This post is not at all festive—I’m writing it on the evening of December 23rd while listening to Christmas music. However, if you are about to eat piles of sugary treats like I am (my mom has stuffed her freezer with homemade cookies, brownies, tarts, dream squares, date squares…), you can balance some of that […]
vegetarian
Pumpkin Dal
This dish came about from a what’s-on-hand-I-need-to-make-dinner-now moment. I always have red lentils in the pantry for dal, I had some fresh tomatoes on the counter and I had about a cup of homemade pumpkin purée left over from making pumpkin pie. The previous week, I had attended a Hindu funeral and devoured a most delicious curried […]
Roasted Chickpeas
When we went plastic-free, we cut store-bought snacks. Those processed foods come packaged in plastic in one way or another—either in plastic bags, or in plastic bags tucked inside cardboard boxes or individually wrapped in plastic and then stuffed into yet more plastic bags. So we started making more snacks from scratch—stovetop popcorn, crackers, dips […]
Zero-Waste Menu No 6
One more menu to go after this and I’ll have a full week’s worth. As I’ve written in some of my other menu posts, I don’t actually cook a different dish every day. In fact, please don’t follow a entirely different menu every day. If you follow this menu today, cook another menu tomorrow and […]
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 […]
How to Make Tahini with Two Ingredients
(Updated 05/02/22) 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 […]
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 […]
Simple Cultured Kimchi
How important is kimchi to Korean cuisine? Well, Koreans eat 1.5 million pounds of it every year, the Korean stock market’s “kimchi index” tracks the prices of kimchi ingredients and when Korea sent its first astronaut to the International Space Station, it sent kimchi along with him too—after spending millions researching and developing a recipe suitable […]
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 […]