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Zero-Waste Chef

fermentation

  • Fermentation

Unsure How to Eat Persimmons? Make Cultured Chutney

Posted on November 24, 2020November 25, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Not sure what to do with persimmons? Make this sweet, sour, spicy and slightly salty chutney to serve with cold-weather main dishes.

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3 Comments
  • Fermentation

Cultured Cashew Cheese

Posted on November 16, 2020November 16, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

This tangy cultured cashew cheese contains a handful of ingredients and like my sourdough crackers, tastes cheesy but contains no cheese.

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23 Comments
  • Uncategorized

Avoid Shopping a Bit Longer During Covid

Posted on October 28, 2020October 28, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Food shopping during Covid is stressful. These ideas will help you avoid the store for a bit longer between shopping trips.

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5 Comments
  • ZWC Book

It’s a Book!

Posted on September 30, 2020November 12, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

I’ve been working on this for a while! My book is now ready for preorder.

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37 Comments
  • Climate Crisis

What to Eat During a Heat Wave or Power Outage

Posted on August 19, 2020November 2, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Record heat and rolling blackouts. The show (or dinner) must still go on. These ideas will satisfy your appetite without heating up the kitchen.

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8 Comments
  • Fermentation

Sourdough Starter Metric and US Equivalents

Posted on August 5, 2020August 5, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Need to measure your sourdough starter but don’t have a scale? Have a recipe you’ll like to convert to US cups? Use these conversions.

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4 Comments
  • Sourdough

Sourdough Discard Pizza: How to Sourdough-ize a Recipe

Posted on June 17, 2020December 30, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Many recipes are suitable for adding sourdough discard to—quick or yeast breads, muffins, tortillas, focaccia—and this pizza dough.

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20 Comments
  • Fermentation

Call the Midwife of Microbes

Posted on May 25, 2020May 27, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Is your sourdough starter sluggish? Your ginger beer jinxed? Your kombucha capricious? Apply to get a diagnosis via Instagram Live.

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  • Fermentation

Sourdough Discard Vegan Carrot Cake

Posted on May 6, 2020June 17, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef
frosting a sourdough carrot cake in the pan with coconut buttercream frosting

If you’ve adopted a pet sourdough, you’ll need to find recipes for the discard you accumulate from feedings. This carrot cake makes your discard disappear.

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24 Comments
  • Fermentation

Is My Sourdough Starter Dead? Your Starter Dilemmas Addressed

Posted on April 15, 2020September 15, 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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26 Comments
  • Fermentation

Online Sauerkraut Workshop Lottery

Posted on April 13, 2020April 16, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Enter this lottery for a spot in my sauerkraut class and learn how to make this living, cultured food. Bring a cabbage to class or just watch.

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  • Fermentation

Online Sourdough Starter Workshop Lottery

Posted on April 1, 2020April 13, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Learn how to start a sourdough starter, how to feed it and what to do with it. Bring your tools, flour and water and we’ll make our starters together.

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No comments yet
  • Uncategorized

Hunkered Down During COVID-19? Make Something.

Posted on March 14, 2020March 14, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Millions of us will stay hunkered down at home during COVID-19, either out of necessity or precaution. Now seems like a great time to learn a new skill.

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10 Comments
  • All Recipes

Sourdough Vegan Pancakes

Posted on February 19, 2020May 3, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

If you start a sourdough starter, you’ll want to find ways to use up the excess. These 5-ingredient vegan sourdough pancakes call for an entire cup of unfed sourdough starter.

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32 Comments
  • Zero-Waste Basics

A 9-for-1 New Year’s Resolution

Posted on December 30, 2019January 19, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef
unpackaged produce from the farmers' market

Have so many vices that you can’t decide on a new year’s resolution? One resolution automatically covers many others.

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9 Comments

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Preserved Lemons
Save-All-the-Greens Turnip Top Pasta
Sourdough Discard Pizza: How to Sourdough-ize a Recipe
Make-a-Dent-in-Your-Discard Sourdough Pita Bread
Ginger Bug
Sourdough Bread
How to Prevent Your Sourdough Starter from Taking Over Your Life
Sourdough Discard Vegan Chocolate Cake
Sourdough Crackers 2.0
Is My Sourdough Starter Dead? Your Starter Dilemmas Addressed

