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Zero-Waste Chef

Mercury

Posted on July 27, 2021July 27, 2021by Paulina Cioce
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Recipe Index
Sourdough Discard Pizza: How to Sourdough-ize a Recipe
Make-a-Dent-in-Your-Discard Sourdough Pita Bread
Quick Cheap Good: Grateful-for-What-I-Have Fried Rice
Ginger Bug
Chestnut Laundry Soap
Sourdough Discard Vegan Chocolate Cake
Apple Scrap Vinegar
How to Sprout Beans, Grains and Seeds
How to Prevent Your Sourdough Starter from Taking Over Your Life

Recent Posts

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

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Stop pouring flavor down the drain! After I cook Stop pouring flavor down the drain! After I cook dried beans, I save any excess cooking water—the broth. Here, I have black beans, kidney beans and pinto beans soaking for a vat of chili—and the resulting strained broth. (I also strain the soaked beans over a bucket that I use to water my plants.) Even if 100 percent of California were not drought-stricken, I would save all of my bean broth to cook with later simply because it adds so much flavor to dishes. I've already taken the time to buy, soak and cook my beans so why not take advantage of the by-products of my money and labor? Reducing water consumption makes me feel good too. And while urban areas in the state consume only about 10 percent our water (i.e., my efforts alone don't even make a dent), I can't think of a downside to conserving water in my home and lowering my water bill. You can of course, just cook off the bean broth in your bean dish. But if you have excess, use it to cook more beans or lentils, thicken soups, season and drink like bone broth or add to quick breads and doughs. I swap out water for rich black bean broth in my sourdough discard chocolate cake—yum! This broth also freezes well. Use wide-mouth jars with flush sides (i.e., no necks or shoulders that can break when the liquid freezes and expands), leave a couple of inches of space at the top for expansion and allow to cool before freezing. If you are freaking out about the drought and climate, I still have room in my climate letter writing party tomorrow at 6pm PDT. Link in profile for info and registration. How do you use your bean broth?
"How do you store bread without plastic?" is a que "How do you store bread without plastic?" is a question I hear all the time. Plastic-free storage can be done and was the norm for most of bread-eating human existence. Not all bread keeps the same. I bake sourdough, which stays fresh longer than a similar loaf made with active dry yeast. If I bake an extra loaf, I freeze it whole in a cloth produce bag for up to a couple of weeks. At room temperature, I store bread on the counter, cut-side down on a wooden board (we polish a loaf off in two days, tops, one if both kids are home). That helps prevent the cut side from drying out and the sourdough crust keeps the rest of the bread fresh. My kids prefer to bake bread with baker's yeast (when they're home...my youngest just left for university in the olde country this month 😭). To store that, I also freeze it whole in a cloth produce bag or store it on the counter in a cloth produce bag.
New recipe on my blog: Simple Restaurant-Style Mex New recipe on my blog: Simple Restaurant-Style Mexican Red Rice (Arroz Rojo) I used homemade tomato paste for this but storebought will work. How many times, after opening a can of tomato paste and removing the one tablespoon you need for a recipe, have you scratched your head wondering what to do with the rest of it? It freezes well but using it up immediately ensures you, well, use it up. Here’s a new rule to live by: when you buy tomato paste, buy rice as well so you can make this simple side dish. Some reasons why this tastes so good: 🧄 I plop a few whole garlic cloves into the rice. This infuses it with flavor and the cloves melt in your mouth when you're lucky enough to come across one. 🔪 I used shallots instead of onions. In his book Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain gave away a few secrets to elevate home-cooked meals to restaurant-level taste. Cooking with shallots was one tip. (Onions will also taste delicious in this if you don't have shallots.) 🍅 Homemade tomato paste. So good! When I go to the trouble of making tomato paste, I make a large amount. 🌽 Homemade broth. I used mostly corn cob broth for this. Last week, I made it with my fermented tomato juice. OMG. Homemade broth made from scraps tastes delicious, you know what goes into it and it requires no plastic packaging. The recipe is in my recipe index. Link @zerowastechef profile.
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.
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 Recipes in my latest blog post and recipe index (link in profile).
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.
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