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Zero-Waste Chef

No packaging. Nothing processed. No waste.

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Is My Sourdough Starter Dead? Your Starter Dilemmas Addressed.

Posted on April 15, 2020May 26, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

sourdough starters in glass jars

Need help coaxing your sourdough starter to life? What can you do with all the discard? And what is a levain? Learn the answers to these questions and more.

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When I post pictures of my preserved lemons, peopl

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UPDATE: the giveaway has now ended. You can still

My sourdough starter discard jar overfloweth . Thi

Small businesses are dying. . According to data fr

Small businesses are dying.
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According to data from Yelp, 71,500 small businesses on its site have closed permanently since March 1st. And according to the New York Times, Black-owned businesses are hit hardest by Covid.
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When you shop small, your dollars stay in your community rather than going to the offices of far-flung giant corporations. You help create jobs. The people who fill those jobs go on to spend their paychecks in the community. The community grows stronger. Oh and small businesses actually pay taxes unlike some online empires that, using various tax credits and deductions, pay $0 in federal tax on billions in earnings. That’s right, you and I each pay more federal income tax than some billion-dollar corporations. When we shop with these wannabe monopolies, we essentially say we’re okay with this system.
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Small businesses are also more likely to fulfill your outrageous, subversive requests, such as “please fill my jar with chocolate chips.” This past weekend, the staff at @countrysun_naturalfoods was happy to fill my clean jars with bulk food. The woman who filled them didn’t act as though I was a complete weirdo and she thanked me for supporting the store, which I ride just a little bit out of my way to do. (I also get in some much needed exercise—win win).
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I don’t want my favorite small businesses going under and increasing that Yelp statistic. As consumers, we have a lot more control than we often realize. Shopping small is often not only more pleasant, it’s also a small act of rebellion.
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What are your favorite small businesses and where are they located? Please tag them if they’re on IG.

Free stuff by the side of the road, edition no 183

Free stuff by the side of the road, edition no 183 (at least).
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This camper oven and refrigerator might be the coolest discarded items I’ve found riding my bike around the area (I realize coolness is in the eye of the beholder...). It dates back to the 1970s. I love the color. (I saw it on the corner of Lincoln and Bryant. It might still be there.)
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Other stuff I saw on a short ride last night: a very solid wooden desk, a piece of plywood we might go back for (to paint for a photo background), two lamps (different locations), a large wooden picture frame, clothes, CDs, board games and probably some other things I’m forgetting about.
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We reached peak stuff long ago. Many people, stuck inside surrounded by their stuff during Covid, are purging like mad. If you want or need something, you may be able to find it secondhand. And if you dumpster dive during Covid, follow the usual good hygiene—don’t touch your face and wash your hands when you get home.

Free plums on a free background. . I’m tying up

Free plums on a free background.
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I’m tying up loose ends in my book and needed to weigh 5 cups of chopped fruit yesterday. A generous neighbor came to the rescue and dropped off several pounds of plums from her tree (thank you Shaula!). If you have neighbors with trees that are currently raining down fruit, they may be thrilled to have you take some of it. Several of you have told me that you’ve had success asking your neighbors to harvest their trees.
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If you don’t have neighbors with fruit trees, you might find fruit trees free for the picking at Falling Fruit (fallingfruit.org). I’m in East Palo Alto at the moment. When I entered the zip code into the Falling Fruit map just now, dots too numerous to count appeared. You can also search for free food of all kinds—or post your excess food to share—on @olio_ex or, here in the Bay Area, @olio_bay_area
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As for free backdrop... The other day, I mentioned to Chandra that I could use more backgrounds for photos. But I hate to buy things for a blog and IG that encourage people to buy less stuff 🤷‍♀️ So Chandra cut up a piece of plywood that had been sitting on his wood pile in the garage and his daughter Zora painted it this lovely shade of blue, using excess paint.
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The fruit wound up in a crumble (swipe to see that). Fruit crumble is a delicious and versatile way to prevent fruit waste 🍎🍏🍓🍑🍒🍐
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Total cost of this photo: $0 😉

100 days until the US election

100 days until the US election

Waste nothing beet pickles . In the old days, when

We can’t clean up or recycle our way out of the

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