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THREE copies up for grabs of the book “Plastic F THREE copies up for grabs of the book “Plastic Free: The Inspiring Story of a Global Environmental Movement and Why It Matters”...
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One person can make a difference! In July 2011, Rebecca Prince-Ruiz (founder of @plasticfreejuly) challenged herself to go plastic free for the whole month. Starting with a small group of people in Western Australia, the Plastic Free July movement has grown to an estimated 326 million strong community across 177 countries, empowering people to reduce single-use plastic consumption and create a cleaner future.
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From the book description: “This book explores how one of the world’s leading environmental campaigns took off and shares lessons from its success. From narrating marine-debris research expeditions to tracking what actually happens to our waste to sharing insights from behavioral research, it speaks to the massive scale of the plastic waste problem and how we can tackle it together. Interweaving interviews from participants, activists, and experts, Plastic Free tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people have created change in their homes, communities, workplaces, schools, businesses, and beyond.”
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TO ENTER:
1. Like and comment on this post and tell us about one single use plastic item you are choosing to refuse. 
2. Follow @plasticfreejuly
3. Follow @zerowastechef
🌊
Conditions: This giveaway is open internationally and prizes will be shipped to all countries excluding Australia and New Zealand. There are 3 books in total to be given away. Entry closes on Saturday, February 27th at 11:59pm PST. I will randomly choose the winners and notify them by DM. This giveaway is in no way administered, sponsored or endorsed by Instagram.
This weekend’s shopping includes a smallish farm This weekend’s shopping includes a smallish farmers’ market haul on a new-to-me background. Total cost of the background: $0.
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On Saturday, I “shopped” at something like a moving sale or estate sale where everything was free. A friend of a friend left town just as the lockdowns began last year and hasn’t been back since. She has decided to stay on the East Coast and from there is co-ordinating the move of her belongings from here on the West Coast. She’s leaving behind loads of stuff, a lot of which would go to landfill. So, on the weekend, several of us descended upon her home—masked and socially distanced—and cleared out boxes and boxes of useful stuff. I’ve posted just some of the things I grabbed.
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I’ve wanted a table to put in the window for taking pictures and voila! (The burlap sac came from a local café that roasts its own beans and tosses these bags out.) We had no glasses; now we do (not shown: half a dozen more that I need to wash still). The little teabag rest is smaller than the ramekin I’ve been using (and it frees up a ramekin). My oven mitts are shot and this pair still has the tag on them. Charlotte needed a desk lamp; one magically appeared. Finally, I grabbed this never used, unopened Blu-ray player to post in my Buy Nothing Group (we don’t own a TV). Several people asked for this right away and I need to randomly pick a recipient today.
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I say this all the time on here but when I need or want something, if I’m patient, it eventually shows up. I can’t tell you how often this happens.
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I hope everyone’s week is off to a good start.
I haven’t made kimchi for about four months. I s I haven’t made kimchi for about four months. I spent $7 on the vegetables and already had on hand the ginger, garlic, kimchi spice and a small amount of dried kelp granules (dried kelp is optional but does add a nice fishy flavor).
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For this new batch, I decided to swap out the daikon radishes for small Japanese turnips (and I found a use for one of the twist ties—swipe to see that). I couldn’t find green onions, so I used a small white onion instead. You can also use other types of cabbage, although I do prefer Napa. As long as you have gochugaru (the dried hot pepper flakes), the kimchi tastes amazing.
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I reserved the turnip tops and am making green pasta with some of them today. We also make pesto or sauté the greens with a bit of olive oil and garlic. They taste delicious and you can sometimes get them (as well as other varieties of greens) free at the farmers' market. At ours, when customers ask vendors to remove the tops, they put the greens in a free bin for people to take who have chickens or humans at home to feed.
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Link in profile for the simple kimchi recipe.
More book news! Canadian retailer @Indigo has sele More book news! Canadian retailer @Indigo has selected my book (shown here with the Canadian cover) as one of its most anticipated books of the spring and is featuring it in another Most Anticipated promotion, this time as a Most Anticipated COOKBOOK! Preorder now through Sunday and get 30% off plus 500 plum points. Link in profile to preorder from Indigo. The book will be out in less than two months, on April 13th 😮
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Thank you very much to everyone who has preordered in the US, Canada and overseas! I really appreciate your support 🙏😊
This is what sustainable soda packaging looks like This is what sustainable soda packaging looks like: bottles that can be refilled over and over again. The left and middle bottle contain ginger beer, the right, kombucha flavored with orange zest.
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Last week, Coca-Cola, the biggest plastic polluter in the world, announced its limited rollout in select states of a new 100% recycled PET bottle. It says the bottle will reduce its use of new plastic in the US by 20%. Globally, the company produces 3 tons of plastic per year, the equivalent of 200,000 plastic bottles per minute.
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While the company unveils a new bottle, it also pushes the old myth of recycling as the solution. In the company’s press release, the general manager of sustainability for North America said, “While we still have a lot of work to do to reduce plastic waste, by educating consumers about recycling and the potential for plastic bottles to become new plastic bottles, we see this as a big move in the right direction.” In other words, the company shifts the onus of cleaning up unmanageable amounts of plastic onto consumers (and overwhelmed municipalities).
