Emily Siner

This applies to lots of food.

If it smells bad, don't eat it.

But otherwise, she says, I could pop the lettuce into a bowl of ice water, which plumps it back up.

Alternatively, instead of trying to make it as crisp as possible for a fresh salad, I could just expand my idea of how it can be prepared.

When in doubt, change the texture.

This could look like cooking things that you might normally eat raw, like lettuce or cucumbers.

It could look like pureeing wrinkly veggies into a soup.

Or it could look like grinding down the stems of parsley or basil.

They still have that same herby taste, but the texture might be off-putting.

So Tamar turns them into an herb oil.

I tried this at home, and I can attest, a pesto made with the stems tastes exactly the same as a pesto made with the leaves.

And it saved me from having to buy twice as many herbs as I need.

They're so good, you know.

One way to increase the lifespan of all the parts of your veggies is to store them with the right balance of moisture.

Baby spinach that you buy in a plastic bag tends to get gooey, Margaret says, because the plastic just retains too much moisture.

Not every experiment with every ingredient is going to be successful.

In fact, this is takeaway five.

Cooking with leftovers should be an adventure.

Like Margaret's mom throwing all the sauces together on a chicken, not trying to achieve the exact same outcome each time.

Or Tamar frying rice with whatever she has in her fridge.