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Zero-Waste Chef

No packaging. Nothing processed. No waste.

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How to Help Fire-Ravaged California (and Oregon and Washington)
Zoom Interview with Permacutlure Guru, Paul Wheaton
What to Eat During a Heat Wave or Power Outage
Sourdough Starter Metric and US Equivalents
Book Giveaway and Discussion: Building a Better World in Your Backyard
10 Ways to Turn Off the Corporate Plastic Pollution Spigot
Virtual Screening of The Story of Plastic
Plastic Free July: The Pandemic Year(s)
Sourdough Discard Pizza: How to Sourdough-ize a Recipe
Black Lives Matter Fundraiser

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Homemade wheat paste . Use this to mount posters,

Homemade wheat paste
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Use this to mount posters, make paper tape, cover textbooks, glue strips for papier-mâché, create collages... when Chandra worked as the matter and framer at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, he made wheat paste to hinge priceless works of art. We’ll use this small batch for a much humbler purpose—paper tape to fasten parcels I’m mailing to the winners of a book giveaway and two bread saws.
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INGREDIENTS
1 cup water
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
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DIRECTIONS
Add the water to the pot. Over medium-high heat, while slowly adding the flour, whisk the mixture aggressively and continuously. The paste will begin to bubble. Keep whisking. Within a couple of minutes it will thicken. Turn off the heat.
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Chandra likes his wheat paste quite thick. You might want yours thinner. Remove from heat when the paste has reached the consistency you like. Store unused wheat paste in the refrigerator.
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Relative to the amount of wheat paste he makes, Chandra uses a wide pot. With a shallow amount of liquid, the paste comes together quickly. He also says he can more easily get into the nooks and crannies of a wider pot.
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That’s it! Easy-peasy. Have you made this? What do you use it for?

I’m honored to participate in @1millionwomen’s

I’m honored to participate in @1millionwomen’s Food Waste Free October Challenge!
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Sign up and each week, you’ll get low-waste recipes from @rainbownourishments, @scottgoodingproject, @simon.toohey @mmundya and me. (The pesto pizza pictured here is one of my recipes).
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If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, just behind the US and China 😳 The good news is we can do something about it—we can eat all the food we buy. Sign up for the challenge in my bio.

Now’s the time to hoard tomatoes when the prices

Thank you everyone who bought tickets for the fund

Thank you everyone who bought tickets for the fundraiser! I thought we might raise $500 for fire relief. We raised $1,912! I sent the funds to @cafirefound yesterday.
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🧮 You purchased 428 tickets to win one of two beautiful handmade bread saws made of untreated, reclaimed oak:
🧮 65 bought 5 for $22 = $1,430
🧮 23 bought 3 or $14 = $322
🧮 32 bought 1 for $5 = $160
🧮 TOTAL = $1,912 🤯
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I assigned a number to each ticket and then used a random number generator to pick the two winners whom I emailed yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t email everyone a number after you purchased the tickets and then draw the numbers live on here so the winners could claim their prizes. I’ll get a plugin next time to send numbers automatically from my blog. (I have Covid-fire brain and didn’t think to do that...)
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Stay safe out there everyone ✌️❤️ Thank you again!

We took advantage of slightly better smoke yesterd

We took advantage of slightly better smoke yesterday morning and headed to the farmers’ market in Sunnyvale. Ordinarily, the majority of the booths line both sides of one main street. During Covid, the vendors spread out to occupy just one side each of two streets, making physical distancing quite easy.
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The vendors we spoke with yesterday said the smoke is very bad on their farms. Yet the harvest must go on.
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The law requires farmers to distribute protective equipment such as N-95 masks to farm workers when the air quality index exceeds 150. Many aren’t.
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United Farm Workers has been distributing masks to some of these essential workers lacking protective equipment. You can donate to UFW through @ufwupdates. @unidos831 and @flowerinspanish are also raising money to support farm workers and their families. As @ufwupdates put it recently, you can’t pick strawberries working remotely.
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Thank you to the farm workers for picking our food!

