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Zero-Waste Basics

Forever Chemicals Everywhere: What We Can Do

Posted on January 13, 2021January 13, 2021by The Zero-Waste Chef

Toxic forever chemicals (PFAS) are everywhere. These strategies will help you reduce your exposure to them.

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One Customer Convinces Dry Cleaners to Offer Reusable Garment Bags
Forever Chemicals Everywhere: What We Can Do
8 Reasons to Be Cautiously Optimistic about the Environment in 2021
Make-a-Dent-in-Your-Discard Sourdough Pita Bread
Homemade Pita Bread
Charlotte’s Easy Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread
Dehydrated Apple and Fuyu Persimmon Slices (Plus a Muesli Recipe)
Sourdough Bread Zoom Classes (and a Recorded Starter Class)
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Before we ate these oranges this morning (one bloo

Before we ate these oranges this morning (one blood orange, one cara cara), I carefully peeled the skin with a vegetable peeler and set those peels aside to use later today. With very little of the bitter white pith on them, these are perfect for making candied (almost free) citrus peels. They taste like amazing gumdrops but with an intense and authentic citrus flavor. Here is the recipe:
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4 medium oranges or other citrus of choice
1/2 cup water (plus more for simmering the peels)
1/4 cup sugar
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1. Use a vegetable peeler to remove 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch wide strips from intact citrus, being careful to leave the bitter pith behind. (By the way, I stick to organic fruit and vegetables when I’ll consume the peels as non-organic contain more pesticide residues.)
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2. Add the peels to a small pot, just cover with water, bring to a boil, cover with a lid and reduce to a simmer for about 25 minutes. This step eliminates bitterness (in the peels that is, although the resulting intense citrus scent might improve one’s attitude as well). Drain peels. Find something to do with the fragrant orange water (water your plants, spray it near a kitty litter box).
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3. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 water in the pot and boil until the sugar dissolves. Add peels. When they begin to boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes. Avoid stirring; this may break the delicate peels (no need for you to learn this the hard way as I did...).
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4. Remove citrus peels with a slotted spoon and place on a wire cooling rack. Cover with a clean rimmed cookie sheet to prevent anything from falling on the sticky peels as they dry overnight. When dry (or almost dry), roll in more sugar, if desired.
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5. If you don’t eat them all immediately, toss in additional sugar and keep in an air-tight jar. They will keep for many months (or even longer). After eating the candy in the jar, you’ll have citrus-infused sugar.
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Dip the candied peels in melted chocolate if you like. I’ve also flavored my kombucha with them (sans chocolate...) and the result tastes amazing 😋

This pic of my starter Eleanor comes from the reci

This pic of my starter Eleanor comes from the recipe “Start with Your Sourdough Starter” in my book, The Zero-Waste Chef, out April 13th. I’ve included a bunch of sourdough recipes in the book and ideas for using up the discard left over from feedings (it’s a zero-waste cookbook after all...).
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Do you have a starter? Please DM me photos of yours and I’ll choose several to share in my Stories. I always love to see pictures of your pets 😊
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The full, updated recipe for starting a starter is in the book. Link in bio for more info and preordering.
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📷 credit: Ashley McLaughlin @edible_perspective

In the US, “best before,” “best by,” “se

Citrus zest adds so much flavor to food and, if yo

“Did you use kombu?!” That’s what my daughte

"It really boils down to this: that all life is in

"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is the first produce bag I’ve finished in a

Yesterday, after I posted a picture of a wine cork

Yesterday, after I posted a picture of a wine cork recycling bin in my stories, a couple of you asked for more information…
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But first…I know I sound like someone with a problem, but…these corks belong to a friend…honest! They aren’t mine! We can’t refill wine bottles where I live. I think it’s possible up in Napa. I would drink more wine if I could refill wine bottles. At least the bottles and corks are recyclable. We need refill schemes for drinks and any company launching today would be very wise to work that model into its business plan. But this post is about cork…
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Cork is not only recyclable, it’s also renewable and biodegradable. Cork comes from oak trees—some up to 300 years old—most of which grow in forests in Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia and France. Highly skilled, well-paid local workers harvest cork from the trees without chopping them down. These still-standing trees are then left undisturbed until the next harvest, 9 to 12 years later.
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According to a WWF report, these forests host up to 135 different species per 0.1 hectare or about a quarter acre, which is the size of a house lot. The trees provide shade for the ecosystem, they retain water in the soil and they draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
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Cork recycling companies harvest cork from wine stores—in the form of cork drop-off bins. During Covid, some stores may have shut down their drop boxes temporarily but you can always hold onto the corks in the meantime. My daughter spotted a bin at Whole Foods yesterday (swipe for pic) from The Cork Forest Conservation Alliance. I’ve dropped off corks in the past at a Bevmo near me and at Rainbow in San Francisco. Both of those bins belong to @recorkofficial (you can check the website for a map of drop-off locations). As I said, PLEASE CONTACT THE STORE near you before dropping off your corks in case the bin has temporarily closed. These corks go on to have a second life as shoes, yoga blocks and other goods.
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Depending on where you live, natural wine corks can go in your municipality’s green bin. Contact yours for more information.
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Cheers 🍷🥂

I planted some of my sprouting vegetable scraps ou

I planted some of my sprouting vegetable scraps outside this weekend: a parsnip top, a carrot top, all the green onions, the root end of a celery stalk and a few rosemary sprigs, stripped of their leaves at the bottom. These had been sitting in the windowsill in water, some for over a month.
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I hope 🤞 the parsnip and carrot tops go to seed, bringing some volunteer vegetables in the spring. The green onion ends will continue to grow outside. We’ll see what happens with the celery top (I kept one inside for insurance and started sprouting another celery end last week). Rosemary, one of my favorite herbs, is a perennial that I put in many dishes.
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If none of these take, at the very least, these vegetable scraps will return to the soil. Whether you subscribe to scrappy gardening like this or you grow all your own food or you tend gorgeous flower gardens, planting anything shows you have hope for the future. Our very long, very difficult winter will eventually give way to spring and renewal. Hang in there.

We may never reach the zero in “zero waste” bu

We may never reach the zero in “zero waste” but that’s no reason to take zero action.
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I posted this a couple of years ago but I think it’s worth repeating, especially at the beginning of a new year when many people are trying to stick to resolutions or intentions (zero-waste or otherwise).
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Don’t let the zero in zero waste intimidate you. The zero merely represents a goal and reducing waste isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. If you prefer, call the lifestyle “low waste” or “less waste” or don’t label it at all.

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