Minimizing Food Waste When Things Go Wrong

Yesterday, I had the bright idea to multitask by making spaghetti sauce with some garden vegetables that needed to be used up while I was cooking something else for dinner. In between dinner tasks, I would chop vegetables and throw them in the pot. I let it simmer through dinner, and after the dishes were done, I decided to taste the sauce. It was horrible! I made some attempts to improve it, but I just couldn’t make it taste right. So I threw it … in a bowl and refrigerated it.

Posting recipes on my blog forces me to do something that I don’t normally do: measure ingredients. My natural tendency is to just keep throwing things in until it tastes right and cook it until it smells done. The problem with this method is that occasionally things go wrong, and when they do, it is harder to tell what needs to be fixed.

When things go wrong, I give myself time to think by refrigerating or freezing the item. Then I look for ways to make the disaster edible. Sometimes, I consult cookbooks and online recipes to see if the item can be used in another recipe. Usually though, I just hope a brilliant idea will occur to me.

When I tasted the sauce again this morning, I realized that I had put in a lot more tomatoes than I thought and decided that all I needed to do was add more onion, garlic, bell pepper, and spices. A lot more! I went out to the garden for the necessary items, added them to the sauce, and let it simmer for an hour. The result? My kids said it was good. I was so sick of tasting it that I didn’t want to have any for lunch. In fact I was so tired of it, that I canned the rest of sauce. Perhaps I will be in the mood for it next week.

Tips for Salvaging Dinner

Here are some other ways to salvage dinner when things go wrong:

• • Too spicy? Add a little sugar.

• • Gravy lumpy? Put it through a strainer, then return it to the pan and continue cooking as usual.

• • Too salty? Add more of the other ingredients.

• • Cooked vegetables mushy? Mash them and put them in a baking dish. Drizzle with butter and bread crumbs. Bake until the topping is browned and serve.

• • Dry rice? Make Fried rice.

• • Dry Roast? Make barbeque beef sandwiches.

• • Burnt baked goods? Scrape off the burnt part with a serrated knife.

• • Cake fall apart? Glue it together with frosting.

• Runny sauce? Simmer the liquid off or add cornstarch.

What do you do when dinner goes wrong? Do you find a way to salvage it or do you make reservations?