Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

It makes me absolutely crazy when I hear how much good food regularly gets tossed out. A 2012 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that America discards up to 40% of its food, or about 20 pounds per person per month; the study notes that it’s basically “Farm to Fork to Landfill.” If you crunch the numbers, a family of four might easily chuck more than $1,500 worth of food per year.

My motto this year is “Don’t throw that out.” Several smart chefs and food professionals are way ahead of me. Let's all learn from their smart choices.
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Editor's note: Each week in "Apparently This Matters," CNN's Jarrett Bellini applies his warped sensibilities to trending topics in social media and random items of interest on the Web.

When I was growing up, to open my parents' refrigerator was to take a magical journey deep into a strange land of Tupperware that ultimately ended in sadness, confusion and some sort of round, congealed blob of food that may or may not have dated to the Carter administration.

"Mom, what is this?"

"Does it look like it might cause infection?"

"Kinda."

"It's soup."

Yes, we were a leftovers house. Be it chicken or rice, you were gettin' it twice!

Though, in all fairness, mom has always been a great cook. So, it was definitely tolerable.

Nevertheless, Day 7 of lasagna never quite had the same pizazz as Day 4. And opening that container on Day 60 risked introducing a newly formed, unknown invasive species into the ecosystem.
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I said it several weeks ago on Twitter and I still believe it to be true:

Here is a FREE ARTICLE for what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers. Ready? "Eat them; they are delicious. The end." Love, Kat.

It's true that there are dishes best served a la minute for optimum enjoyment; people aren't generally prone to stashing omelettes and pancakes into Tupperware containers for midnight noshes. Thanksgiving foods, though, tend to benefit from a night hunkered in the fridge, melding flavors and becoming exponentially more delicious.

Linda Petty is an editor at CNN Living. She liked boxed mixes, tarted-up vegetables, letting produce rot in her crisper and eating cold pizza at her desk for breakfast.

What’s behind that pantry door?

This week I will do my food shopping only at one very special place: my own pantry. Lord only knows what I will find in the back corners of the lowest and highest shelves. I expect to be eating some tuna salad from all those cans I bought when forecasters were predicting the last snow storm that brought Atlanta to a halt - which may give you some idea of the vintage of those items.
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