Food & conservation Archives - Ines Lechleitner

Food waste reduction: going bananas!

Culinary Art, Food & conservation / December 22, 2021 December 22, 2021

Food waste is a painful part of everyday life for me – and so many other people around me. We order or buy fixed quantities of what we think we’ll use, but it’s actually really hard to predict the exact amounts that we’ll use in the end. And then – due to a combination of a lack of time, imagination, and pure habit – we end up throwing away uneaten food on a daily basis.

food waste reduction, easy fermenting recipe, fermented banana recipe, creative food waste reduction

I’m no exception to these bad habits. Some of the products I buy are poor quality and go to waste before being eaten, while others are better quality but sit too long in the fridge and get overlooked. However, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way! Food waste reduction is easy and fun.

There are a few habits I’ve incorporated into my daily practice in the kitchen that I can highly recommend.

First up, with any bread that starts to go stale or dry, I chop it up into small cubes, then I dry them out in the oven. It takes just a minute or two! These little cubes form the base for savoury knödel delights, which make an appearance in my kitchen on a regular basis. In fact, one of my kids’ favourites is the delicious, doughy south Tyrolean spinatknödel (feel free to get in touch with me for this wonderful food waste reduction recipe).

Second, let’s go back to the title of this blog: going bananas! Bananas are a precious fruit, but when they start to go brown, no-one in my family will touch them. I used to get worried when this happened – I’m not a fan of banana bread! Now, instead of feeling worried about the food waste, I feel excited because I adore the fermented banana recipe I’ve recently discovered.

I’d love to share it with you…

Take a 500ml glass jar and fill it with 250ml filtered water.
Then dissolve 2 tablespoons of cane sugar into the water.
Next, add 2 tablespoons of whey (molke in German), water kefir, or the powder from one probiotic capsule.
Chop 2 ripe bananas into 2cm slices and add them to the liquid.
Close the jar lid and let it sit in a warm, dark place for 2-4 days.
After this time has passed, check the taste and when it seems ready, move it to the fridge.
Once fully chilled, this fermented mixture keeps for more than a week.

What I find so thrilling about the outcome of this amazing food waste reduction recipe is the sour, fresh, sparkly character of the drink – in combination with the calming taste of this spectacular fruit.

I like to blitz it in the morning and drink it as beautifully refreshing breakfast. I love the fizzing feeling that spreads throughout my entire body as I sip it. Plus, I have to say that it makes an excellent base for cocktail experiments…

long live living cocktails! Prost!

And it’s not just about bananas and breakfast and cocktails. For example, the fruit skins and vegetable peelings that I used to throw away now get used as a starter for homemade vinegar or cleaning products. The same goes for that tired cucumber or beetroot forgotten at the back of the fridge.

food waste reduction, easy fermenting recipe, fermented banana recipe, creative food waste reduction Plus, pickled or fermented foods are natural super foods that have healing qualities and can be eaten without any cooking involved. This makes them the perfect lunch at work combined with simple warm ingredients such as boiled potatoes, rice, or other grains. And, as they’re already prepared and seasoned, having a jar in my fridge saves me time and energy on a daily basis.

Ultimately, I guess it’s this turn from guilt and concern to excitement and curiosity that has really gotten me hooked on fermentation processes as food waste reduction. The truly great thing about fermenting, is that – once the raw ingredients have been chopped up and prepared – time does all the work and I only need to check in occasionally (like saying hi to a friend!) until it’s ready. So, let me know how you get on with this fermentation recipe. I hope you enjoy!

Secret Colors Hidden Within

Food & conservation, Sensory Art / September 3, 2021 September 3, 2021

Hello there,

When I first read about the practice of Lucila Kenny and her approach to natural dyes my heart skipped a beat. The way she connects the political and ethical questions with the care for the plants we find around us and the joy of creating just makes so much sense.

Yesterday I finally had the honor of participating in one of her “Making Colors with Food Waste” workshops at the amazing new project space in Neuköln WirWir run by April Gertler and Adrian Schiesser.

Here is the outcome of three recipes: red currents, yellow onion skins and red beet skins with four different fabrics:

As I work in my creativity workshops with colors, food, drawing, scent and processes of transformation, Lucila’s perspective on colors hidden within the plants in often unexpected parts is deeply moving. It shifts our perception in yet another direction and opens a new world of relations and fields of experimentation that I want to integrate more into my own workshops in the future.

For example it is the greens of the carrot that can produce a bright yellow color whereas the carrots – staining orange on the touch while handling them – contain close to no transferable colors. A whole new field has opened and I am so looking forward to explore it with you!

