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Zero-Waste Chef

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It’s a Book!

Posted on September 30, 2020June 10, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

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

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  • Zero-Waste Basics

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

Posted on September 16, 2021September 16, 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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10 Comments
  • All Recipes

Simple Restaurant-Style Mexican Red Rice (Arroz Rojo)

Posted on September 9, 2021September 9, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

The simple, fresh ingredients that go into this Mexican red rice elevate it from home-cooked side to tastes-as-good-as-a-restaurant dish.

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4 Comments
  • All Recipes

9 More Simple Staples to Make not Buy

Posted on September 2, 2021September 7, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
two freshly baked pitas filled with air, stacked one on the other

Making any of the staples on this list is a rewarding, satisfying, fun experience. Many of them will save hands-on time. Most will save money.

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13 Comments
  • Rants

I Paid a Small Fortune to Recycle My Plastic Waste

Posted on August 31, 2021August 31, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

I paid to send plastic waste to Terracycle for recycling but producers should pick up the tab for cleaning up their pollution, not me.

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9 Comments
  • Climate Crisis

No Time to Waste: An Easy and Even Fun Way to Push Our Reps on Climate

Posted on August 17, 2021August 17, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
black rotary telephone beside ball pen on white printed paper

Please join me for an online action party on August 31st. We’ll contact our Members of Congress to urge them to take bold action on climate.

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1 Comment
  • Climate Crisis

Books and More for Coping With IPCC-Assessment-Induced Ecoanxiety

Posted on August 12, 2021September 14, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

If you feel overwhelmed or doomed in light of the IPCC climate assessment released this week, these books and media picks can help.

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2 Comments
  • All Recipes

Easy Roasted Salsa: Charlotte’s Non-Recipe Recipe Brings Out the Flavor

Posted on August 5, 2021August 4, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

In a hurry for a get-together with friends, my daughter Charlotte quickly made this flavorful roasted salsa, using fresh seasonal ingredients.

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1 Comment
  • Zero-Waste Basics

How to Launch a Bring-Your-Own-Container Program in Any Community

Posted on August 2, 2021September 3, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

One woman, out to reduce her family’s waste, launched a movement that quickly spread across Toronto. Learn how to start a similar program.

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  • Fermentation

How to Make Delectable Vinegar With Leftover Wine

Posted on July 22, 2021July 30, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

My pineapple scrap vinegar grew a mother of vinegar, which I then used to brew wine vinegar with leftover wine to prevent all kinds of waste.

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5 Comments
  • Homesteading

Unpaving Paradise: Plans for a Parched Yard In a Drought

Posted on July 15, 2021July 16, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

At the end of the month, I move back to my house, where I plan to install a greywater system and grow food in the neglected yard.

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16 Comments
  • Fermentation

Easy 2-Ingredient No-Cook Cultured Tomato Paste and Juice

Posted on July 10, 2021September 14, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

This cultured tomato paste and bonus tomato juice requires zero energy to make and won’t heat up your kitchen on a hot day.

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3 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

What I Eat in a Day: Plastic Free July Challenge

Posted on June 30, 2021June 30, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

You may wonder what you’ll eat in a day, let alone all of Plastic Free July. You need a (simple) plan: what to eat and how to shop and prep.

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5 Comments
  • Homesteading

Solar Dehydrated Fruit Without a Solar Dehydrator

Posted on June 21, 2021June 21, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau

I’ve wanted to build a solar food dehydrator but perhaps I don’t need one. Making do with what I have and experimenting has worked so far.

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3 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

Plastic Free July: Cut These Top 4 Single-Use Plastics

Posted on June 17, 2021June 17, 2021by Anne-Marie Bonneau
Purple produce bag upcycled from a donated linen sheet, filled with avocados

If you don’t know how to start Plastic Free July, cut the Top 4: the very common, very swappable sources of single-use plastic pollution.

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7 Comments
  • Sourdough

Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter and Fun With Grain Mills

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

I ground up teff grains in my grain mills to make a gluten-free sourdough starter but store-bought flour also works as do various grains.

