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Zero-Waste Chef
No packaging. Nothing processed. No waste.

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Posted on March 23, 2014by The Zero-Waste Chef
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Top Posts & Pages

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Instagram post 2192323600332569271_533634447 After sailing for three weeks across the Atlantic back to Europe, @gretathunberg said, "I’m not traveling like this because I want everyone to do so, I’m doing this to send a message that it is impossible to live sustainably today and that needs to change. It needs to become much easier." . Do not feel guilty if you cannot live as sustainably as you'd like to! Remember we are all swimming against the current. Just do your best. Link in profile for my post on Environmental Guilt Syndrome (EGS).
Instagram post 2191562771706217803_533634447 To tree or not to tree. That is the dilemma. . Will you put up a Christmas tree this year? If so, will you choose real, potted, rented, artificial, secondhand or upcycled? 🌲🎄🌳🌴🌵 . One of you sent me the following DM on the weekend: “I’m planning to get a Christmas tree and was wondering your thoughts on what is better for the planet. I’ve read conflicting stories. I’ve tried to buy replantable ones (they all died ☹️) and have tried the Norfolk pines (they don’t love dry New England). I was thinking many of your followers might be interested in knowing the same! Thank you 💛” . So I took to Instagram stories and asked you all what kind of tree, if any, you would choose. You had a lot to say. Swipe for handful of the responses.
Instagram post 2190124472412200934_533634447 Ditch the produce wash and use baking soda and water to remove some pesticide residues. . I buy organic produce at the farmers’ market from small local producers who: grow a variety of crops which they rotate, use beneficial plants and insects to keep pests at bay, build good soil and so on. My daughter MK, a broke student, cannot afford to eat food grown this way. She usually opts for less expensive, industrially farmed fruit and vegetables she buys at the discount grocery store—the non-organic produce grown in monocultures and sprayed with synthetic pesticides. . So she uses a simple trick that removes some of the pesticides from the surface of her produce: . In a bowl, mix together about one tablespoon of baking soda with six cups of water. Add the produce. Wait about 15 minutes. Drain. Rinse. . A 2017 study out of University of Massachusetts, Amherst, showed that a solution of baking soda and water removed two types of pesticides from the surface of apples more effectively than did plain water or a solution of bleach and water. (Study: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b03118) . The researchers treated organic Gala apples with two common pesticides, the fungicide thiabendazole, and phosmet, which kills various pests, after which they soaked the apples in the three different solutions and finally, tested the apples for residues. They found that the baking soda solution “took 12 and 15 min to completely remove thiabendazole or phosmet surface residues, respectively, following a 24 [hour] exposure to these pesticides.” . Although the study looked at apples only, one of the researchers, Dr. He, said the baking soda solution is a “general method” that can be used on other kinds of fruit and vegetables because it helps to break up pesticide molecules, which can then be washed away. . More info on my blog. Link in profile.
Instagram post 2188708444092385571_533634447 Do you have leftover bread from your big meal? Don’t view it as wasted food but rather, as breadcrumbs waiting to be set free. . My daughter made these bread crumbs by slicing up some bread and allowing it to dry out for a few days before she needed it. (For faster breadcrumbs, toast the bread in the oven at 300°F for a few minutes). She then whirred the dried slices up in the food processor and added the breadcrumbs to the nutloaf she made for Thanksgiving. . Other ways to use breadcrumbs: bind vegetable pancakes, toast and sprinkle on salads (they absorb the dressing...yum yum), bread fried food, stir into soups and stews to thicken, sprinkle on macaroni and cheese and so on. . We saved several scraps from our Thanksgiving dinner: vegetable bits from prepping all the things, which became broth for other dishes in our feast; potato peels left over from the mashed potatoes to fry up today (maybe at breakfast) and apple peels and cores left over from the apple pie, which will become vinegar. If you consume the peels, scraps and cores of produce, you may want to stick to organic as skins contain more pesticide residues. . The amount of broth and vinegar alone produced by these scraps would cost about $12 to $15, plus I’d have to trudge to the store and then deal with disposing the packaging. Oh and these free homemade versions contain unadulterated ingredients and taste delicious. . Link in profile for 15 creative ways to use up food scraps.
Instagram post 2187976745972901148_533634447 It’s not a bargain if you don’t need it.
Instagram post 2187217529007956017_533634447 On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for the food that my family and I will enjoy today and for the farmers who grew it. . I am also grateful that I don’t have to work on Thanksgiving and can enjoy a big meal at home with my family. Many people who work in retail will stock shelves and man the cash registers today as peak consumption season kicks off. . Thanksgiving is the new Black Friday. Sales used to begin on Friday at 5 or 6am, then a few years ago, some stores began to open their doors Friday at midnight and now, several open on Thanksgiving Day itself. Can we not stop shopping for even one day? Can we not find a better way to entertain ourselves? . I will observe #BuyNothingDay tomorrow, as I have for about 20 years, since I first read about it in @adbusters.magazine. Spending $0 is the best deal of all. . . . #gratitude #consumerism #greennewdeal #climatebreakdown #climatecrisis #plasticfreeliving #waronplastic #zerowasteliving #zerowastejourney #zerowastechef #farmersmarket #eattherainbow #eatfoodnottoomuchmostlyplants #repair #reduce #usewhatyouhave #lowimpact #lesswaste #lowwaste #optoutside🌲
