Reducing holiday food waste is easy in South Sound

The long Thanksgiving Day weekend is drawing to a close, and when you wake up tomorrow, the calendar will say Dec. 1. If that isn't enough to set off a touch of holiday shopping anxiety, then you must be among the minority of shoppers getting a jump on the rest of us.

Back to Thanksgiving for a minute: Did you know that the average U.S. household throws away 25 percent of the food it prepares? A whopping 96 billion pounds of food is wasted every year in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Not surprisingly, food waste spikes during the holidays by about 25 percent.

At Horsefeathers Farm this year, where Thanksgiving dinner had to wait a day while I worked Thursday, we tried to prepare and cook only what was likely to be fully consumed Friday and the days following. The turkey weighed in at 15 pounds, which was plenty of turkey for everyone at the table of six, plenty of leftovers and plenty for the subsequent turkey barley soup that has become part of our post-Thanksgiving Day ritual. The soup is a great way to take advantage of what always turns out to be a meaty turkey carcass, thanks in large part to my inept, impatient carving skills.

The garden provided about 25 percent of the meal, including the potatoes, the garlic, some of the onions, apples to stuff the turkey and rosemary to spice up the dressing. The new, experimental addition from the garden were the oft-ignored but not forgotten beets, which were combined with red cabbage and cranberries to make an interesting cold relish. That dish took the place of the Brussels sprouts-grape concoction that was a big hit last year, but had to be set aside because the Brussels sprout plants got off to a poor start in the cold frame this year and never fully recovered.

Anyway, food waste was kept to a minimum this year at Horsefeathers Farm, and what didn't make it past the dinner plate ended up as scraps in the food composting bin, joining the potato peels, onion skins and other assorted food waste generated during meal preparation.

Here's something to be thankful for: Thousands more South Sound residents are recycling their food waste this holiday season, thanks mainly to the expansion of curbside food waste recycling programs this year in Olympia and the surrounding area. Those efforts should help South Sound residents beat the national average when it comes to holiday food waste.

Sticking to the holiday theme, here's some advice from longtime Washington State University Extension agent Don Tapio on how to keep a Christmas tree fresh through the holidays. Tapio, a south Thurston County Christmas tree farmer when he's not busy doling out advice, knows of what he speaks.

For beginners, Tapio said, recut the base of the Christmas tree as soon as you bring it home. All that's required is removal of a one-half-inch disk of wood at the butt end of the trunk before putting the tree in the stand. Put the tree in water as soon as you make the cut, even if it's not going immediately into a Christmas tree stand.

Remember: cut trees soak up a lot of water, up to 4 quarts a day for a noble or Fraser fir during the first week. It's best if the tree stand can hold 1 quart of water for every inch of stem diameter, but few of them do, so keep an eye on the water level in the tree stand.

Some other useful tips from Tapio: drilling a hole in the base of the tree, or cutting the butt end at an angle, does nothing to increase the uptake of water. The temperature of the water is a non-factor, too, in the amount of water the tree absorbs.

Clean water is all that's needed to keep a tree fresh. Forget the additives, such as floral preservatives, commercial tree preservatives, molasses, sugar, bleach, soft drinks, honey, aspirin or whatever else you've heard might help.

I have my own surefire way to keep a cut tree fresh. Don't put the tree up until about a week to 10 days before Christmas. As Andy Rooney said last week on "60 Minutes," Thanksgiving as a holiday has been pre-empted by the consumer rush to Christmas, including commercial Christmas displays, that go up long before the turkey lands on the dinner table.

So on this, the last day of November, take a deep breath, have a turkey sandwich or turkey soup, and remember there are still more than 20 shopping days until Christmas.

John Dodge is a senior reporter and Sunday columnist with The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5444 or jdodge@theolympian.com.