My goal is to reduce food waste. I was upset about hearing in class something that had already been brought up to me many times and I had chosen to ignore it. Almond milk isn’t sustainable. As an avid almond milk consumer I was upset that after having a rough transition to plant based milks, my favorite milk alternative in fact wasn’t as good as I thought. In all honesty I switched to a plant based diet because I felt lazy and had terrible digestion after consuming dairy. But the ethical part kept me motivated. I felt good knowing I was doing my part for the environment and taking a stance on animal cruelty. 2 years into the plant based shift I come to realize that the almond milk Ive been buying a gallon of each week for the last two years, wasn’t doing much good either. In addition to the almond production being super water wasteful, which I had known and guiltily chosen to ignore, my professor pointed out that most of the almonds are wasted as most companies just milk them for milk and throw away the pulp. I felt inspired to use this as the root of my project.
I know I wasn’t going to stop drinking almond milk, I use it for coffee and oatmeal everyday and the taste and calories of other plant based milks don’t compare in my opinion. So the least I could do is help use the almond pulp that gets thrown away. 40% of the food in America is wasted and I could do my part in helping. I began with the almond pull idea, but realized there are a lot of edible components people and companies seem to discard. Some foods I cam up with are banana peels which are totally edible, mushroom stems, tomato peels, and of course the almond pulp.
My first initial idea was to make a dish that was made entirely out of these foods. I could make sort of a lasagna where I used banana peels as the dough, almond pulp as the cheese, and the “meat” could be made of mushroom stems and tomato peels. This dish would tackle on food waste and in theory would be very cheap to produce. After all it is made with items people throw away anyways. It could be used to help fight hunger and could maximize companies’ profit if they didn’t waste any parts.
I set out to make the cheese from the almond pulp. The process had me very satisfied. In addition to making the cheese I was also going to get my almond milk for the week. And I didn’t need to use any packaging because I just bought almonds from the almond dispenser and used a reusable bag. So I already realized this method was more environmentally friendly. The cheese came out as a spread. It tasted good but not really like cheese. It got me worried cause I can’t imagine that in a lasagna with the other items.
Im still going to try to make it but if it fails, Ill different sandwiches out of these discarded foods and it can be a sandwich line that helps reduce food waste. I know I can make a “meat” like sauce out of mushrooms and it should work just fine with mushroom stems. I can also make a pulled pork alternative out of banana peels. This sandwich line could be a very exciting way to reduce food waste.
Goal:
Make a zero/low waste meal (lasagna?) made entirely out of food scraps.
Make a meal out of ingredients people tend to discard
Functions
Address food waste Make a cheap meal Possibly dress hunger
banana peel base for the pasta Almond pulp cheese Veggie Meat filling composed out of mushroom stems tomato peel sauce
Almond pulp cheese
Almonds Water Salt Paprika Nutritional Yeast Lemon Turmeric Garlic Powder
To do:
Make a mushroom stem a medley/stew to replace beef Test out different ways of cooking banana peel. Make some sort of base out of banana peel. Combine the banana peel, almond spread, and mushroom stew in one dish. Add tomato peels. Figure out how they can be served and packaged.
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