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Zero-Waste Chef

  • ZWC Book

It’s a Book!

Posted on September 30, 2020October 14, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

I’ve been working on this for a while! My book is now available.

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44 Comments
  • Challenges

A New Year’s Challenge: 30 Days of Climate Action

Posted on December 31, 2021January 1, 2022by Anne-Marie Bonneau

30 Days of Climate Action kicks off Jan 1. When you sign up, you’ll receive a daily action to take to address our changing climate.

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  • All Recipes

Easy, Adaptable, Sweet & Sour Apple-Cranberry Chutney

Posted on December 16, 2021December 16, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
Chopped chutney ingredients in a stainless steel pot sitting on the stove at the start of cooking. The ingredients include apples, shallot, minced garlic, dried cranberries, vinegar and spices.

Have apples a wee past their prime? Make this sweet and sour apple-cranberry chutney. Or swap out the apples for pears. Make it your own.

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5 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

7 Low-Waste Gifts in Jars Your Recipients Will Love

Posted on December 6, 2021December 13, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

Just about everything looks better in a jar, especially food. These gifts in jars look impressive but most require little hands-on work.

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4 Comments
  • Homesteading

Frugal Hugelkultur: How to Build the Ultimate Raised Garden Bed

Posted on November 29, 2021December 6, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

Hugelkultur beds contain dead wood that, upon decomposition, returns water and nutrients to the soil for waste-free, frugal gardening.

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8 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

9 Easy Ways to Reduce Plastic at Thanksgiving

Posted on November 18, 2021November 27, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
pumpkin pie in a pie dish with a slice cut and a slice on a plate

These nine simple swaps will help you minimize plastic waste this Thanksgiving while maximizing taste and even saving money!

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8 Comments
  • Food Waste

How to Cook Without Following Recipes or Buying More Food

Posted on November 11, 2021November 11, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

Eating all the food we buy presents no downside. We shop less and save time and money, eat tastier food and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

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5 Comments
  • Climate Crisis

We Need to Talk About Our Demand Chain Crisis

Posted on November 5, 2021November 16, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
close up of a bike chain on a green bicycle

We keep hearing about the supply chain disruption in the news media but need to address what drives our supply chain: unsustainable demand.

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6 Comments
  • Sourdough

Simple Multigrain Bread With Sourdough Discard

Posted on October 27, 2021October 28, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
multigrain sourdough discard bread sliced on a wooden cutting board, surrounded by the various seeds that go into it

Want another recipe to enjoy while putting a dent in your jar of sourdough discard? Try this easy multigrain sourdough discard bread.

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7 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

Passive Zero Waste: Doing Nothing Is the Best Solution

Posted on October 19, 2021October 19, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

If sustainable living seems hard, try passive zero-waste. In other words, do nothing (or very little). Here are 11 strategies.

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7 Comments
  • All Recipes

Pumpkin and Spice Sourdough Discard Quick Bread

Posted on October 14, 2021October 14, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

This pumpkin sourdough quick bread is like pumpkin pie in bread form and, if I slapped a label on it, it could honestly claim “Now BPA-Free!”

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9 Comments
  • All Recipes

5 Simple Zero-Waste Frugal Dinners Under $12

Posted on October 7, 2021October 7, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
A large pot of bean and vegetable soup, a very frugal dinner

Each $12 frugal dinner in this post serves four people, thus proving that a zero-waste or low-waste lifestyle need not cost a fortune.

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5 Comments
  • Sourdough

Sourdough-Potato Focaccia Made With Simple Ingredients and Tools

Posted on October 4, 2021December 2, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
slab of sourdough potato focaccia topped with garlic cloves and cooking on a silver cooling rack

Do you love sourdough bread? Do you love potatoes? This sourdough-potato focaccia is for you. It requires humble ingredients and simple tools.

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10 Comments
  • Food Waste

Stop Pouring These 7 Leftover Flavors Down the Drain

Posted on September 29, 2021September 29, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
Three glass jars on a marble background, containing bean broth. They are pinto bean broth, black bean broth and kidney bean broth.

You’ll want to save these leftover concoctions to cook with later because they add so much flavor to dishes. But you’ll also conserve water.

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  • Food Waste

Quick Cheap Good: Grateful-for-What-I-Have Fried Rice

Posted on September 23, 2021September 24, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
A pot of rice and various vegetables arranged on a tabletop. These will go into fried rice, a very frugal and versatile dish.

