This cucumber caipirinha cocktail is refreshing, sweet and delicious. The cucumber and lime work well together and it’s salad so healthy, right?
Let’s get drunk on vegetables, shall we? Put salad in our cocktails, sit in the sun and watch the world through sunglasses. We can drink this refreshing and summery Brazilian cocktail with the smugness of a smoothie and talk rubbish.
Actual rubbish.
Food waste
Bellies rumble in the night and we throw food in the bin. Children look in empty fridges and unfathomable tonnes of food waste is generated by commercial and industrial sources around the world.
I bake food that my family doesn’t actually need to eat to survive. Food that, in excess, would make us fat while others waste away. Sometimes I feel guilt. Though not as much as those who throw it away on a mass industrial scale should feel, though they probably don’t. Otherwise something would be done.
Use it up
Usable food rots in landfill. Where possible we can compost, allowing our waste to nourish the soil.
We can reuse vegetable scraps into stocks and soups. Perhaps just giving thought about eating root to stalk when buying the vegetables is a good place to start. Great, thick cauliflower leaves are so often discarded, but surely can be eaten. Even strawberry tops can be used, corn cobs can be turned into jelly and carrot juicer pulp can be used in pastry.
So much food is discarded and I suppose that I’ve been considering it more and more lately. This is a huge issue that I don’t purport to know a lot about, but I’d like to learn more. Using up my carrot tops isn’t going to move usable produce out of industrial waste bins and onto the shelves of the food banks, but surely the more we think about wider food issues, the better.
The fat and the famished
The fat and the famished show that the food system is broken, globally. I’m not really sure what I can do about it, personally, but I suppose one of the smallest things I can do, after buying only what I need and using what I’ve bought, is to stop wasting food by being more creative about using plant parts that are normally discarded.
If you make these cocktails, you’ll be left with cucumber pulp. Why not try using it in Cucumber and Mint Cupcakes or Cucumber and Lemon Cake? Maybe make it into a smoothie or use it as a face mask? The lime peels can be dried or zested for future recipes. Making cupcakes, and thus using even more ingredients, isn’t going to help the hungry, but thinking about food before binning it and using it up might, eventually.
What are your tips for reducing food waste at home? What normally wasted parts of plants do you use? I’d love to hear in the comments.
Get the Cucumber Caipirinha Cocktail recipe
- 1 cucumber
- 2 limes
- 1-2 tablespoons caster sugar
- 2 shots cachaca
- handful of ice
- Chop the unpeeled cucumber into chunks and puree with a hand blender. Strain through a sieve, reserving the juice.
- Cut the limes into chunks and put into two glasses. Add the sugar to the glasses and muddle with the end of a rolling pin or spoon to extract the lime juice. Pour in about a shot of the cucumber juice and add a shot of cachaca. Top with ice and enjoy. You will have leftover cucumber juice for more cocktails!
Here are some useful sites for more information on issues in our food system:
Food Tank
Love Food Hate Waste
Tristram Stuart, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal
Feeding the 5000
Heidy L. McCallum
Fabulous blog post, your photos are divine, and that drink looks like I could have 1 or 6!
christine (@foodyschmoody)
This is such a beautiful cocktail. And refreshing! Yes please. We definitely need to work on our waste here, I’m definitely guilty of wasting too much. thanks for the reminder.
Kavey
Need to make cocktails more often!
Kate Hackworthy
Don’t we all, Kavey, don’t we all! 😉
Gintare
This is such a sensible post. It is disturbing the amounts of food that are wasted, even more so the part never reaching us because it is not considered “pretty enough” for consumers. Hats of to you for thinking more creative ways to use everything!
Kate Hackworthy
Thanks Gintare. We all really need to act, don’t we? Perhaps if we start at home, then eventually the real problem, industrially wasted food, will be addressed.
Michelle @ Greedy Gourmet
Did you see Zili in the news this week and his banana peel advice? You should add it to cheesecake!
Kate Hackworthy
Oooh, I’ll have to check that out! Thanks, Michelle.
Kecia
This cocktail sounds so refreshing with the cucumber and lime!
PassTheKnife
Thanks for your gorgeous cocktail recipe and tips to eliminate food waste. I like to use the stems of mushrooms, seafood shells, carrot tops among other vegetable odds and ends to make homemade stocks.
Kate Hackworthy
That’s fantastic. I definitely need to make my own stock more often.
Aunt Bee
This is one gorgeous cocktail! Looks so refreshing! <3
Kate Hackworthy
Thanks Aunt Bee, it was certainly refreshing!
Fish Fingers for tea
A very refreshing sounding cocktail! Food waste is a huge issue and one that we should all be trying to learn more about what we can do. I think you’re right though, starting in our own kitchens, with our own families is so important.
Kate Hackworthy
Thanks Sian. Little steps can make great change. Even if those steps are just thoughts at first…
Sarah, Maison Cupcake
I’ve never drunk one of these but I can see in a heatwave it would be very refreshing… hope we get some more hot weather then I will try one!
Kate Hackworthy
Let’s hope more hot weather is on it’s way!
Katie Bryson
Love cucumber in cocktails… so quenching and the very essence of summer. I try to be really careful not to waste any food… One of my tips is the fact that I don’t bother peeling carrots I just give them a good scrub before using them!
Kate Hackworthy
Great tip. I’ll start doing that as well. I have a lovely little veg brush and I’ll start to give it more use. 🙂
Elizabeth
What a thought provoking post (and that drink is GORGEOUS!). I do try to reduce waste as much as I possibly can. I compost, I freeze a lot and I try and get creative with dishes, but still I feel guilty about how much we do throw away.
Kate Hackworthy
Exactly. I guess it just gets to me that there is so much more that we can do, I’m just not entirely sure what. So I’m learning and experimenting with waste :). Questioning scraps is where I’ve started.
Anyonita
Yes, salad slurped up our straws! Delish!
The first part of your post is so poetic & reminds me of one of my favourite quotes from a poem by Tanure Ojaide. He says, “Folks, let’s drink ourselves to death” & while he wasn’t talking about cocktails, he’s the type of person who’d probably raise a glass to veggies in a glass. 🙂
Kate Hackworthy
Thanks so much, Anyonita. I’m going to google him now!
Sandi Gaertner (@sandigtweets)
This is not only a beautiful drink, but your point about waste is an important message. We started composting this year because I couldn’t stand the waste. Thank you for making your point so beautifully. Perhaps you will inspire people to be more aware of their kitchen waste and spark more creativity for its use.
Kate Hackworthy
Thanks for such lovely comments, Sandi! I always get a bit nervous posting things like this. We have been composting as well, but we eat so many veggies that there always seems to be a lot hitting the compost bin. We’ve decided to be more creative and to use what we can first. Thanks for commenting.
Sarah @ The Chef Next Door
This is a gorgeous cocktail! Wish we could sit outdoors and drink one together. Cheers!
Kate Hackworthy
Me too. We need a virtual, international cocktail party!
Michaela ~ An Affair from the Heart
What a refreshing summer cocktail!
Kate Hackworthy
They were certainly refreshing, and so easy to make!
Jenni @ Jenni's Ferris Wheel of Food
I adore a refreshing cocktail!
Kate Hackworthy
Me too. It’s such a nice treat on a hot day to make cocktails!