The other day as I was taking stock of the fridge to prepare my grocery list, I held up a bunch of celery minus a stalk or two, the rest as limp as wet noodles — a common dilemma in my household of two.
I started to pitch it. But first, I wanted to see if Tamar Adler had any thoughts on how I might salvage it. Of course she did.
A magazine editor and former chef at esteemed restaurants including Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Adler earned national renown and comparisons to M.F.K. Fisher with the release of her 2011 collection of essays, ”An Everlasting Meal.”
She’s now channeled her graceful prose and no-waste philosophy into “The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers from A-Z” (Scribner, $35): an encyclopedia of sorts with more than 1,500 recipes for “making much with odds and ends.”
Recipes are organized alphabetically by leftover ingredient, in chapters prefaced by mindful meditations such as How to Eat Well (vegetables), How to Be Renewed (dairy and eggs), and How to Speak Plainly (beans and rice). She shows how she gives practically every edible kitchen scrap imaginable a second chance at life, whether it’s a disassembled taco remade into Enchilada Stew, tidbits of cheese transformed into Homemade Cheez-Its, overripe melon blended and frozen into popsicles, or a shot of booze in a jam jar shaken and poured over ice for a cocktail.
Flipping to the entry for “celery, wilted,” I took her advice and cut up my sad stalks into bite-size pieces, placed them in a skillet with herbs, olive oil, and a splash of water, and braised them until very tender to serve atop some cooked quinoa. I paired it with roasted carrots topped with pungent and bright Carrot Top Pesto, and threw chopped celery leaves over it all.
As my husband and I swooned over our frugal feast, I understood what Adler meant when she compared this sort of saving to praying: “For a moment, you are fully present in your life, clear about the value of every last bit of it.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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