C4
EAT, DRINK & EXPLORE
East Oregonian
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Tasty deals: Apps help find unsold food and reduce waste
By KIRSTEN
GRIESHABER
Associated Press
BERLIN — After a long
day at work, Annekath-
rin Fiesinger is too tired
to consider making dinner
at home. So the 34-year-
old uses her smartphone to
check nearby restaurants,
hotels or bakeries in Berlin
for food being sold for a dis-
count at the end of the day.
The part-time coffee shop
worker, who is also studying
for a degree in the science
of ecosystems, is part of a
growing movement of envi-
ronmentally aware people in
Germany and beyond who
are using apps to reduce
food waste and try to cut
down on climate-wrecking
carbon emissions.
While it’s unclear how
big an impact such efforts
have in ultimately reducing
emissions, they reflect how
environmental concerns are
growing and shaping the
behavior of consumers and
businesses.
“For me this is all about
the environment,” says
Fiesinger. “We cannot go on
with all this wastefulness.”
Fiesinger uses “Too
Good To Go,” Europe’s
most popular app to find dis-
counted unsold food. It uses
her phone’s GPS to tell her
which registered businesses
nearby have extra food
for sale, and what they’re
offering.
“It’s super easy: just
download the app and, on
your way home, pick up
what you like best,” she
explained, scrolling through
a long list of photos adver-
tising veggie meals, baked
goods and unsold lunch
specials.
The app is part of a grow-
ing number of services using
technology to help reduce
food waste.
Activists have built
online communities to share
food with neighbors before
throwing it away. Startups
have teamed up with super-
markets to create applica-
tions that alert consum-
ers when groceries that are
about to expire are marked
down. Even the German
AP Photos/Markus Schreiber
Franziska Lienert, spokeswoman of the company that runs the food sharing app “Too Good To Go,” uses a tablet to find a
restaurant participating with the food sharing community.
government has launched a
phone app offering recipes
by celebrity chefs made spe-
cifically for leftover grocer-
ies that often get discarded.
On average, every Ger-
man throws away more than
120 pounds of food a year,
the government says. That’s
about 11 million tons of food
annually, which creates 6
million tons of carbon diox-
ide emissions that contribute
to global warming. Glob-
ally, about one-third of all
food ends up in the garbage.
Emissions come from
burning the wasted food
but also from producing the
food in the first place. For
example, cattle raised for
beef and milk are the ani-
mal species responsible for
the most emissions, repre-
senting about 65% of the
livestock sector’s emissions,
according the U.N.
Scientists say the only
possible way to slow down
global warming is by dras-
tically reducing the emis-
sions of greenhouse gases,
such as carbon dioxide in
the coming decades. Doing
so means ending the use of
fossil fuels and cutting back
Armin Doetsch, owner of the restaurant Aennchen von Thor-
gau. Doetsch participates in a food sharing program via the
App “Too Good To Go” for ecological reasons.
on other sources of emis-
sions, such as intensive land
use for agriculture.
The German government
has said it wants to reduce
food waste by half until
2030 and Chancellor Angela
Merkel called on all citizens
to support initiatives that
help avoid food waste.
“I think that every sin-
gle person can contribute
to this big goal,” Merkel
said during her weekly pod-
cast in February. “Digitiza-
tion can help with intelli-
gent packaging and (online)
platforms via which one can
then share food.”
The “Too Good To Go”
app, which was created by
a couple of Danish entrepre-
neurs in 2015, has seen its
number of users grow rap-
idly. More than 5,000 people
download the app in Ger-
many every day, a spokes-
woman for the company
says. It’s also available in
10 other European countries
including Denmark, France,
Britain and Poland.
“So far, we have rescued
14 million meals in Europe
from being thrown away —
that equals 35,000 tons of
CO2 that have been saved,”
spokeswoman
Franziska
Lienert said.
Evaluating the actual
impact of those saved meals
can be tricky, as the con-
sumers would have likely
bought food from another
retailer instead. But food
sharing programs and
apps can help better match
demand for meals to their
supply, increasing the indus-
try’s overall efficiency.
Ten million people use
“Too Good To Go” and
some 23,300 food busi-
nesses participate, Lienert
said. It’s the most popular,
but other food sharing apps
include FoodCloud, Karma
or Olio, which is available
in hundreds of cities in the
United States.
To make a profit, “Too
Good To Go” keeps 1.09
euros ($1.22) per meal sold
through the app. The food
is usually about 50% less
expensive than its original
price.