Cooking dishes like fried rice with food I have on hand never fails to make me feel grateful. It also reduces food waste and saves money.

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4 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

How to Store and Keep Bread Fresh Without Single-Use Plastic

Posted on September 16, 2021October 19, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

Readers often ask how to store bread without plastic, while keeping it fresh. It can be done! And if your bread does dry out, revive it.

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15 Comments

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Can we please have this everywhere? From @ecowatc Can we please have this everywhere? From @ecowatch: In Maui, restaurants "purchase stainless steel HuiZero containers, which are exchangeable at all other participating restaurants. When customers order food to go, they pay a $10 deposit to receive their food in a reusable container. The next time they order from a participating restaurant, they can bring that tin back to receive either $10 cash or $10 credit towards their food, depending on the restaurant." Customers can drop off their tins dirty. Restaurants wash them. Brilliant! Check out the list of participating businesses at @huizerohawaii.
Thank you for the story this week @ebtimes. "Reso Thank you for the story this week @ebtimes. "Resolved to reduce waste, save money and eat more deliciously? You need a local role model. Someone who makes it look easy, and won’t pile on the eco-guilt even if you forget to save your apple peels every now and then." The story includes a couple of recipe excerpts, Eat All Your Vegetable Pancakes and Sparkling Tepache, from my cookbook. Link @zerowastechef for the story.
Happy 2022! So far, so good... Today is Day 1 of Happy 2022! So far, so good... Today is Day 1 of my new year's challenge, 30 Days of Climate Action. Today's action is …🥁 🥁 🥁... have a conversation with someone about the changing climate. Climate scientist @katharinehayhoe, author of the excellent new book, Saving Us, A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, says the number one thing anyone can do about the climate change is to talk about it. But how you talk about it is crucial. Hayhoe says to start with something you both have in common and care about and how climate change affects it. (e.g., I'm Canadian and a warming climate threatens maple syrup production). You can read the full action in my newsletter (link @zerowastechef). And please read this book! If you had some climate conversations over the holidays that didn't go over too well, this book will prepare you for the next ones. It is also filled with hope. Hayhoe lays out dozens upon dozens of examples of climate solutions that people around the world are already implementing.
Worrying about the changing climate can make you w Worrying about the changing climate can make you want to curl up into fetal position and give up all hope. But there are reasons for optimism. (Someone tell Bootsy here.) We already have the solutions to address the climate crisis and they are being implemented. Now we need to ramp things up. Tomorrow, January 1st, I’ll launch 30 Days of Climate Action, a subset of my regular newsletter that will run for the month. When you sign up for the challenge, you’ll receive a daily email outlining one way you can act on climate. Not every single person will take every single action in the challenge but I’ve included what I think are doable strategies that can make the biggest impact. So you won’t receive suggestions like “Day 12: Sell your car today” or “Day 18: Move to the woods” or “Day 22: Become a hermit.” (Although some of you may find those actions appealing.) I often hear questions like, “How do I go beyond zero waste?” or “I’m really worried about climate change but what can I do?” or “How can one person make a difference?” I’ve addressed these kinds of questions in the challenge. Some actions push for system change. Some actions focus on individual change. We need both. We need it all. I hope you’ll join in! Link in profile to register. I'd also like to thank you all for following me along on here. As we say goodbye to another difficult year, I want to wish you all a safe and joyful 2022.
Beginning January 1st—only a few days away 😯—I'm launching a subset of my newsletter: 30 Days of Climate Action. The format differs a bit from previous January challenges I've done that lay out the entire month's worth of actions on my site all at once. For this 30-day plan, every day, you'll receive a new task in your inbox to help keep you motivated (and hopefully in suspense!). I regularly get DMs asking, "What can we do on a bigger scale?" I've included lots of answers to this question in the 30 actions. Any guesses what the first action is? Registration link in bio @zerowastechef.
