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 grandmothers did this. Today, many of us choose what to eat based on our whims—or our picky eaters’ demands! Let’s […]
easy recipes
Simple, Good Food from Fresh Ingredients: Roasted Honeynut Squash
In my recipe index, you’ll find foods that most people buy processed and packaged today: crackers, bread, broths, nut milk, hummus, ginger beer, yogurt, ketchup, vinegar, tahini, pickles, pickled peppers, pasta—those difficult-to-find foods for anyone trying to reduce their plastic footprint. I also include many recipes for ingredients that would otherwise go to waste—scrap vinegar […]
8 Make Ahead Staples for a Low-Waste Thanksgiving
Cooking without producing waste requires some planning but not that much. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner without waste needs a bit more planning. I don’t like to leave all my prepping for Thanksgiving to the day before or day of. I like to sleep. So this week and continuing on the weekend, I’ll prep a bunch of […]
Zero-Waste Menu No 6
One more menu to go after this and I’ll have a full week’s worth. As I’ve written in some of my other menu posts, I don’t actually cook a different dish every day. In fact, please don’t follow a entirely different menu every day. If you follow this menu today, cook another menu tomorrow and […]
Use ’em or Lose ’em Roasted Vegetables
My kids and I went away for a few days last week and when we returned, I found some vegetables I needed to use up, some more quickly than others, such as a head of Romanesco broccoli (bottom right in the pic below) and a wrinkled orange bell pepper (pictured in the middle). I decided […]
Simple Fermented Salsa with Live Cultures
Click here to jump to the recipe My younger daughter refuses to drink kombucha (referring to the SCOBY, “How can you put anything into your body that touched that!”). She won’t try sauerkraut (“What’s that smell?!”). She will eat sourdough, although somewhat reluctantly (“Why can’t we have a normal kitchen?”). But she scarfs down this. If […]
How to Cook Simple, Satisfying Dal
I love Indian food and cook dal once a week or so. This delicious, satisfying and aromatic dish contains dry split peas or lentils, onions, tomatoes and spices. Even my picky daughter eats it. Like kitchen sink soup, frittata and vegetable fritters, you can improvise with dal, adding a bit of this and a smidgen of […]
Fermented Hot Peppers
Updated 01/18/18 Click here to go straight to the recipe I grabbed a handful of hot peppers at the farmer’s market a couple of months ago to ferment. It was so easy! Every time I try a new ferment, I find myself saying that. I’m convinced that anyone attempting to simplify their life will eventually […]
Fried Potato Skins
Ideally, my daughter would eat mashed potatoes with the skins on. But as I have usually peeled the potatoes, I have personally trained her to expect mashed potatoes with the skins off. I hate to compost the skins and waste them. Fortunately, you can never go wrong with fat, salt and potatoes, even if just the […]