Don’t throw away your stale bread: Tips for a more sustainable kitchen, Italian

(CNN) — Before you throw away that last stale slice of bread or the heel you never like to eat, I have a recipe or two for you.

And really good ones. As an Italian-born foodie, I can tell you that Italians will not compromise on having a fresh loaf of bread in their homes — which you might think means that yesterday’s stale bread is at risk of ending up in the trash bin. On the contrary.

Repurposing ingredients and preserving food is central to my and so many other culinary traditions, so I always lean on tried-and-true ways to make a new meal out of something that could otherwise be wasted.

Those two or three tossed-out slices of bread add up: American consumers produce nearly 35 million tons of food waste at a cost of about $261 billion each year, according to ReFED’s latest repor