This isn't 100 percent zero waste but it's 100 per This isn't 100 percent zero waste but it's 100 percent cute! My daughter Charlotte lives in Montreal with her aunt, uncle and 4-year-old, dump truck-obsessed cousin so she made him this gingerbread dump truck this weekend. Charlotte followed a gingerbread recipe from @sallysbakeblog and based the design on a dump truck soft toy she sewed for her cousin last Christmas. The little presents on top do have some wrapping on them but you can skip those. Even with them, baking and assembling a homemade gingerbread house (or dump truck) cuts down on the packaging waste of store-bought, prefab gingerbread house kits plus you can design whatever type of structure you'd like. Make a simple cottage or a yurt or a mansion or a truck or, or, or... You can also eat the house! Yes, you can eat homemade gingerbread houses (and also store-bought if they contain edible ingredients and pieces, which most do). The houses taste better fresh, so eat yours within a week or so (depending on the recipe you followed). Pick off candies when no one is looking, stealthily break off pieces of the roof here and there, dip them into a cup of tea, or crush the gingerbread into crumbs and use them to later make a cookie crumb pie crust. What would be your ideal gingerbread house (or structure)?
Tomorrow we will hand out these simple 315 upcycle Tomorrow we will hand out these simple 315 upcycled cloth produce bags at the Sunnyvale farmers' market, beginning around 10am. Some are plain and some are patterned—each one is unique. Thank you to everyone who has donated their unwanted fabric and sheets. And thank you Sunnyvale Environmental Services Department for letting us squat in your booth! We give these away to reduce plastic at the market and to raise awareness about plastic pollution. During the holidays, they double as gift bags! They look cute and will keep wrapping paper out of landfill. But wait, there’s more! Sew some of these yourself over Zoom next week. I'm teaching an online produce bag-making class on Thursday, December 16th at 4pm PST. We will sew these VERY simple bags in the workshop. I still have some spots left. Bring your fabric, machine and a cup of hot chocolate or eggnog 🙂 The registration link is in my profile. I look forward to seeing some of you in person tomorrow!
Two hugelkultur beds are now operational in the ba Two hugelkultur beds are now operational in the backyard and full of seeds. This bed contains branches from our dead fruit trees, compost from our bins, unwanted carved pumpkins I picked up from neighbors after Halloween and some soil we dug out to create room for logs we buried under the other hugelkultur bed. As the buried deadwood slowly decomposes, it releases nutrients and water—a godsend in drought-stricken California as these beds will require less water than beds without wood. The organisms that break down the wood will also aerate the soil. Our clay soil needs all the help it can get 😬 Thank you @satbarisisters for passing along your five pre-loved redwood boxes 🥰 Total cost for this filled bed: $0. I planted free seeds in it from the garden share I attended last weekend. Link in my stories for more about hugelkultur.
On Sunday, I attended a garden share event at Char On Sunday, I attended a garden share event at Charles Street Gardens, a community garden in my city. People brought all kinds of food, plant cuttings and seeds from their gardens to share. I brought home a PEACH TREE! On my bike! It's a sapling and I rode slowly. I've planted some of the cuttings and seeds I brought home. Today, I'll transplant the tree. If you want to garden but don't have a space for it, contact your city and inquire about community gardens. Look for a @slowfoodusa or @slowfood_international chapter in your city also. You'll likely find some avid gardeners and also food events to help foster independence from Big Food. Get your garden fix, grow some food, meet nice people and build community.
Want to opt out of receiving gifts? Have some conv Want to opt out of receiving gifts? Have some conversations now before your family and friends start shopping. When people ask me what I find to be the most difficult part of living a simple life with less, I say other people's expectations. People often want to give me stuff I don't want or need—especially at the holidays. If you'd like to receive less stuff this year, these ideas can help. They won't work on everyone all the time but even if a couple of people fufill your request for no gifts, you'll have less stuff to deal with, less stress and more joy this holiday season. And they probably will as well. Have you been able to convince others to buy you less or no stuff at the holidays? What worked for you?
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Frugal Hugelkultur: How to Build the Ultimate Raised Garden Bed
Sourdough Measurements by the Cup (or Why I Use a Kitchen Scale...)

Recent Posts

  • A New Year’s Challenge: 30 Days of Climate Action
  • Easy, Adaptable, Sweet & Sour Apple-Cranberry Chutney
  • 7 Low-Waste Gifts in Jars Your Recipients Will Love
  • Frugal Hugelkultur: How to Build the Ultimate Raised Garden Bed
  • 9 Easy Ways to Reduce Plastic at Thanksgiving
  • How to Cook Without Following Recipes or Buying More Food
  • We Need to Talk About Our Demand Chain Crisis
  • Simple Multigrain Bread With Sourdough Discard
  • Passive Zero Waste: Doing Nothing Is the Best Solution
  • Pumpkin and Spice Sourdough Discard Quick Bread

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