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3 Comments

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  • How to Store and Keep Bread Fresh Without Single-Use Plastic
  • Simple Restaurant-Style Mexican Red Rice (Arroz Rojo)
  • 9 More Simple Staples to Make not Buy
  • I Paid a Small Fortune to Recycle My Plastic Waste
  • No Time to Waste: An Easy and Even Fun Way to Push Our Reps on Climate
  • Books and More for Coping With IPCC-Assessment-Induced Ecoanxiety
  • Easy Roasted Salsa: Charlotte’s Non-Recipe Recipe Brings Out the Flavor
  • How to Launch a Bring-Your-Own-Container Program in Any Community
  • How to Make Delectable Vinegar With Leftover Wine
  • Unpaving Paradise: Plans for a Parched Yard In a Drought

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Good news! The ubiquitous chasing arrows symbol s Good news! The ubiquitous chasing arrows symbol serves as a marketing ploy to keep consumers consuming. Imprinted on plastics, that number surrounded by the triangular arrows indicates the type of resin that goes into plastic. It does not indicate that the plastic will actually be recycled. This marketing ploy convinces the public that what goes into the recycling bin will become a new product on the other side. But we know that less than 10 percent of plastic are recycled in the US. I’m getting to the good news part. Honest… This week, the California Assembly and Senate passed a bill that will ban companies from imprinting the chasing arrows recycling symbol onto products and packaging if they cannot prove that the materials are actually recycled. The bill now awaits Governor Newsom’s signature.
Have a glut of summer vegetables on hand? Consider Have a glut of summer vegetables on hand? Consider preserving at least some with very little effort by fermenting them in a brine. Place the prepped food in a clean jar, pour a brine over top, close the jar and let the vegetables sit from between five to seven days (or so). I use 3 tablespoons of salt for every 4 cups of water for the brine (5% salinity). This jar contains whole cloves of peeled garlic, a bit of basil (for flavor and color) and Early Girl cherry tomatoes. Yum! After we (quickly) eat these soon-to-be-effervescent cherry tomatoes, I'll ferment something else in the brine. Link @zerowastechef for more info on fermenting vegetables in a brine.
9 More Simple Staples to Make not Buy Making stap 9 More Simple Staples to Make not Buy Making staples makes me more self-reliant and less dependent on Big Food. Plus the food tastes delicious—the ultimate test. Well, perhaps approval from a picky eater might be the ultimate test. These pass that one too. If you’re strapped for time and want to try one or two of these, several on this list require very little hands-on time to prepare. Many of these will save you money as well: 1. Cashew cheese 2. Homemade Nutella 3. Pasta 4. Garlic-dill pickles 5. Tomato paste 6. Tofu and soy milk 7. Paneer 8. Pita bread 9. Wine vinegar Link @zerowastechef for the recipes.
Another country, another ban on plastic items, thi Another country, another ban on plastic items, this time in England. The ban includes single-use plastic plates, plastic cutlery and polystyrene and will go into effect within the next two years. (Note that the EU already banned similar items this past July.) In April 2022, the government will tax plastic that contains less than 30 percent recycled content. Sometime in 2023 a phase-in of extended producer responsibilty (EPR) will start. (source: @guardian) EPR puts the onus and cost for cleanup where it belongs—on polluters rather than individuals and taxpayers. None of these bans we're witnessing around the world would have come about without pressure from below (i.e., from all of us). When I decided to go plastic-free in 2011, these bans were nowhere in sight. Now, I read about bans and taxes on single-use plastic and EPR constantly. Yes, the progress is painfully slow. But we are seeing progress. Keep pushing.
Homemade wine vinegar is as incredibly delicious a Homemade wine vinegar is as incredibly delicious as it is self-sufficient. After posting my white wine vinegar a few weeks ago, I started this batch made with leftover red wine. It has been brewing away and within the last few days, a visible mother of vinegar layer has begun to develop on top. The vinegar should be ready to bottle in about two more weeks. My wine vinegar making adventures began after my pineapple scrap vinegar formed a mother of vinegar (MOV) on top. I used that MOV to make white wine vinegar, in which more MOV layers formed. One of those MOVs is busy working away in this red wine. (I'll soon have to put some of these mothers up for adoption...) We rarely have leftover wine on hand to make vinegar but it does happen. If you never have a drop of leftover wine, buying a bottle of wine specifically to make vinegar may sound extravagant but in fact, it will render fabulous vinegar and save you money (unless you currently buy gallon-size jugs of the cheapest wine vinegar available). Here's the math: A 750-ml bottle of wine will render approximately 950 ml of wine vinegar (you add a cup of water to the wine). An okay-tasting, 375-ml bottle of red wine vinegar near me costs $4.69. That works out to $1.25 per 100 ml. I can buy an inexpensive bottle of wine for $8 and make almost three times as much truly amazing wine vinegar for 89 cents per 100 ml. Like most foods, the taste of the store-bought can't compare with homemade. And of course, if you make your wine vinegar out of uncorked leftover wine, you'll not only save money but prevent food waste. The instructions are in my recipe index under “You can make that?”—link @zerowastechef. This works for various types of wine. If you don't happen to have a mother of vinegar just sitting around, you can use raw apple cider vinegar with the live mother instead (such as Braggs brand). Thank you again @kirstenkshockey for the guidance 😊
