Many stock cubes and pre-prepared broths have sugar and other additives like MSG in them. By making your own using this easy method, you skip those, save money, reduce waste, and have less to carry home from the store!

This is a no-waste broth because you use vegetable and herb trimmings that you collect little by little over time and store in your freezer. Then when you have collected enough, you turn them into a vegetable stock that you can use to add flavor and nutrition to soups and stews as well as rice and grain dishes. This stock is also great for using in baby food/purees.

For those of you with slightly older kids, making this stock together is an easy project to use to start a conversation about sugar and additives in food products and also about food waste.

How staggering (and sad) are these stats?

–Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted.

AND

—Fruits and vegetables have the highest wastage rates.

These are nutrient dense foods that we all need more of (and especially our children). Yet so much is thrown out and many children are not getting optimal nutrition, or worse yet, they are going hungry. As explained by Stop Wasting Food, “even if just one-fourth of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world.”

It can be hard to know where to start to make a positive contribution to this enormous global issue of food waste, but simple steps like buying less and making better use of what you do buy can make a difference.

Simply collect your raw vegetable and herb trimmings and keep them in a bag or container in your freezer. (You can use the same bag over and over to reduce waste or use a reusable container that fits in your freezer.)

Some great things to save for this are carrot and potato peels, onion and garlic skins, fennel or celery tops/ends, tomato or mushroom pieces, or parsley, rosemary, and thyme stems.

Add to the container little by little (like each time you peel an onion), and when you are ready to make some stock, add your trimmings to a pot, cover with water, and simmer for about an hour.

Strain and voila: homemade vegetable stock. Store it in the fridge or freezer and use it in your favorite dishes and baby foods.

For more tips and recipes like this one, see our book, Sugarproof.

Sources:

www.stopwastingfoodmovement.org

www.fao.org