Vegetable tops don't have to go in the trash. Here's how to use them

LOS ANGELES - Many years ago, I ran into Alain Giraud, one of the best French chefs in Los Angeles, rummaging through crates of discarded vegetable greens at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market. This was a good decade before food waste became the sort of thing people talked about on high-profile panels and in beautiful documentaries. Giraud doubtless already knew to use his kitchen's parsley stems and fennel fronds in stock, as any classically trained chef would, so I ducked under the table and asked him what he was doing.

"It is for my rabbits," the chef said in his thick Parisian accent, tucking a thatch of bright green carrot tops into the straw market basket under his arm, along with bouquets of lavender and chervil.

I remember this for many reasons. Because it was incredibly charming, of course, but also because my daughter used the story years later to guilt me into