In order to run my zero-waste kitchen, I need to plan my shopping trips a bit. Before heading to the farmer’s market or grocery store, I take a look at the running shopping list on my phone and add a few things we might need. List in hand, I gather my zero-waste equipment. The list helps […]
food shopping
7 Big Food Marketing Gimmicks
I’m surprised no store employee or manager escorted me from the supermarket premises today. Looking for food to snap pictures of for this post, I kind of went a bit crazy once I started. I found so much material! If aspects such as added sugar, overpackaging and dead food lacking nutrients don’t turn you off of processed food, […]
Key Ingredients for a Zero-Waste Kitchen
To reduce kitchen waste—and to save time and money—I improvise when I cook rather than strictly follow recipes. If you follow recipes for a different dish every night, in no time, ingredients you bought specifically for those dishes but didn’t use entirely—plus leftovers—will overrun your kitchen. You and your family can eat only so much! […]
Aioli
Click here to go straight to the recipe I took my older daughter MK back to university in Canada last week, where we saw my mum and sister. Michelle had made aioli and gave us a jar. We loved it! An emulsion of olive oil and egg yolks, aioli has the consistency of homemade mayonnaise, but […]
Bulk Shopping Haul 06.22.14
Today I went zero-waste shopping at bulk heaven—Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. If you’ve never tried it, zero-waste shopping may sound like an intimidating prospect. But if you live near a store with a good bulk section, really, you need only get organized and bring along some zero-waste shopping gear.
You’ll Need Some Jars
If you’re contemplating going plastic-free or zero-waste in the kitchen, start hoarding jars of all sizes now. Keep them out of the recycling, search the backs of cupboards and your attic and hound your friends and coworkers for theirs. Before you know it, you will have amassed a pile of them. I rely on the […]
Three Years’ Worth of Produce Stickers
I try to buy most of our produce from the farmer’s market. But occasionally I miss a Sunday or I forget to buy something, so I end up at the grocery store. (I never forget my cloth produce bags though!) A few years ago, my older daughter MK started sticking those little annoying produce tags (never present […]
How to Sew Reusable Cloth Produce and Bulk Bags
I’ve been diligent about using cloth shopping bags for literally decades now (I bought my first cloth bag in 1988). But until recently, I rarely used cloth produce bags. I’m all for plastic bag bans, but we need to address the plastic produce bag issue—those things generate huge amounts of plastic waste. So in 2011, when […]
Zero-Waste Bulk Shopping
Today, after going to the farmer’s market, I went shopping at Rainbow Grocery, or what I like to call Bulk Mecca. Rainbow Grocery has awesome bulk aisles. You can get everything there, including: Beans, legumes and rice of all kinds. Pasta in different shapes and varieties—semolina, corn, gluten-free, whole wheat, with eggs, without eggs. Nuts […]