Like Fiesinger, most of
the app’s users are univer-
sity students and young,
tech-savvy professionals.
While a growing num-
ber of businesses are partic-
ipating in such app-based
schemes, many others still
give their unsold food for
free to charities that dis-
tribute it to the homeless or
other people in need.
Whereas unsold food in
Germany usually ends up
in the garbage, France and
the Czech Republic have in
recent years implemented
laws banning supermarkets
from throwing away food
and instead ordered them
to donate it to charities and
food banks.
In Berlin, Fiesinger
checks her phone for food
offered in her neighborhood.
She decides on a lunch
special at Aennchen von
Thorgau restaurant on the
banks of the Spree river. She
clicks on one of four unsold
pasta dishes, ordering and
paying automatically.
“In Berlin, it’s really
easy to find something —
there’s something waiting
for you on every corner,”
says Fiesinger on her way
to pick up her meal.
Restaurant owner Armin
Doetsch says he partici-
pates in the app’s program
mainly for environmental
reasons.
“We often have leftovers
from our lunch specials,”
Doetsch said. “Rather than
tossing it, we prefer to give
it away, even if it’s only for
little money.”
He piles a dish of Spaet-
zle pasta with mushrooms
— marked down to 3.80
euros from 6.50 euros —
into a container Fiesinger
had brought along and
hands it over with a smile.
“We also want to avoid
extra packaging waste,”
says Doetsch. “Everybody
who brings along their own
Tupperware box gets free
ice cream as a reward.”
Meet Oregon’s fermented foods pioneers — the Shockeys
By AARON SCOTT
Oregon Public Broadcasting
APPLEGATE VALLEY
— Do you ever dream of
moving to the country? You
know, grow your own food
in the garden, maybe raise a
few chickens and goats.
Kirsten and Christopher
Shockey moved to Southern
Oregon’s Applegate Valley
to do just that: They wanted
a humble homesteader life.
And along the way, they
became pioneers in a global
fermented foods movement,
with their newest book,
“Miso, Tempeh, Natto &
Other Tasty Ferments: A
Step-by-Step Guide to Fer-
menting Grains and Beans,”
due out Tuesday.
Like other homesteaders,
the Shockeys’ day generally
begins with a trip to their
garden, where every morn-
ing seems to deliver a deli-
cious surprise.
“Oh my gosh, so good,”
says Kirsten, popping a rad-
ish seed pod in her mouth
and handing several to
Christopher.
“They’re super peppery,”
he replies after trying one.
And then another. And then
another. “I’m going to have
to stop eating them.”
“Yeah, you are,” she
laughs.
While others might only
harvest what they can eat
while it’s fresh, the Shock-
eys have another goal in
mind: fermentation. They
pick the pods and a basket
full of basil and head back
to the commercial kitchen
on the ground floor of their
house. Setting their haul
on the table, they break out
bowls and salt. Because fer-
mentation always begins
with salt.
“Give me a nice sprin-
kle,” says Christopher, as
Kirsten pours a quarter cup
or so of salt on the basil and
he starts to rub it in. “So this
is the magic. We’re going to
take a whole bowl of basil
and massage that salt in.
It’s pretty amazing: Out of
basil you can get that much
brine coming out of there,”
he says, squeezing a handful
of leaves and watching the
green brine run through his
fingers.
They pack the basil and
brine into a jar and put it
in the pantry, where it joins
shelves and shelves of color-
ful, bubbling brews. Fennel,
leeks, rhubarb, rutabaga.
Chances are if it grows in a
garden, they’ve tried to fer-
ment it.
But what, exactly, is
fermentation?
It’s an ancient form of
pickling, where instead of
adding vinegar, you get
the microbes that naturally
occur on the veggies to do
the preservation work for
you. This is how Christo-
pher explains it in classes
for kids: “We’re going to
use microbes — little, teeny,
tiny guys; guys that you
can’t even see — and their
job is to eat the sugars, and
they’re going to make lactic
acid, which is that sour taste
that you taste, and they’re
going to fart CO2. And then
usually the kids are like,
‘Oh, my God, is it going be
smelly?’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s
microbe farts!’”
It might be smelly, but as
the Shockeys like to point
out, it’s also good for you.
Scientists are finding that
the microbes themselves,
called probiotics, are benefi-
cial, and as they break down
the food, they add extra
vitamins. And, unlike freez-
ing or drying, fermenting
preserves the volatile oils
that hold in flavor.
“So it’s like you’re taking
the smell on this harvest of
right now,” says Kirsten as
she points to the basil, “and
you’re going to capture it in
that jar.”
