Four years ago, Slow Food Youth Network founded an annual international event — World Disco Soup Day. On that day each year, parties are thrown in which food waste is turned into a disco soup. The goal is to end food waste, raise awareness around zero waste, feed people and celebrate when you do save food.
This year’s event is coming right up: Saturday, April 25.
It’s easy to celebrate saving food when what you create from food scraps is delicious. Which it can always be — and we’re here to help show you how to make it so.
As part of the event, SFYN are asking participants to upload recipes from their elders that make delicious use of food scraps. I was about to do that, but when I was asked to start uploading ingredients and quantities, I realized it wasn’t going to work: This isn’t the approach we take when we cook this way. Instead, we peer into the fridge and think about how we’re going to use that cup of leftover black beans and those two boiled potatoes, those three celery stalks that are about to wilt and the cupful of arugula that’s too limp for a salad.
More often than not, we make a soup. And from now on, I’ll think of it as a disco soup! (Thank you, SFYN!).
We kicked off New Year’s in January by proclaiming 2020 The Year of the Soup, and gave a master recipe for making a Sunday Super Soup from stuff in the pantry and leftovers in the fridge. Here’s the story (which walks through how to change your relationship with food scraps), and here’s a more formalized version of the master recipe:
I’m hoping SFYN’s young members find the master soup recipe useful. (I’m a member of regular Slow Food USA, the Dallas Fort Worth chapter.)
If you’re not accustomed to cooking this way, now is a great time to start! You can be super mindful of not throwing out usable food scraps this week. Save everything. I use a dedicated zipper bag for odds and ends trimmed from carrots and onions, stray herbs, etc.
And we will help you strategize! If you find yourself with a cupful of white beans, some celery and half an onion, for instance, we’ll tell you how to turn that into a salad that makes a lovely lunch — or your own disco soup for next Saturday!
Just let us know in a comment at the end of this story. (PLEASE comment — we are eager to hear from you and engage!) We’ll suggest ideas — and everyone else can jump in an we can toss them back and forth.
In the meantime, we’re going to be thinking about ideas for cold disco soup, in case the weather is fine whether you might be on Saturday. Green gazpacho!
Sound good? Save scraps! Please share this story, with the hashtags #worlddiscosoupday #wdsd20 #Re_generation #fillbelliesnotbins #slowfoodyouthnetwork #sfyn
Plan for a big ol’ disco soup on Saturday, April 25. And stay safe.