Like all things zero waste, this menu requires a bit of planning but not that much. A few weeks ago, I decided to schedule a weekly Instagram Live chat on Wednesdays at 4pm Pacific Time. Yesterday, I discussed tips for preventing waste at Thanksgiving—not just food waste but packaging waste also (read 18 waste-busting tips […]
Thanksgiving
Take Food Waste Off the Thanksgiving Menu
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), over the 2016 Thanksgiving holiday in the US, “six million turkeys—a value of roughly $293 million—ended up in the trash.” Producing that much discarded turkey “requires an estimated more than 100 billion gallons of water (enough to supply New York City for 100 days). And when it […]
7 Make Ahead Staples for a Zero-Waste Thanksgiving
Cooking without producing waste requires some planning but not that much. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner without waste needs a bit more planning. I don’t like to leave all my prepping for Thanksgiving to the day before or day of. I like to sleep. So this week and continuing on the weekend, I’ll prep a bunch of […]
18 Waste-Busting Ideas for Thanksgiving Dinner
The biggest food day of the year in the US will soon be here. These ideas will help you waste less. 1. Keep it simple For this post I did a bit of research into a typical Thanksgiving dinner. I checked out menus on the website of a popular, mainstream magazine site and found them […]
How to Cook a Whole Pumpkin in a Pressure Cooker
Homemade pumpkin purée tastes so much better than store-bought. For several years now, I had been roasting small whole pumpkins to make purée. That works well. Basically, you stab the pumpkin a few times around the top, roast it for about 45 minutes and purée the flesh. You can read a post about that here. Today I […]
How to Scale Back During the Holidays
Some might say I go too far. When compared to the average consumer, I may seen downright nutty. But I believe that decades ago—before mass consumer culture kicked in—I would have seemed fairly normal. Well, let’s say normal as far as my consumption patterns go… As I have said many times, I’m not extreme, our […]
5 Buy Nothing Day Activities
Buy Nothing Day (previously known as Black Friday) may come around just once a year but you can embrace it year round. Adbusters launched the day in the early 1990s to protest the consumer madness that kicks off in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving. You can read more about Buy Nothing Day here. If you don’t […]
Kick the Can[ned Pumpkin]
I can’t remember the last time I bought a can of food, including canned pumpkin. When we went plastic-free in 2011, we ditched all canned food. Cans are lined with plastic that often contains BPA, which according to the Environmental Working Group, “is a synthetic estrogen that scientists have linked to breast cancer, reproductive damage, […]