Eat It Up!: 150 Recipes to Use Every Bit and Enjoy Every Bite of the Food You Buy

by Sherri Brooks Vinton

Don't toss those leftovers or pitch your beet greens! Eat it up! Sherri Brooks Vinton helps you make the most out of the food you bring home. These 150 delicious recipes mine the treasure in your kitchen—the fronds from your carrots, leaves from your cauliflower, bones from Sunday's roast, even the last lick of jam in the jar are put to good, tasty use.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Food, Cooking, Reference

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2016

Reviews

[Damona · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an old-fashioned, use-every-scrap, home cook, a lot of this is basic or common sense stuff (use stems and peels for soup stock, turn stale bread into croutons). There were definitely ideas in here, though, that I wouldn't have thought of (potato peel chips, eating the leaves of broccoli and cauliflower)! Good stuff. I can see coming back to this one for ideas when I am uninspired.

[Larae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book about using up what normally gets tossed out. I will definitely be making some of these and may have to buy the book!

[BookBec · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might be an excellent book for someone just getting into cooking at home from scratch, not to mention farmers markets and CSA shares, but for the more experienced whole-foods cook, it's a book to borrow from the library to glean a few new ideas.

There are many useful ideas here. -- Vinaigrette made with the juice left over from a jar of olives. -- Dip made with fennel fronds. -- How to take the chewy shells off of squash seeds. -- How to purify the drippings from cooking a duck.

There are also a lot of ordinary ideas, like using old bread for French toast, croutons, bread crumbs, and bread pudding. Or reusing last night's leftover rice instead of throwing it out.

I sometimes wished the illustrations were more detailed (or were photos), such as the different components of the giblets bag in a whole chicken. I did not know that the liver would add a bitter taste to chicken stock, but the drawings weren't enough to teach me to identify the liver to separate it out. On the other hand, my chicken stock has never seemed bitter to me, so maybe I'm just fine not knowing how to identify the liver.

And the author's voice isn't my favorite, sometimes coming across as too cutely chatty. For example, in 2016 the word "app" is far more likely to make a reader think of a smartphone program than an appetizer. Just write out the whole word! And a few editing errors made me cringe. Unrefrigerated supermarket eggs in the UK are not an "odd site for an American" (site = location), they're an "odd sight" (thing to see).

[Arlene S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Waste not. Organized alphabetically within food categories (produce, pantry, whole beast); this arrangement enabled me to go straight to the page about those carrot tops I have been saving and find what to do with them. Well-written receipes included. Seems "nose-to-tail" eating is "in" and this aims to help. I like the Thai Rind Salad using up watermelon rind inspired by Thai Green Papaya Salad .

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book! I can do better re food waste, especially produce. I can't seem to gauge adequately about amount or frequency or something, and toss spoiled contents of my refrigerator drawers. Best suggestion for me is keeping a container in the freezer for stuff to throw into an occasional pot of soup. Lots of good ideas for oddities, like carrot tops or beet leaves, etc. I didn't like the inclusion of recipes that seemed to lack relation to the premise of the book.

[Bree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notes:
better than Waste Not Want Not but very similar in material

[Dna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting and useful information here. It's not a book I'd buy and re-read, like some of my food reference books, but I'm grateful to my library for carrying it. Recommended to people who like to shop smart, cook at home, and reduce waste in the kitchen.

[Jennifer Schadt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would rate it a little over a four! It had some wonky things in it, but overall a really good book!

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got a killer coconut bar recipe from it!

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

We waste so much of the food we buy just because we don't know how to make use of it. This book is filled with useful information, recipes and tips for getting the most from your fresh food!

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideas, a lot I already knew and a few I’ve added to my waste not kitchen.

[Cissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many ideas for avoiding food waste!

These range from using otherwise-discarded parts of vegetables- carrot tops, asparagus stalks, broccoli stems, and the like- through uses for the fat and giblets of chickens, things to do with bones from a roast, what to do with the other part of a separated egg, and things to do with stale bread. And much more! The various stocks are interesting, especially the vegetable ones- I am still working out what would make my ideal vegetable stock.

It's not just that the recipes show interesting ways to use things like cauliflower leaves- the whole approach helps me think of how to use various foodstuffs that might otherwise go to waste- usually in easy ways. I think it would be especially handy for people in CSAs, based in veg or meat or both.

Recommended for people who figure there MUST be a use for that, and who hate throwing weird bits of food away!