The best feta cheese comes packed in a salty, funky brine, and that stuff is pure liquid wonderment. Just as any brine can be used to flavour food, leftover feta brine can be used to whip up cheesy rice; moist, flavorful pork chops; and a crazy tasty pan sauce. (It also freezes very well, which means you can stash it pretty much indefinitely.)

Video: Welcome back to Eating Trash With Claire, the Lifehacker series where I convince you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and delicious. In this episode, I show you how to transform strawberries that are just a bit past their prime into a sweet sauce, cocktail-friendly ice cubes and a delicious compound butter.

Video: Welcome back to Eating Trash With Claire, the Lifehacker series where I convince you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and delicious. In this episode, I show you how to make a delicious, hearty pesto out of carrot tops.

Video: Welcome back to Eating Trash With Claire, the Lifehacker series where I convince you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and delicious. In this episode, I show you how to use spiky, seemingly useless pineapple peels to make a tasty, tropical gin.

Video: If you're a reader of Eating Trash With Claire the Lifehacker series where I convince you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and delicious - you should get excited, because it's now a video series. First up, I show you how to make a delicious, flavour-packed stock out of scraps, shells, and other "trash" that is actually treasure. Enjoy!

Out of all the trash I've eaten, pineapple peels might be my favourite. Not only can you use them to make an ice cold glass of tea or a decidedly tropical infused gin, but it has come to my attention that there is yet another fantastic beverage this noble scrap can be used for: Chicha de arroz con piña.

The stock pot is often the ultimate destination for all sorts of kitchen trash, but once the liquid has been drained away, some of those scraps - namely, carrots - still have more to give.

We all know to save bird bones to make stock, but the excess skin and fat you find yourself with after butchering a piece of poultry is just as valuable. With very little effort on your part, you can render out some of the tastiest cooking fat around.

Stock is the backbone of so many recipes. Whether it's used as a cooking liquid for rice or beans, or as the base of a soup or gravy, the quality of your stock influences the quality of your final dish. Though it isn't hard to make, there are a few tweaks you can make to ensure yours is a rich and tasty stock that's anything but watery.

In terms of savoury no-cook sauces, it's hard to beat pesto. You can spread it on bread, toss it with grilled vegetables, drizzle it on fish, or use it as a pasta sauce. Though it's usually made with fresh basil, it can actually be made with almost any green thing, including kitchen scraps.

Whether you're frugal, environmentally conscious, or just love an efficiency challenge, there are a lot of reasons to save your food scraps. Well, mostly to make stock out of. And to compost the rest. But some of your scraps are good for more than just boiling for soup -- they can also be the starting place for a clever air freshener.

Garlic skins have always been my least favourite part of peeling garlic. They either stick to my fingers, or float about the kitchen, carried by slight breezes before making their home on random appliances. But I resent them no more, my dears, because it turns out they make a kick-arse broth.

I've never been a huge fan of peels, crusts, or any hardened, outer portions of various foods. Though I rarely take the time to do it, I prefer my apples peeled, and I still remove the crusts from my sandwiches if I'm feeling slightly juvenile. As a result, I tend to shy away from recipes that advocate the straight-up chomping of peels and the like.

Pineapple is a flawless fruit. Not only is it a tasty snack all on its own, but it's delicious when dipped in chocolate, and plays super well with alcoholic spirits of all kinds. I like to buy them whole and break 'em down myself, but I'm always a little sad to toss out the the bumpy, slightly spiky peels.

I hate to sound melodramatic, but lettuce and I are enemies. It's not that I don't like eating salad -- I do -- it's that I never eat salad fast enough before my lettuce gets "weird", as in "not technically inedible but kind of limp and not-so-fresh looking". This makes me feel like a failure, and I hate failure. Luckily, Jenn Louis has a recipe specifically designed for not-quite-salad-worthy lettuce, and it's called "lettuce jam".

Most cabbage recipes call for you to remove the core and toss it (or compost it), but this is folly. According to Epicurious, a cabbage core "is a crunchy, radish-like vegetable part worth eating all on its own," and they have several tasty plans for it.