I also want to share with you a related work I produced a year ago for a solo show with Hans-Jörg Mayer at after the butcher in Berlin. It was a show and a site-specific video work connecting the art works to the space and to different recipes for fermented vegetables. The plants were then fermenting in the exhibition space along side the art works and were shared with the visitors at the closing of the show.

Save the scraps: unexpected recipes

Food & conservation / July 23, 2021 July 23, 2021

Hi there!

Hope you’re feeling connected and alive with new adventures, travels and experiences as we move into late summer. Inspired by my creativity workshop on food waste reduction, I thought I’d share two simple recipes with you for using leftovers.

Lemons are an ongoing theme in my drawings and photography, but lemons and oranges also offer a wonderful option for making a multi-use cleaning product. After you’ve made lemonade or seasoned fish, just put your leftover citrus into a jar filled halfway up with any simple vinegar. Press down until the fruit is covered. Close the jar and add more lemon and orange peels over time. Once the jar is full, place it in a sunny spot for about 2-3 weeks. Remove the fruit and use the liquid offering a bright scent and disinfectant benefits.

Now, on to something you can eat. We all love crème fraîche for potatoes, dips and sauces. I have a recipe that takes leftover onion skins and vegetable peels and adds a depth of flavor to crème fraîche that delights the senses.

You can use the peels of onions, beetroot, carrots, parsnips and apples. Rhubarb, leek greens, the outer leaves of radicchio, red cabbage, Tuscan kale and celery leaves also work well. Even pumpkin scrapings and seeds do the trick! In summer you can dry everything in the sunshine or use a dehydrator during winter. When dried, pulverize the ingredients with a blender or a mortar and pestle.

If you’re not familiar with it, crème fraîche is cream with added lactic acid bacteria. This converts the milk sugar into lactic acid. This process can easily be mimicked at home with a little buttermilk.

Combine 250ml whipping cream and 2 tablespoons buttermilk in a glass jar.

Cover – closing the lid lightly – and let stand at room temperature for 8 to 24 hours, or until very thick. You might have to stir the mixture if it only thickens on the top. The crème fraîche is ready when it becomes quite thick and gives off its typical light sour smell. Stir well before covering and refrigerate for up to 14 days. Mix in your dried vegetable powder to create layers of flavors. You can experiment with different colors and tastes.

If you’d like more inspiration for ways to use leftovers, I recommend Cooking With Scraps written by Lindsay-Jean Hard. You’d be surprised at the possibilities with the liquid from a can of beans or leftover apple cores! Curiosity in the kitchen can help make what seems like a daily chore into something more dynamic and rewarding.

Wishing you creativity and expansiveness.

Ines

Honoring the Leftovers

Food & conservation / July 9, 2021 July 9, 2021

Welcome to July!

With all the fresh produce and food this time of year offers, I’d like to share the story behind one of my creativity workshops, Color Food Fun.

As an artist and a mother, I take a lot of inspiration from my kids’ playfulness, curiosity and their willingness to try out new things. When my son was learning about the different aspects of food production in school, I offered to give a workshop on food waste reduction. As some of you may know, I love an opportunity to improvise! Why not see how children could learn about the political aspects of food using leftovers?

I asked parents to send their child to school with a cutting board and one ‘leftover’ food item from the fridge. In a sense, it was going to be an experiment about how we can change our relationship to food. And what better group than kids with little or no experience with cooking!

As an interdisciplinary artist, process and connections are a major theme in my work. I wanted the children to spend time with whatever they brought and form a connection through making drawings of their carrot, tomato or cabbage.

It became so personal for each child, like a poetic act of honoring the food.

After cutting out their drawings, they made a big collage together – grouping colors, types of food and possible relationships. The food became little islands of ‘players’. I was so thrilled to see their excitement and joy as they formed cooking groups based on the organization of the collage. I stood back and let them be the creators unless they needed help.

The energetic community of these young chefs was so beautiful to watch!

At the end, we shared in this delicious and unexpected buffet. The kids wanted to taste everything which is unusual because children can be quite picky. Food became an exciting adventure in how to look at it, how to serve it and how to taste it.

Afterwards, parents called to tell me how much fun their child had and how it had triggered a lot of reflection about food. The political aspect had been felt through the different processes, subtly woven into the experience.

I took what I had learned from the workshop and brought it back to my office. Once a month, I asked my colleagues to bring in one food item or leftovers from home. I then created a big lunchtime communal meal. As we ate, people would try and guess which part of the meal incorporated their special ingredient. Instead of the usual lunch of grabbing take out and eating at their desks, we became an engaged group sharing food together.

I’d love to invite you to do this with your children and friends. Plan a dinner party where everyone brings something and co-create a meal together. Set the table and welcome in a spontaneous creative atmosphere. It may feel a bit strange to put the recipes and planning aside, but as the kids taught me, isn’t that part of the fun?

Happy experimenting!