I made literal sun-dried tomatoes. And I mean literal in the formerly correct sense of the word… I used a solar dehydrator for these. I haven’t tried dehydrating tomatoes in my oven. I feel I should use the solar dehydrator since I have access to one but tomatoes should turn out well in the oven. […]
sustainability
Homemade Tahini
We eat lots of hummus and so go through quite a bit of tahini. I’m pretty sure when people set out to reduce their waste, their hummus intake becomes inversely proportional. There’s likely a mathematical theory that proves this. This past weekend, I cooked two cups of chickpeas in my pressure cooker for hummus but […]
Drawdown: A Book that Just Might Save the Planet
The bad news on the environment is as unrelenting as a California wildfire. We’re well over 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (scientists consider 350 ppm safe). A 2012 report from the World Bank describes the world as “barreling down a path to heat up by 4 degrees at the end […]
Rice Milk
The short version of this post To make rice milk, whir 1/2 cup of cooked rice and 2 cups of water in a blender until the mixture reaches a smooth consistency. Drink. The long version Homemade rice milk made with leftover cooked rice prevents both food waste—because you can use up that rice sitting in […]
Don’t Be Perfect
I really struggled with this blog post because…I wanted it to be perfect. The irony! As one of my creative writing teachers told us, just write “s&!%, s&!%, s&!%” over and over and over if that’s what you must do to get words onto the page (or screen). Like perfection, the zero in zero waste […]
21 Consumer Products You Can (Likely) Live Without
I haven’t written a rant for some time… I was slow to see the hit show Mad Men. I found it difficult to watch a bunch of white, sexist, racist, entitled, whiskey-swilling, chain-smoking, philandering men develop ad campaigns to sell Americans things they didn’t need. But then again, I think that was the point—to shine […]
Off-the-Grid Kombucha
Because you want to take your hippie game to the next level… The word “ferment” comes from the Latin verb “fervere,” to boil One of the benefits of making fermented foods is that you can prepare many of them without consuming energy. So, after the apocalypse, I’ll still be able to eat my mouth-watering fermented salsa, […]
Vegetarian Chili
I have tried to make good vegetarian chili many times over the years—and have consistently failed. Instead of hearty and filling, it had always turned out thin, soupy and unsatisfying. We eat lots of soup and I love it—when I intend to make soup. But I don’t like chili soup. So I consulted the expert cook […]
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 […]