You won’t believe how spoiled and ignorant people are here. My colleagues didn’t know radish tops were edible. I used to eat them all the time together with my packed lunch.
In our house we rarely throw any food out. Even if I don’t want something, the partner will gladly eat it. Stems, stalks and things some people bin when it’s perfectly edible.
This is not the same as good. I’ve eaten radish tops and carrot tops. I’d do it again, if I were very hungry and there wasn’t much else. But not by choice.
Broccoli stems, on the other hand, I actually like.
Appropos of root vegetable tops, they should be.removed and stored separately once you get your produce home. They draw moisture and nutrients from the tuber/root.
Fixed that for you.
I like to think we’re pretty good at using up food. Veg that’s past its prime usually becomes soup, either to eat now or freeze. But,I don’t worry too much about this - the local council is very committed to recycling and has a weekly collection of “green waste” which includes all food items, including things like bones, so I know it’s going to be turned into a mulch which the council uses in parks, etc.
Looks like your recycling program is much more advance than here, no such thing on the national level. I have heard the city can sell you composter bin for cheap price (on paper), neighbour has ordered one but never got any news. Many friends bought their own composter bins in their garden for green waste but only limited to people who has space and the initiative, which remains a small minority of the population.
Ours used to do that before the new arrangements. I know some councils sell the compost back to the public but, unfortunately, not ours.
Impressive program. Not only do you have municipal composting available, it even deals with food waste like bones.
Our cities and towns have a lot of catching up to do.
Yep. Apart from the weekly “green waste”, we have other collections on a two-weekly basis for paper, glass/cans/plastic and non-recyclable. Our borough is about the tenth best in England for recycling with something like 60% of all household waste collected going for recycling.
My parents too. I’ve come to appreciate the all of it, but I really do enjoy the stems just as much. My sister, in her first job as a teenager, used to work at Wendy’s and they used to have a salad bar, which included broccoli florets. They used to get whole broccoli to cut up, and the stems would be discarded. My sister used to bring the stems home for my mom and we would cook them in our stir fries. 
Back on topic, I’ve been inspired to now try to make something with kohlrabi.
Chez naf, shrimps fish heads, meat bones go to broth making. Greens of leeks go to soup.
I didn’t know that there are people who don’t eat broccoli stems.
Although, I don’t eat radish and carrot leaves, not inspired. So I guess I’m those spoiled ones!
If not eating carrot and radish tops makes one spoiled . . . then I’m in the spoiled group, and I think I’m okay with that.
I try to use everything but some things I just don’t like. (sometimes carrot tops make their way into a stock but I don’t freeze them for that - maybe I will see how they hold up to being frozen for stock)
How about the leaves of artichokes? I remember when I was in Italy, people ate all the leaves individually, by scraping away the soft fleshy portion. This took a lot of time. Is there other ways to use the leaves?
Not exactly food waste, but I usually don’t eat cucumber skins (too bitter) or the red peanut skins (ditto).Evelyn
That’s interesting . . . that is how I eat artichokes 90%+ of the time.
I feel the need for a pole . . . do you eat an artichoke “whole” (leaves and all) or do you trim it back to just the heart? I wonder if this is a regional thing too (I have had to explain to people how to eat a whole artichoke before - adults, I was surprised - so maybe it is just how I grew up.
Yes.
The very young ones, you can eat everything, leaves and hearts. For the normal sized ones, just the heart.
