Endlessly cut and cut small food items (8)
I believe the answer is:
parsnips
'food items' is the definition.
(vegetables eaten as food)
'endlessly cut and cut small' is the wordplay.
'endlessly' means to remove the last letter.
'cut' becomes 'pare' (paring is a kind of cutting).
'and' says to put letters next to each other.
'cut small' becomes 'snips' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'pare' with its final letter taken away is 'par'.
'par'+'snips'='PARSNIPS'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for parsnips that I've seen before include "roots" , "Fine words butter no -- (proverb)" , "Snip spar, oddly, of the vegetables" , "food" , "Snip spar with the vegetable" .)