"I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw pu "I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw puzzle. If you look at the whole picture, it is overwhelming and terrifying, but if you work on your little part of the jigsaw and know that people all over the world are working on their little bits, that’s what will give you hope.” — Jane Goodall If you happen to be looking for a puzzle piece to work on, I have an event for you! On Tuesday, August 31st, 12pm PDT, I’m hosting a Zoom action party to urge our elected representatives to take bold action on the climate crisis. After introductions at the party, I’ll post a script in the chat and provide the simple instructions for calling your two senators and one representative. Feel free to follow the script or edit it to personalize it. I’ll make the first call so you can see how fairly painless it is (and that I am nervous like some of you might be). We’ll all mute on Zoom while we complete our calls. Then we’ll move on to posting on our reps’ social media. I’ll have templates you can use or edit for tweeting or posting here on IG or on Facebook. Link in profile to register for the action party. I look forward to seeing you there!
Kernel-to-Cob Corn Chowder is one of my favorite s Kernel-to-Cob Corn Chowder is one of my favorite summer recipes from my cookbook. After removing the kernels, you make broth from the cobs. I also add the husks and silks to the broth if I use organic corn on the cob. Jalapeños or serranos, garlic, ginger, cilantro and lime juice add flavor to this hearty chowder filled with corn and potatoes, while cashews add creaminess. You can find the full recipe, excerpted from my book, on @sustainable_america’s website.
One of the many solutions to the climate crisis is One of the many solutions to the climate crisis is as old as dirt: compost. Decomposing organic material in landfills emits methane gas—a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. By keeping previously edible food and food scraps out of landfill, we reduce these emissions. Compost can also sequester carbon. (It is magical stuff!) But what if you don't have a yard? @compostgeek’s book, No-Waste Composting: Small-Space Waste Recycling Indoors and Out, includes ideas for indoor composting: terra-cotta pot composting, vermicomposting and bokashi. And if you do have a yard? Well then... learn how to build hugelkultur beds (raised beds filled with branches and twigs that release water and nutrients as they decompose), create African keyhole gardens (raised beds arranged around a compost bin in the center,) and do pit composting (as in dig pits in your yard and fill directly with food scraps). Do you have pets? You can compost pet waste in a dedicated bin—not your regular bin!—in your backyard too 🤯 (See the book for instructions.) Want to get additional people composting? Consider accepting your friends' and neighbors' food scraps. @sharewaste matches up eligible composters with eligible food scrap donors (it's Tinder for food scraps). To encourage the larger community to divert wasted food and food scraps from landfill, consider working with your municipality to implement a green bin program or community gardens that accept food scraps if your city doesn't offer these programs. Working with local goverments generally brings about change much more quickly than working at the state or federal level.
This zucchini blossom fills me with hope and joy. This zucchini blossom fills me with hope and joy. The plant started out as a small rogue seedling in my compost bin. I carefully plucked it from there and replanted it in a pot, where it grew quickly. Last weekend, it began blossoming. It's very resilient—just like people! If you grew zucchini this year, what have you been cooking with your bounty?
One of the easiest ways for us to reduce our indiv One of the easiest ways for us to reduce our individual emissions is to eat all the food we buy. These are just a handful of ideas for doing that. And yes, we need collective change as well as individual change. We can write our elected reps to demand they take the necessary steps to shift our economy away from fossil fuels AND we can chop those last vegetables up to make soup that provides the necessary sustenance to help us keep up the fight. The two are not mutually exclusive. Anyone who tells you different has already given up—and that defeatism plays into the hands of the fossil fuel interests that have knowingly created this crisis.
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