I regularly receive requests for cooking classes suitable for beginners, kids or team building. Until now, I have focused on fermentation: kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut, dill pickles, sourdough bread and so forth. While these are all suitable classes for beginners, kids or team building, not everyone has drunk the fermented Kool-Aid (yes, that’s a thing and […]
real food
What Is Fermentation and Why Do I Go On About It So Much?
If you have read my blog at all, at some point, you may have had one of the following thoughts: Fermentation sounds revolting. Why does she keep going on about it? OMG. I love fermentation. I named my sourdough starter [insert name]. On [insert date] she turns [insert number] years old. We will throw her […]
12-Step Program to Cut Processed Food
I admit it. I love sugar. I eat less sugar than I used to but I still eat it. And although I don’t believe sugar is as addictive as cocaine, food manufacturers certainly seem addicted to the stuff—or at least to the huge profits that added sugar enables. A University of North Carolina survey found that […]
9 Items I Banned from My Kitchen and How I Replaced Them
In 2011, my daughter MK and I decided we would try to live without plastic. Because I’ve been at this for a while, I take for granted many of the early changes we made back then to wean ourselves off of the stuff. But with all the welcome press lately on the plastic pollution crisis […]
Good Food from Fresh Ingredients: Roasted 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 […]
Someone Tell Me How I’m Missing Out
If you read environmental news, you may have stumbled across articles within the last week or so on a new type of edible straw. This article from Fast Company contains some unfortunate wording about these alternatives to wasteful, single-use, ocean-polluting plastic straws: It’s not about the consumer sacrificing anymore, it’s about the consumer having fun and […]
Zero-Waste Menu No 5
When we first went plastic-free in 2011, it took us a while to figure out what to eat. One thing was clear, however—we would no longer eat processed foods, with all of their plastic packaging. We started eating more fresh vegetables from the farmers market and I also began fermenting like crazy. If you’ve caught […]
Recipe Index Update: Vegan, Veganizable, Vegetarian
The Alaskan permafrost has begun to thaw. This is bad. As the permafrost melts due to increased temperatures, it will expose centuries-old buried plants that absorbed carbon dioxide and froze before they could decompose. As the no-longer-perma permafrost thaws, it will expose this organic matter, which will then decompose and as a result, release carbon […]
Zero-Waste Menu No 3
If you have access to decent bulk bins and a good farmer’s market, with a little preparation and perhaps a substitution here and there, you can prepare almost any recipe without producing waste. Just follow the rules below. When we first went plastic free in 2011, it took at least a couple of months to […]
How to Store Produce Without Plastic
Read aloud in a Brad Pitt drawl: The first rule of food waste is: you do not buy too much food. The second rule of food waste is: you do not buy too much food. In an ideal world—one in which you have time to shop a few times a week at a local farmer’s […]
A Reorganized Recipe Index
The recipe index on this blog gets constant, steady traffic. I had originally organized the index into an alphabetical list but as I added more recipes, it became a bit unruly. I’ve reorganized the index with categories like “Ferments, beverages,” “Bread and sourdough” and “You can make that?” so you can more easily find what you’re […]