Waste Not / Sarah Burtscher

Waste Not

Hitting the stands this month is a cookbook designed to inspire, inform and guide us through cooking with leftovers, with that limp carrot at the back of the fridge and the brown banana in the bowl. Meet Sarah Burtscher and her fridge/pantry/fruit bowl foraging approach to cooking.

WORDS Lucinda Diack / IMAGES Jet Campbell

DID YOU KNOW THAT KIWIS THROW AWAY 157,389

tonnes of food a year? I know! It is shocking, yet living in a household with two small children, it’s a figure I regularly contribute to. It is a figure that has been generated by local and international organisation Love Food Hate Waste, and one they further shock us with by breaking it down – that 157,389 tonnes is the equivalent of 271 jumbo jets of food. All of which is left to rot, instead of being eaten.

The top 10 wasted foods in New Zealand are bread, leftovers, oranges and mandarins, apples, bananas, potatoes, poultry, rice, lettuce and beef. Reading that list I am sure you can recall at least one instance in which you have contributed to this incredible amount of waste.

For South Canterbury woman Sarah Burtscher, it is a figure that needed attention. ‘I have always had a love of cooking,’ she explains. ‘I love what food represents, how it brings people together and creates a sense of community. And now more than ever it is important to value your food, to help not only your wallet but also the environment.’

In helping us tackle that enormous amount of waste, Sarah has self-published Fridge Cleaner Cooking: Waste Not Want Not, a practical and beautiful cookbook designed to inspire and inform home cooks to make the most of their food waste, turning things such as last night’s leftover brown rice into cookies that I personally can attest to tasting delicious.

While quick to inform me she isn’t a commercial chef, Sarah has a wealth of experience when it comes to cooking. ‘I started my journey in hospitality at high school when I waitressed for some extra income,’ she says. ‘And I loved it. Right through university and then during my OE I worked in restaurants, cafés and bars, learning along the way. But the one thing I never did was work in any of the kitchens. It wasn’t until I bought a run-down café in Christchurch (30 years ago) that I learnt more about this side of the business.’

Having fallen in love, Sarah found herself moving to the remote Mt Gerald Station in Lake Tekapo, where she once again dived right in, starting Run 77 Café & General Store and then the Tin Plate – Pizza, Pasta, Piada & Bar. ‘Both have now had several new owners and been renamed,’ she explains, ‘but it was here that I was really able to embrace my instinctive style of cooking to minimise waste. I had to, to keep the bottom line from being affected.’

Coupled with this was Sarah’s remote home location. ‘Living on the farm meant I couldn’t just up and go to the supermarket whenever I wanted. I had to be versatile. I was doing a lot of cooking at that time,’ she laughs. ‘As well as all the café menu planning and general business, I was doing all the household cooking and all the farm cooking, but I loved it. Planning menus still gets me excited.

‘My kids used to laugh and call me a fridge cleaner, as I would throw anything that worked into creating a meal,

cleaning out the fridge of food that was a little past its best and working it into a nutritious dish for them.’ It was a name that stuck, with Sarah working under the brand of Fridge Cleaner Cooking nearly a decade later.

Sarah describes her love for cookbooks and the inspiration they have provided her with over the years. ‘I love reading them and buying them and for as long as I can remember have been gathering ideas for my own pie-in-the-sky dream of producing one.’

A dream that was propelled into a reality with the Level 4 COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020. ‘The idea had been creeping in more and more over the years,’ she explains, ‘and in 2019 I started to take it a bit more seriously. However, I swung into gear in lockdown. I had three kids home to help with the taste testing!

‘From there it was about getting it written, designed and photographed.’ As Sarah has dyslexia, this was no small feat. ‘It was quite a major task for me to write a book,’ she explains. ‘And while the end result is about inspiring home cooks, it is also about inspiring other dyslexia sufferers and like-minded people. If I can do it, anyone can.’

While some of the recipes were taken from her time as a restaurant/café owner, others were written solely for the purpose of the book. Yet each one has been made fail-proof for the home cook, and each one designed to help us make a difference to the amount of food waste our households produce.

Organised into chapters – Fridge, Pantry, Fruit Bowl and Lockdown Cooking – the recipes are loosely based around the top 10 wasted foods and supported by hints, tips and tricks; such as how to use up the end of jams (in a smoothie!) and ideas for what to do with those pesky banana skins. Even for the cook-averse amongst us, there is something practical and

LEFT While home is Mt Gerald Station, Lake Tekapo, Sarah and her husband divide their time between the farm and Christchurch where their three teenage children are at school. Photo Mary Hobbs, from the book High Country Stations of Lake Tekapo.

‘I would throw anything that worked into creating a meal, cleaning out the fridge of food that was a little past its best and working it into a nutritious dish.’

informative to be found in the pages of this striking book.

Sarah credits much of the visual success of the book to her collaboration with local photographer and graphic designer Jet Campbell. ‘There was a lot of laughs behind the scenes and some strange hours worked,’ she describes, ‘but it was so much fun. Jet is incredibly creative and while some of the styling happened accidentally, and some of it planned, it was basically just [the two of us] in my kitchen.’

Beyond her fridge cleaning food philosophy, Sarah is focused on making cooking fun. ‘It should be about giving it a go,’ she shares. ‘Definitely don’t worry about making mistakes! I can’t make sushi very well, so I embrace clumsy sushi, or I make a sushi bowl. Experiment with what you have in the kitchen. I don’t have all the solutions and love hearing how others have solved a problem or utilised something they found in the back of the fridge.’

For Sarah, Waste Not Want Not is about starting the conversation around food wastage in our homes, with ‘starting’ being the operative word. ‘I have so many other ideas,’ she laughs, jumping straight into a discussion about useful tools to help declutter the kitchen. Her debut book is certainly not the last we will see of this fridge forager.

Fridge Cleaner Cooking: Waste Not Want Not by Sarah Burtscher will be in stores from 10 April 2021 onwards, $39.99. Distributed by Bateman Books.

‘I don’t have all the solutions and love hearing how others have solved a problem or utilised something they found in the back of the fridge.’

TOP LEFT While Sarah delights in bringing her dream to write a cookbook to fruition, she is most proud she was able to support local industry in doing so, collaborating with local designer and photographer Jet Campbell on the visuals and printing in Christchurch. OPPOSITE Sarah uses figs from the garden to test a new tray bake recipe for her blog, fridgecleaner.co.nz, Roasted Pork & Fig with late Summer Vegetables. Yum!