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Zero-Waste Chef

freestyle cooking

  • 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
  • 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
  • Zero-Waste Basics

7 Staples I Stock at All Times

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

With these 7 basic staples on hand, I have the foundations for a variety of delicious, healthy dishes. When any of these run out, it’s time to shop.

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7 Comments
  • Challenges

Go Zero-Waste in 31 Days

Posted on December 30, 2018January 29, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

Adopt a zero-waste life in 31 days. As you accomplish each task in this plan, you’ll slash your waste, reduce your carbon footprint, eat better, save money, reduce stress and more.

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34 Comments
  • Food Waste

Freestyle Cooking: The Recipe for Eliminating Food Waste

Posted on June 7, 2018October 27, 2020by The Zero-Waste Chef

According to a recent USDA study, Americans waste 1 pound of food per person per day at the household level. Now I basically live and breathe waste. I would like to insert the word figuratively into that statement but with plastic pollution in our water, our air, our soil and our food I cannot. Even with […]

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15 Comments
  • Food Waste

Freestyle Cooking: Stir Fry

Posted on January 17, 2018February 20, 2018by The Zero-Waste Chef
stir fry

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 great-grandmothers did this. Today, many of us choose what to eat based on our whims—or our picky eaters’ demands! Let’s […]

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Sourdough Discard Pizza: How to Sourdough-ize a Recipe
Preserved Lemons
Make-a-Dent-in-Your-Discard Sourdough Pita Bread
Ginger Bug
Save-All-the-Greens Turnip Top Pasta
Is Recycling a Scam?
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Good news! . Victoria will ban single-use plastics Good news!
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Victoria will ban single-use plastics by 2023, beginning by phasing out banned items in its own government systems within a year.
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The ban includes plastic straws, cutlery, plates, cotton ear bud sticks and polystyrene cups and containers. When announcing the ban on Saturday, the environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, said that these items account for about a third of litter in Victoria.
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The ban includes bars, cafés and restaurants but not medical or scientific equipment and exemptions will apply for emergency, disability and aged care services as needed.
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Plastic contributes to the climate crisis all along its life cycle and Big Oil is currently ramping up production of the stuff. Regulations like these will make a big dent in preventing plastic pollution at its source—production.
Our lemon tree didn't produce much this year so I Our lemon tree didn't produce much this year so I asked around and received 30 pounds of free lemons on Sunday 😮
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Earlier this week I made a large dent. I peeled 4 giant lemons with a vegetable peeler to start a batch of limoncello. I then juiced those peeled lemons to add to the jars or preserved lemons I also started. I needed more juice for those preserved lemons, so I zested all the additional lemons that I juiced and stashed the zest in the freezer. My kitchen smelled amazing!
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I chop up preserved lemons to serve on the side of Indian dishes (or simply put them in the dishes, often when I've run out of fresh lemons), make dressing, start cultured cashew cheese or add to dips for some intense lemon flavor. Someone of Facebook told me today that she adds preserved lemons to pastry. I’m trying that next! Link in profile for the preserved lemons recipe.
Pasta that prevents food waste! . We had some wate Pasta that prevents food waste!
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We had some watermelon radishes on hand with lots of greens attached so I used the leaves to make green pasta. Earlier in the week, the green leaves of mild white Japanese turnips turned our pasta green. MK made some kale pesto to go with this. So good! This pasta is perfect if you’d like to serve green food on St. Patrick’s Day next month—or if you like pasta. 
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I did run this through my pasta machine but you can make pasta by rolling it out and cutting the noodles by hand. And if you are on the market for a pasta machine, check thrift shops or your Buy Nothing group. People often buy these with great intentions but end up never using them.
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Link in profile for the recipe.
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
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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
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