Preserving Abundance: Learning from our Ancestors to Reduce Food Waste and Build an Abundant, Low Waste Cooking Practice That Fits into Your Life
Food waste is a big problem: about 40% of the food we buy ends up getting tossed out. But finding ways to reduce waste can feel overwhelming and energy intensive, or complicated. So what about if we reimagined food waste through the lens of possibility, using history as our guide?
Learn from a food preserving expert and food historian and look to the past to learn time-honored techniques for reducing waste in the kitchen: Just as our ancestors have for thousands of years.
Preserving Abundance is a way of thinking about food waste that’s simple, sustainable, and fits into your life.
Whatever your reason for wanting to reduce waste in your home or your commercial kitchen (like saving money, helping the environment, or just learning some new skills), this course will provide you with the tools you need, while connecting you to a history of food that’s bigger than yourself.
You’ll build a way of eating and cooking that speaks to season, and place, and history, and give yourself an even richer and fuller experience in the kitchen.
Use the lessons of the past to learn sustainable culinary traditions and create your own: And tap into that historic wisdom to build a brighter culinary future.
In Preserving Abundance, we honor the abundance of every ingredient we use: And when we do, we honor all the hands that went into growing it, all the wisdom that has been passed down to use through culinary traditions, and we honor ourselves and our own curiosity and excitement for food.
What you get:
When you buy this class you get:
- Practical guidance for reducing food waste, plus mindset-shifting tips to help you cut down on waste automatically.
- Hands-on demonstration videos for everything from using vegetable scraps to using food waste for crafts.
- Simple, flexible recipes to adapt to the food waste you have on hand, using minimal equipment, so you can get started right away.
- A course workbook filled with recipes and ideas made to fit your kitchen and how you cook: All rooted in traditional practices like fermentation, so you can use the foods of the past to build new traditions today.
Plus, everyone who preorders Preserving Abundance in 2024 gets access to the legacy version of the course immediately, plus free access to a new, expanded Preserving Abundance, which opens in 2025.
Why look to history to reduce food waste now?
This class came about as a result of my own experiments with food waste, and over a decade of knowledge and a unique shift in thinking that helped me think of waste in a different way. For years, I struggled to make ends meet and afford food, and was very mindful of not wasting what I bought. I learned all kinds of techniques to use every part of my food (canning, pickling, freezing, etc), I grew whatever I could, and did everything I could think of to keep waste low and save money, but I still found myself running into a wall.
Even though the desire to waste less was there, I’d lack inspiration or would feel too overwhelmed to be able to put my knowledge into practice, and as a result, lots of food scraps would still end up in the trash.
It wasn’t until I began my research as a food historian that it all clicked: by learning about history, I could tap into a whole world of eating much larger than myself. And, best of all, I found endless rabbit holes to jump down. In that way, I hope this course is a jumping off point, rather than an end point, for you.
This class doesn’t just give you a set of historic recipes, though.
Instead, I hope to make those foods and the approach to making them (putting up what you have in many creative ways) something that is relatable, enjoyable, and easy.
You aren’t just learning abstract facts, or names and dates, you’re learning processes that are the same ones your ancestors used, getting curious about your food, and learning and growing until reducing food waste comes naturally.
What’s covered:
In each section, you’ll find tons of ideas and practical guidance to help you wherever you are on your food waste journey, whether you’re new to cooking or a seasoned expert. The class includes:
Fermentation: Everything from sauerkraut to soda, this includes sections on dairy fermentation, homemade sodas and adult beverages, vinegar making, and tips for using up fruit and veggie scraps for sauces, dips, rich seasoning blends, and more.
Beyond fermentation: Some of my favorite tips and tricks I’ve collected over the years, including everything from pickled watermelon rinds to banana “ice cream”, healthy snacks, and more.
Beyond the kitchen: Reducing food waste doesn’t have to stop with food! We’ll make inks, dyes, perfume, home and garden products, and plenty of other goodies together.