bread regularly: breakfast bread with dense whole grains. I call it ‘compost bread.’ I’ll put in the last 3 tablespoons of quinoa, the dregs of oatmeal, dried cranberry, nuts, seeds, pistachios from a party that still need to be plucked from their shells, amaranth (to give it some crunch factor) or millet (give it a stir and let it rise overnight). Everything thrown into my no-knead bread, because it rises for a long time.

When bread goes stale, I make

• Crostinis: brushed with olive oil, sliced thinly, thrown in the oven.
• Savory bread pudding: another great way to ‘clean things up.’ I’ll take a quarter of a celery root, roasted and throw it in with the bread and milk.
• Breadcrumbs: I’ll rip bread apart or cube it and try to have it ready. I’ll turn oven off and leave bread in there overnight. Put it in food processor. And then dry again in the oven. Always have a big airtight glass jar. Depending on what I need them for, I keep them plain and add seasonings down the road.

Ravioli is another one of our ‘clean-ups.’ Doesn’t take much to fill ravioli. We’ll fill raviolis with puree of roasted asparagus (after no one has eaten it once it’s cold), along with Mascarpone or Fontina.”

Roasting revives everything
“Friends give me stuff all the time. They know that I can’t bear to throw food away. So baguettes I’ll find on my porch! I take what they give to me and turn it around.

Now I love the way roasting revives past peak produce. For example, green beans that look like they’re ready to ‘go,’ I will roast at 425 degrees, which brings out the sugar and caramelizes the beans. I’ll roast peppers which are past their prime under the broiler until they are soft, wrinkly, and dark and I can peel the skins off. If I can’t use them in a week, I’ll throw them in the freezer.”

Rice Pudding from Chinese take-out rice
“Both my husband and I enjoy leftovers for lunch. Take-out rice becomes rice pudding made with a basic custard, with whipped cream and raisins. Or I’ll throw rice into a soup. For me, leftovers have 9 lives just like bread: you make stock from the bones, you make risotto with the stock, you make cake from the risotto. Chicken and rice never dies.”

Don’t cry over spoiled milk, yogurt or stinky cheese
“I should admit I don’t pay attention to expiration dates – except for fresh meat and fish. I eat yogurt way past its expiration date. Cheese is the same way. You can take the gnarly-est Camembert that’s past its prime, bake it on pizza and the ammonia vapors bake right off! Camembert or Limburger just get creamier and gooey-er as they get older. The trick is to first mix the cheese in question with a more neutral cheese such as Mozzarella which melts nicely. I’ll put the stinky cheese in the freezer first so it cuts easily. Then I’ll place it on the pizza in globs and let it melt into the crust.

If milk is just at the point of going sour, I’ll use it in a scone recipe calling for buttermilk. I may even add an extra tablespoon of vinegar to help it curdle. Once you put the vinegar in, it curdles almost instantly. Sour milk for buttermilk is a common substitution I make all the time – at least for me it’s common.”

Ravioli Pie from stuck-together raviolis
“I’ve had two food disasters in the last two months that turned out great in the end.

For a dinner party, my husband hadn’t put enough flour between our homemade raviolis and hadn’t bothered to separate them with wax paper. By the time we were ready to cook them, they were one big glob of ravioli. So I decided to just cook the whole thing as ravioli pie. I took the glob of ravioli, put it in brown butter, pan fried it, sliced it just like a pie and then drizzled it with a cider cream sauce. The only inconvenience was that I needed a huge pot to boil water. Set it in big mass. To make the sauce I reduced apple cider, added a little cream and a little mascarpone and little bits of nutmeg and sage leaves. That was it.

The other disaster was Tahini shortbread cookies which sounded like the bomb but made terrible cookies! They were bitter tasting and didn’t have any of the subtleness I was expecting– they were just overpowering and I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. But when I just mooshed them up in my hands and made a crust for a savory cheesecake – the tahini flavor was better distributed. I just added some melted butter to it. For me, it’s the challenge of using this disaster up and turning out something beautiful.

The best compliment my husband can give me – and he has a finicky palate – is when he says: And you did this just with X Y and Z?”

Pear butter, apple sauce and citrus ice cubes
“The only skins we peel are spaghetti squash and butternut squash – they become tougher when cooked. We don’t peel our sunchokes. Orange rind we preserve with some sugar that’s not overly sweet, and just enough to submerge them in. Looks more like marmalade.

For apples and pears getting soft, I will chunk them up – skin on – and put them in my hot muesli. I also make a pear butter or apple butter that I cook down so that the flavors intensify and it becomes thick enough to spread with a knife. Cook your fruit a shorter time and you have apple sauce!
If lemons or limes are getting soft. I’ll squeeze the juice and freeze it in an ice cube tray. Or make sorbets.”

Food waste on campus: re-evaluate portion sizes
“Working at it from every angle, I’m sure schools could reduce the amount of waste. More important than finding a better solution for leftovers is putting more thought into portion sizes they make. Talking with other people you see it’s common, that level of waste. Some of it is cultural. Look at the waste around restaurants which is tied into U.S. food safety guidelines. If the waiter brings a loaf of bread and you don’t touch that loaf of bread, the restaurant has to get rid of it. In that situation, I’d much rather the restaurant offer me something small and let me ask for more instead of presenting me with the kind of bounty that’s usually heaped upon diners. Ask me if I’d like butter with my bread …

I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes but I can just imagine how hard restaurants try to find good homes for wasted food. Rick Bayless is doing a lot for “completing the circle.” Their food scraps get picked up and is composted on a large scale.”