Instagram post 2186575806401466191_533634447 According to Forbes, global personal lube sales will reach $1.5 billion by 2025. Save your money, avoid plastic bottles filled with chemicals and grow your own lube by keeping an aloe plant handy 🌱 We can grow it outdoors here in temperate Northern California but it does well indoors also. . When the desire arises 🥰 break off a piece, split it open and remove the extremely slippery gel with your finger or just rub the split leaf directly wherever. You’ll be amazed by the stuff. And you’ll never ever spend your hard-earned cash on lube. (The gel also soothes sunburns and minor scrapes and cuts.) . Buy a plant or grow it for free if you have a friend who will share the “pups” from their mature mother plant (maybe the friend you’ll share the aloe gel with). Pups are baby aloe plants—offshoots with roots. Pull these away or use a clean knife if they won’t pull away from the mother plant. Plant in sandy soil in a pot with good drainage. Water. Wait. Don’t water these desert plants too much or too often 🌵 . Disclaimer: If you’re worried about using aloe vera as lube, do your own research before trying it. I post things on here that I do and that I’ve found have worked for me 😊 . Use your aloe responsibly 😉 . Link in profile for my TMI post.
Instagram post 2185792486709196933_533634447 When I recently asked in my stories “What do you need help with?” several of you asked about reducing waste with babies and toddlers. Although I hadn’t started living plastic-free until my kids were 10 and 16, I did implement many low-waste practices from their birth onward, such as: ✨Using cloth diapers. We had a diaper service for both kids. After a few months, I bought the dedicated diapers the service had been sending and laundered them myself once a week. Use cloth and you’ll not only keep disposables out of landfills, you also won’t have to worry about the type of information Pampers collects with its urine-detecting wifi enabled diapers 🙄 ✨Breastfeeding. Breast milk is the first zero-waste food. Yes, I know some women can’t breastfeed their babies, either because of physical limitations or the appalling lack of support for new parents in this country or both. My firstborn had serious medical problems so I had to express my milk and feed her with a special bottle. It was hard. ✨Make, don’t buy, baby food. This is easy. ✨Feed toddlers smaller portions of food they like. One of you said your son “wastes sooooo much food!” I have a few ideas for that. ✨Get over the ick factor. If you’ve already had kids, you’re probably over this by now. You can clean up poop and vomit with rags rather than paper towels, wash them and not die. ✨Buy less stuff. Your phone is bombarding you with ads for a lot of baby paraphernalia that you don’t need. Resist! ✨Use secondhand stuff. Ask friends and family for hand-me-downs, organize a swap and hit the local thrift shops. ✨Go to the library often. Libraries were zero-waste before zero-waste was cool 😎 . With babies and toddlers, you can control what comes into your home. Once your teenagers start working and earning their own money, you just hope your low-waste habits have rubbed off on them. And they do! . Link in profile for the full blog post. The comments there also have good info. . #zerowastekids #zerowastelifestyle #zerowasteliving #intentionalliving #slowliving #slowfood #secondhand #reusable #lesswaste #plasticfreeliving #planetorplastic #noplanet
Instagram post 2185078545108538174_533634447 One key to zero-waste living ➡️ plan ahead a bit. . I always have bowls or jars of food fermenting or soaking on my counter, which keeps my kitchen running efficiently. Rather than figuring out at the end of the day what on earth we’ll eat, I’ll have some components prepped and ready to go into a dish, kind of like my own meal kit but without the cardboard box, single-use plastic bags for every ingredient plus throwaway freezer packs filled with goo. . Here, I have a bowl of wild rice and a bowl of moong dal with a pinch of fenugreek soaking to make dosa—thin, Indian pancakes. (I can’t find the dosa-making staple urad dal in bulk to save my life so I’m using whatever small lentils I have on hand). I put the sourdough discard into cracker dough (top right) which ferments for a while on the counter before I either bake crackers the same day or refrigerate and bake them later in the week. The soaking beans will go into soup. These three delicious dishes I’ve planned all happen to cost little. . #mealprep #mealplan #plasticfree #plasticfreeliving #planetorplastic #plasticpollution #breakfreefromplastic #beatplasticpollution #lessplastic #lesswaste #intentionalliving #slowliving #slowfood #lowimpact #zerowastejourney #zerowasteliving #noplanetb #climatebreakdown #nowaste #zerowastechef
Instagram post 2182181716184420580_533634447 Regrowing some green onions . Occasionally I can find green onions wrapped only with a rubber band that I remove and hand back to the vendor at the farmers’ market or cashier at the store. But often green onions where I live have a big plastic tag attached to them and I can’t bring myself to buy them. Fortunately they are easy to regrow. . A friend salvaged this pot from my yard, took it home and brought it back to me yesterday, planted with green onions. Because I live in temperate Northern California, I’ll keep these outside but they would also do well in a sunny window. I’ll trim off the green tops as I need them. . If you have some green onion ends with the hairy roots, you can save them and regrow them in a jar of water, which is what I often do because it’s extremely simple (grab glass, add water, add onions). They will thrive and taste better in a pot of soil though. Just stick them in there and water them when the soil dries out. . I’ve had great luck replanting basil by putting cuttings in water to grow roots and then planting the cuttings in soil. Link in profile for instructions for that. (Green onions are even simpler!) . #foodwaste #windowsillgarden #urbangardening #regrow #plasticfree #plasticfreeproduce #noplastic #lowwaste #zerowastelifestyle #zerowasteliving #intentionalliving #slowliving #slowfood #noplanetb #zerowastechef

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