Sarah Burtscher has been involved in the hospitality business since her teens and brought her first cafe in the early 2000's when she was in her thirties in Christchurch, New Zealand She moved onto Lake Tekapo where she revamped an existing cafe and started Run 77 Cafe and then the Tin Plate – Pizza, Pasta & Piada and Bar. She has never trained professionally but loves cooking and what food represents and hates wasting it!
Sarah has lived on a fairly remote High Country Station with a four hour round trip to a large supermarket, so she is used to making do with what you have, when need be. This is where the hacks not to throw food out, the planning and "cleaning out the fridge", came into play.
She says, "With remote living you are totally responsible for all your own rubbish. The more I looked into it, the more I came to realise that the food waste statistics are shocking, some people just don't know how to utilise their grocery shop to the full. In Waste Not Want Not there are (mostly) recipes to show you how older, forgotten food can be made into delicious home cooked meals. You don't need to be a good cook, you don't need fancy ingredients, you can just make do and cook on.
I can't ignore the fact that the idea to write the book germinated in 2019 and then in March 2020 the whole world went into lockdown and home cooking, of necessity, came back into vogue. Never has it been more important to value your food, to help the environment and to help your wallet. I've added a lockdown chapter of recipes, all cooked in isolation at Level 4 NZ, it was when I got my A into G and got started.. Be greener with 'Fridge Cleaner' cooking, save some cash and have some fun!"