This was the noontime sky in the backyard in Sunny

This was the noontime sky in the backyard in Sunnyvale, California yesterday. If all the orange pictures you’re scrolling through of Northern California on fire are freaking you out, you can do one thing about the climate crisis right now: Cancel your big bank credit card. Why? Because the big banks help fuel these fires.
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To continue to lay siege to our planet, fossil fuel companies need cash to operate and since the Paris agreement was signed in 2016, banks around the world have poured $2.7 trillion into the fossil fuel industry according to @guardian.
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Chase finances Big Oil more than any other American bank, followed by Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America. Every time we swipe a credit card from one of these banks, we contribute to that bank’s coffers. And if we carry a credit card balance—as nearly half of Americans now do, thanks to the Covid economic crisis—the banks rake in even more money.
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When enough people break up with the big banks and make a big stink, the banks will have to change. They will lose money and more importantly, they will lose their social license to operate—society’s acceptance and approval of business as usual. At that point, business as usual ends.
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If you need a new credit card, look for a credit union in your community. Member-owned, not-for-profit credit unions exist to help their members, not big business.
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Stay safe out there everyone! #thistooshallpass

UPDATE 09/13/20: We raised $1,912 for fire relief!

Greetings from California . We are in the midst of

Greetings from California
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We are in the midst of another heat wave. Yesterday, San Francisco hit an unheard of high of 100°F. Sunnyvale, where I’m staying for a couple of days, reached 106°F. Just when the temperature began to drop in the evening, smoke from the fires rolled in, pushing the AQI (air quality index) to 176–unhealthy for all groups—so we couldn’t open the windows for relief from the heat. But we are very fortunate. We live far enough from the fires that our home isn’t in danger of burning down.
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More fires broke out over the weekend around the state (some in Southern California) and a red flag warning is in effect in the Bay Area from 10pm tonight until 8am Wednesday morning (meaning we are at risk of more fires). Sunday night, Governor @gavinnewsom declared a state of emergency. I’m wondering when the previous state of emergency ended... Oh and fire season doesn’t start until October. How will our firefighters, already stretched thin, get any rest?
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Climate change is here. It will get worse. We need a green new deal. Please vote.
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Talk soon,
Anne-Marie
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p.s., I’m still working on the fire relief fundraiser I mentioned in my stories last week. More to come...
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p.p.s., The laundry dried very quickly yesterday in this heat.

This little plant gives me a little thrill. I foun

This little plant gives me a little thrill. I found a potato with some eyes sprouting and decided to let it get pretty gnarly. After about a month, when it eyes had grown into larger clumps, I cut the potato into a few pieces and planted it in this raised bed. A potato plant popped up almost immediately. This isn’t the greatest soil, so we’ll see what happens.
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I plan on burying a few pieces of a chopped log in the raised bed today or tomorrow. As those decompose, they will add moisture and nutrients, while aerating the soil.
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Are you planting anything for fall and if so, what?

More adventures in “Try a Bunch of Stuff, If Som

More adventures in “Try a Bunch of Stuff, If Something Works, Keep Doing It.”
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I noticed this hunk of sprouting ginger on Chandra’s counter. It was too dried out for cooking, so I dug a hole in the ground, tossed it in and covered it with soil. I don’t know how well it will grow in this so-so soil but I did plant it close to food scraps I had buried to help nourish the soil (see my previous post if you’re interested in that).
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A few of you saw the ginger in my stories and told me that this indeed works well. One of you said your aunt has been growing her own ginger this way for 40 years. Another said you grow your ginger in pots indoors (and get pretty flowers to boot).
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I hope to soon post some pics of fresh ginger I grew myself. But if I don’t get any ginger—or Instagram material—out of this, I really have lost nothing. At the very least, I will have fed the worms and bugs in the soil.
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When I was younger, fear of failure prevented me from trying stuff. I’d overthink the stuff I wanted to try: “What if the ginger doesn’t grow, or I forget to water it, or I water it too much, or a critter digs it up and runs off with it or it does grow and tastes awful or it grows too much and crowds out the other plants, or, or, or...?” Maybe I knew someone who was an expert at the new thing and I would judge myself by that yardstick: “She’s won awards for her ginger.” Or other people might discourage me: “You’ll never grow ginger as good as store-bought. Don’t waste your time.” Well, now I just plant the damn ginger. Stay tuned...

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