"This is very much the book I've always wanted to write."
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Sarah Wilson is back with a new book, and this time it isn't sugar in the firing line – it's food wastage.
The I Quit Sugar author has helped more than 650,000 people around the world quit the sweet stuff, and now she’s on a new mission with an issue close to her heart.
“I grew up with parents who lived very simply – it was minimalist and as self-sufficient as possible and not because mum and dad were hippies. It was that they didn’t have a lot of cash but also because they had this very, very ingrained sense of wastage being wrong," she says.
“Everything was recycled, everything was reused, very little was purchased, very little rubbish was produced and it was kind of frugal but for moral reasons in many ways. I guess it’s been a part of my story all my life.”
That start in life evoked Wilson’s passion with food – and not just the shiny side of it that most people interact with.
Having grown up just outside of Canberra, her first foray into food was waitressing at former Civic institution Caffe della Piazza – renowned for being the first restaurant in town to offer late night dining. Waitressing then gave way to Wilson’s career as a journalist, which took her into the world of women’s magazines, including a four year stint as editor of Cosmopolitan.
“I did this full circle, from where I began to working in the land of over-consumption in women’s magazines and so on which I never fully gelled with – I was a square peg in a round hole in that sense.”
A personal experimentation with quitting sugar in January 2011 which resulted in improvements to her skin, energy levels and general health, led Wilson to further research on the topic. Then came the books, and the online eight-week I Quit Sugar program, which has participants from all over the world.
I Quit Sugar: Simplicious is now Wilson’s third book but the first primarily focussed on minimising food wastage.
On top of the 306 sugar-free recipes, the book’s pages are filled with tips and tricks to making the kitchen as sustainable as possible, alongside handwritten confessions and notes by Wilson scattered throughout. The cover, which Wilson features on leaning against her beloved bike and holding a bouquet of scraps, wouldn’t look amiss on a magazine stand with its headlines promising “$2 meals” and “27 gut-healing fixes”.
“I’m kind of taking the piss a little bit.
“A lot of people remember me from [working in magazines] and I want to say how I always had an issue and I still have an issue about how consumerism operates – even at Cosmo I never owned a handbag.”
Tongue-in-cheek notes aside, Wilson’s underlying message is a more serious one.
“Food wastage is a massive, massive issue. It’s regarded as the biggest contributor to CO2 emissions on the planet today, more so than cars and factory emissions and so on. People kind of despair that there’s nothing they can do to save the planet. Well the best thing they can do is commit themselves fully to minimising food wastage.”
For Wilson, the solution comes down to learning to cook – and cook properly.
“Cleaning out the back of your fridge and finding limp zucchini and lettuce at the back is actually depressing, and it’s actually enough to put people off cooking, cause they go ‘oh I just can’t cope with that, I’m just going to toss it all out and buy takeaway’.
“In Australia we toss out one in four of our supermarket grocery bags every week. And that is what is ruining the planet.”
In the book, Wilson delves into what she calls her “perpetual kitchen”, a flowing and ongoing process that she lives by where food is purchased mindfully, stored correctly and everything is used – including meat bones and vegetable leaves and off-cuts.
“I don’t just start with a bunch of ingredients, make a meal and that’s the end of it – that’s just the beginning of it. So the bones from my roast chicken becomes stock which becomes soups which once the soup has done its dash I thicken it up with extra potatoes and it becomes a casserole, and on and on it goes.
“People have been asking me for years, ‘look can you just cut to the chase, how can I be healthy? What’s the one thing I can do?’ – and I say learn to cook properly. And if you can learn to cook in this effortless perpetual flowing way, then it’s actually just part of your life, you don’t think about it.”
It's a message she thinks the world is ready for: "eating your scraps and, taking your leftovers home from a restaurant or better still the person that's sitting next to you – taking their leftovers home." Don't laugh – it's something she's known to do herself.
“Yesterday there was this very bourgeois couple at Mosman. We got talking about the food wastage thing and they ordered this big, big meal and hadn’t eaten it all.
"They’d taken a couple of bites of the confit duck leg which god knows how much it cost them, and they said ‘we kind of feel we need to give this to you’ and I said ‘why don’t you take it home’ and they said ‘no we wouldn’t know what to do with it’. I made the most beautiful cauliflower fried rice.”
I Quit Sugar: Simplicious by Sarah Wilson. Pan Macmillan. $39.99.
RECIPES
Not quite banana bread
Serves 12
This fake banana trick is a really good one for anyone wanting to up the nutritional count of their breakfast and cut back on fructose. It's great as is. Better toasted under a grill, in a sandwich press or in a frying pan with a dash of coconut oil (or butter if you don't mind dairy).
2 large, very ripe bananas
1 cup grated parsnip (about 150 g or 2 parsnips)
4 eggs
⅓ cup coconut oil
2 tablespoons (or 1-2 frozen cubes) full-fat coconut milk
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons chia seeds stirred into 1 cup water and soaked for 10 minutes
½ cup coconut flour, sifted
¼ cup buckwheat or quinoa flour, sifted
1½ teaspoons baking powder
pinch of sea salt
To garnish (optional): 1 small, thin parsnip, halved lengthways
Shredded coconut
Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 23 cm × 13 cm loaf tin with baking paper. Place the bananas, grated parsnip, eggs, coconut oil, coconut milk, spices and vanilla in a food processor and process until smooth. Add the chia seed 'goo' and pulse to combine.
Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and fold through the flours, baking powder and salt until just combined. Transfer to the prepared tin and top with garnishes that float your boat. Bake for 1 hour or until cooked – a skewer inserted in the middle should come out clean. Check after 45 minutes, and if the top is browning too quickly, cover with foil.
Let the loaf sit for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Slice and serve. Store the cooled bread in the fridge for up to 5 days, or freeze (place individual slices between baking paper) for up to 3 months.
Bacon 'n' egg porridge
Serves 2
2 teaspoons coconut oil, olive oil, butter or ghee
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup whole rolled oats
¾ cup chicken stock
4 rashers bacon, chopped and fried
2 tablespoons grated cheddar
2 soft-boiled eggs, halved
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
fennel fronds, to serve (optional)
Heat the oil, butter or ghee in a saucepan over a medium heat and saute the onion until translucent (about 3 minutes). Add oats, stock, and if using oats also add 1¼ cups of water. Stir and cook for 6-8 minutes until the liquid has been absorbed.
Take the porridge off the heat. Stir through half of the bacon and all of the cheese. Divide the porridge between two bowls, top with the egg halves and remaining bacon, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with fennel fronds if you like.