According to a recent USDA study, Americans waste 1 pound per person per day at the household level. Now I basically live and breathe waste. I would like to insert the word figuratively into that statement but with plastic pollution in our water, our air, our soil and our food I cannot. Even with my crossed-the-borderline […]
Food Waste
Lemon Extract
I feel as though have a part-time job at the moment finding uses for the lemons that our tree rains down upon us. If I had more than one lemon tree as prolific as this one, I would lose my mind. Or I would list the location of my trees on Falling Fruit, a site […]
Freestyle Cooking: Stir Fry
Before cooking dinner, if we home cooks first examined the inventories of our pantries and refrigerators and used what we found there to make a meal, we would slash food waste in the home. Our great-grandmothers did this. Today, many of us choose what to eat based on our whims—or our picky eaters’ demands! Let’s […]
Take Food Waste Off the Thanksgiving Menu
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), over the 2016 Thanksgiving holiday in the US, “six million turkeys—a value of roughly $293 million—ended up in the trash.” Producing that much discarded turkey “requires an estimated more than 100 billion gallons of water (enough to supply New York City for 100 days). And when it […]
Documentary Review: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste
Anyone who eats should watch this film Anthony Bourdain’s documentary, Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, became available online and in select theaters last weekend. I watched it and I loved it. It features Bourdain, along with renowned chefs Dan Barber, Mario Battali, Massimo Battura and Danny Bowien. View the trailer below. The documentary starts […]
Drawdown: A Book that Just Might Save the Planet
The bad news on the environment is as unrelenting as a California wildfire. We’re well over 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (scientists consider 350 ppm safe). A 2012 report from the World Bank describes the world as “barreling down a path to heat up by 4 degrees at the end […]
15 Ways to Reduce Waste in School Cafeterias
Recently a concerned mom asked me if I had any ideas to reduce waste in school cafeterias. When my email back to her grew longer and longer, I realized I had better just write a blog post on the topic. The school year may have ended (or will end soon) here in the US but […]
7 Steps to Reduce Food Waste at Home
For Earth Day this year, I visited Hamlin School in San Francisco and discussed waste with students from Kindergarten to grade eight. Considering my audience, I wanted to keep things straightforward and to the point so I came up with a list of steps to reduce food waste at home. I figured most adults might find […]
Bentonite-Calcium Tooth Powder
I am not a dentist. I am merely sharing my own experience, not dispensing medical advice. Now that I have that out of the way… Full-On Hippie Ingredient: Eggshell Calcium Powder For a while now, I have wanted to make toothpaste with calcium powder but simply could not find calcium powder in bulk. So I made my own […]
How to Make Eggshell Calcium Powder
My daughter MK made me some homemade toothpaste a couple of years ago that I really liked. It was very similar to this recipe but she added calcium powder to it. She bought calcium supplements and emptied the contents of the gelatin capsules into her toothpaste concoction. I have wanted to make her toothpaste recipe […]
10 Ideas to Rescue Citrus Peels
The average American eats 12.5 pounds of citrus each year. I searched for the average peel to fruit ratio but found nothing credible. I did have this juicy and delicious mineola on hand, however. Holy cow! The peel accounted for fifty-three grams—23 percent—of this orange. Let’s assume the average peel weighs even less. Even a […]