Oregon Public Broadcasting Photo/Kristen Henderson
Kirsten and Christopher Shockey ferment basil, along with
everything else they can grow, in the test kitchen in their
home in Southern Oregon’s Applegate Valley.
The Shockeys didn’t set
out to be mad culinary sci-
entists. They originally
moved from Corvallis to
Oregon’s Applegate Valley
in 1998 in search of a sim-
pler life.
“Especially as the kids
were starting to grow, I
just wanted them to be
grounded,” Kirsten says. “I
wanted them to have a con-
nection with the land, and
I wanted them, more than
anything, to know where
their food came from.”
The idea was to get their
40-acre homestead to pay
for itself, which turned out
easier said than done. Their
first thought was a vine-
yard, but everyone else was
doing it. Then they decided
to make cider, but it was
going to take years for the
apple trees to mature. So
they tried a dairy, but they
couldn’t grow enough fod-
der to make it sustainable.
Meanwhile, they got a
crock of sauerkraut as a
gift and that inspired them
to start making it at home.
It turned out to be a crock
of kraut that changed their
lives.
“Then we thought we
should launch our own
label,” Christopher says.
“We schlepped a lot of sau-
erkraut to farmer’s mar-
kets back in the day when
it wasn’t sexy — a lot of
yucky faces.”
At the time, most Amer-
icans associated sauerkraut
with the canned goop served
at ballgames. But like the
pioneers who came to the
Applegate Valley before
them, the Shockeys were
resourceful. They saw fer-
mentation as a way to bottle
the beauty and the bounty of
the landscape around them
— and customers began
to flock to their flavorful
concoctions.
“We created vegetable
recipes that maybe didn’t
have a cabbage blade in
them at all, and so the idea
was really working locally,”
Kirsten says.
“She did 52 varieties in
one year: 52,” Christopher
exclaims.
They experimented with
fermenting anything and
everything
neighboring
farms grew in surplus, cre-
ating a tool for local farm-
ers to transform a loss into
a profit.
“It’s using what would
be considered waste prod-
ucts a lot of times, whether
they’re, as my husband puts
it, ‘cosmetically challenged
vegetables,’ or overruns,”
says Mary Alionis, owner of
the nearby Whistling Duck
Farm and Store and a long-
time Shockey supplier. “So
it also allows me to grow a
surplus of things, and then
I know that I’m not going
to have too much because
my surplus can go into
fermentation.”
Realizing there was only
so much kraut one cou-
ple could sling — and in
response to repeated cus-
tomer requests for recipes
— Christopher suggested
they write a cookbook (and
eventually turn the produc-
tion business over to Alio-
nis). Kirsten’s response: It’s
been done.
“The only fermenta-
tion book out there at the
time was Sandor Katz’s
‘Wild Fermentation,’ so a
small one and Christopher
plucked it off the shelf and
came back to me and said,
‘Yeah, but there’s only 17
pages of vegetables.’”
So they started going
through vegetables alpha-
betically, arugula to zuc-
chini, in a quest to figure
out how to ferment them
all. In 2014, they published
the results in a cookbook
titled “Fermented Vegeta-
bles: Creative Recipes for
Fermenting 64 Vegetables
& Herbs in Krauts, Kim-
chis, Brined Pickles, Chut-
neys, Relishes & Pastes.”
The book has now sold more
than 100,000 copies world-
wide and helped feed the fer-
mentation wave that swept
things like kimchi, kombu-
cha, and keifer into the mass
culinary consciousness —
and every grocery store near
you.
“There’s a revitalization
of sauerkraut in Germany,
for example, and that’s with
books like ours,” Christo-
pher says. “And so to think
that two people from Ore-
gon are responsible in some
little way for Germans to
learn how to make sauer-
kraut … it’s just mind-blow-
ingly cool!”
The Shockey’s have
followed with a condi-
ment cookbook, “Fiery
Ferments”; their upcom-
ing guide to fermenting
miso, tempeh, natto and
other legumes; and a new
book about cider that’s in
the works. Now they travel
the world to teach their
Oregon-grown gospel of
fermentation.
The Shockeys may come
up with recipes, but what
they really hope people take
away from their books and
classes is a playful will-
ingness to experiment with
fermentation.
“What I’ve seen is this
explosion of creativity,”
Kirsten says. “People all
over the country and all over
the world saying, ‘Wow,
look, I can use this method,
this thing that has worked,
you know, since people had
a vessel and some salt, really
— and look what I can do
with it. Look at the flavors
that can happen!’”