„Too good for the bin“ is a German campaign against food waste. Health food magazine „Schrot & Korn“ [whole grain & corn] made a competition in their September issue: Topic was the use of old or stale bread. The authors of the two best recipes had been invited to visit this year’s book fair in Frankfurt to cook their recipes in the show kitchen of the „Gourmet Gallery“ together with bio-leading chef Christian Kolb. I won this trip with my recipe of an onion bread soup!

Respecting food should be a matter of course. But it is not. Unfortunately. My daughter once read in a newspaper about the enormous amounts of foodstuff thrown away in German households. She started to keep a tally about everything, really everything, what could not be used anymore in our kitchen. When I say everything, I mean everything: she noted even an egg that accidentally fell to the ground. We had been far, far, far below the national average of mentioned article. Anyhow, this „bookkeeping“ was highly educational: No spontaneous shopping, no „Oh, we’ll just take this“ without having a plan – from week to week it went better and with even less things to throw away. Respect for food is also a matter of discipline.

Statistically German households throw away unbeleavable 82 kilograms of food per year and person. It says that every eighth food product we buy finally ends up in the bin. That means everybody of us spends about 235 Euros a year for food to be thrown away at the end. Mind you, per head.

Back to the show-kitchen at Frankfurt book fair: Bread always (even before our daughter‘s documentation) has been sacred to me. How much labour and good ingredients. We never have thrown bread into the bin. We cut every crust, every slice which becomes stale into cubes, dry and use them for Knödel [dumplings]. We love Knödel: bread dumplings, bacon dumplings, beet root dumplings, roasted dumplings, cheese dumplings, stinging nettles dumplings, Kaspressknödel [Austrian roasted cheese dumplings], spinach dumplings, liver dumplings – this is a great way to use up scraps. You see there were enough recipes for the competition. Anyhow, at the end I handed in a recipe for a delicious, warming Onion-Bread Soup, just the thing for Autumn.