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Just about anything has the potential to be recycled. Slapping the word “recyclable” in green all over a plastic package doesn’t mean it will be recycled. Following Coca-Cola’s logic, I could honestly tattoo all over myself “100 percent able to win the lottery.” Both claims squander ink.
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We need refill schemes.
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Link in profile for my latest blog post, “Why I’m not Excited About Coca-Cola’s 100% Recycled Bottle.”
Incredibly delicious homemade pappardelle pasta . Incredibly delicious homemade pappardelle pasta
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A couple of weeks ago, when my daughter MK said she craved pasta, I said use 2 (pastured) eggs for every cup of flour. I also told her to make the pasta directly on the counter. Frustrated by my insufficient instructions, MK grumbled a bit while she made pasta from scratch. But now she is a pasta-making fiend and can't stop making the stuff, which is fine by me!
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You don't need a pasta drying rack like this for your pasta. You can instead twirl the pasta into several small nests on your counter or work surface while it rests for a few minutes before cooking. Miraculously, it doesn't stick together when you cook it. If you do want to hang it, rest a broom between two chairs and drape it over the broomstick.
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You also don't need a pasta machine to make pasta. I can't be bothered setting up the machine so I will roll it out by hand as thinly as possible and then form my shapes. MK rolled this dough out into sheets using our machine, rolled the sheets up into logs and then sliced off strips.
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We ate this with pesto MK made out of free carrot tops from the farmers’ market (they often give them away) and 4 or 5 kale leaves that needed to be used up asap. I liked the addition of the kale leaves to balance out the carrot greens. You can also add spinach, parsley or other herbs.
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I also make pasta without eggs. My cookbook includes a version with semolina and water, and my blog has one with flour and pumpkin purée. Link in profile for this pasta recipe and for the vegan version.
I hope you find these conversions helpful. Please I hope you find these conversions helpful. Please note: I’ve rounded a bit on the conversions from US to metric, so you’ll notice some slight inconsistency as the measurements scale up (I rounded 1.892 liters to 1.9, for example).
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Also please note: Fluid ounces differ greatly from dry ounces! Fluid ounces measure ingredients by VOLUME and dry ounces measure ingredients by WEIGHT.
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1 tsp = 5 ml
1 tbsp = 3 tsp = 15 ml
1/8 cup = 2 tbsp = 30 ml
1/4 cup = 4 tbsp = 60 ml
1/3 cup = 5 tbsp + 1 tsp = 80ml
1 cup = 8 fl oz = 237 ml
1 pint = 2 cups = 16 fl oz = 473 ml
1 quart = 2 pints = 4 cups = 946 ml
1/2 gallon = 2 quarts = 8 cups = 1.9 liters
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Fluid ounces fl oz (volume)
1/2 oz = 1 tbsp = 15 ml
1 oz = 2 tbsp = 30 ml
2 oz = 4 tbsp = 60 ml
8 oz = 1 cup = 237 ml
16 oz = 2 cups = 473 ml
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Dry ounces (weight)
1 oz = 28 g
2 oz = 56 g
4 oz = 1/4 pound = 113 g
8 oz = 1/2 pound = 227 g
16 oz = 1 pound = 454 g
Happy National Pizza Day! . To mark the occasion, Happy National Pizza Day! 
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To mark the occasion, here is a picture of the recipe "Sourdough Pizza with Tomato-Garlic Sauce" from my cookbook, The Zero-Waste Chef, out soon on April 13th! The overnight proof of this naturally leavened dough renders a wonderfully chewy crust that's well worth the wait. The sauce, like the dough, contains simple ingredients.
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My book is available for pre-order and once again, a big thank you to everyone who has already pre-ordered! I greatly appreciate your support! Link in profile to pre-order. 
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📷credit: Ashley McLaughlin @edible_perspective
Don’t have a rolling pin? A wine bottle or even Don’t have a rolling pin? A wine bottle or even a jar does the trick.
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The marketing industry has trained us to buy products that will supposedly solve all of life’s problems. But with a little creativity and resourcefulness, we can often find more sustainable and less expensive solutions to our predicaments than new goods.
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So here is a challenge: The next time a kitchen gadget breaks or your jeans tear or you run out of the goop you like to put in your hair, before searching for a product to buy, see if you can come up with a different solution, using the resources you already own.
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A friend’s husband once told me that when he was a broke student, he stayed with friends for a night in a hotel in Las Vegas on his way home from a camping trip. After promptly losing his last $20 in the casino, he returned to the room hungry. He still had some food left from camping, including tortillas and cheese, so he (carefully) made a quesadilla in the hotel room with the iron and ironing board, using the iron’s steam setting to soften his tortillas. I aspire to that type of MacGyver-esque thinking.
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What problem have you solved lately with a bit of creativity?
Use number 37 for glass jars: utensil storage . I Use number 37 for glass jars: utensil storage
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I keep these by the stove on my kitchen counter. The large free jars came from two different restaurants that my daughter MK used to work in. Restaurants, bars and cafés can be excellent sources of free jars—just ask!
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The short jar had a small, simple paper label that slipped off easily after soaking the jar for a few hours in water (to conserve water, I’ll soak jars in a larger container or bowl that has been sitting in my sink, awaiting washing and capturing water).
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The tall jar originally had a stubborn label stuck to it. Often, after smearing with oil and letting the jar sit overnight, a label will peel off fairly easily (the oil dissolves the label’s glue). Or you can make a paste out of oil and baking soda if you like, smear that on, allow the glue to dissolve, then scrub off any residual glue. Or use a copper scrubber to scrub the jar.
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Link in profile for more on removing labels and desmellifying  jars. The comments on that post also include lots of good info.
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