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Zero-Waste Chef

Vacaville I-80 Noah Berger AP Photo

Posted on September 6, 2020September 18, 2022by Anne-Marie Bonneau
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Highway I-80 in Vacaville in Northern California during a wildfire. Fire jumped the highway and started to burn on the other side. Traffic is backed up in the right-hand lanes.

The flames jumped I-80 in Vacaville

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It’s a new week! Now’s a good time to clean yo It’s a new week! Now’s a good time to clean your reusable mug and bring it along. Paper to-go cups contain a thin lining of plastic to prevent coffee or tea from leaking all over the place and onto you. Don’t have a thermos? How about a ceramic mug? A mason jar also works. To prevent burning your hand, wrap several rubber bands around the jar or sew a cloth sleeve for it out of scrap fabric or a worn-out sock. If you have many mugs, you could keep one packed in your zero-waste kit, one at the office (if your office doesn’t have real mugs, in which case, consider working on changing that), one at school and so on. If you need to buy mugs, your thrift shop likely has a large shelf full of them. Thank you @redrockcoffee for joining @svreduces and allowing people to bring their own mugs and thermoses for to-go drinks! When they see the green and white sign—like a beacon!—they know they can bring their own mug, no questions asked, except for “What can I get you?” Want to help get more businesses to allow BYO in your community? Find out how in my profile @zerowastechef
Need some new-to-you furniture? Depending on where Need some new-to-you furniture? Depending on where you live, you might find some good stuff out on the curb. This is just a fraction of the stuff I’ve seen out on the curb. Never ceases to amaze me. Do you shop the curb? What’s the best thing you’ve found? See my stories for stuff in my home that no one wanted.
If your store has nut grinding machines, you can h If your store has nut grinding machines, you can help keep umpteen fossil-fuel-based plastic jars out of landfill when you fill up your own glass jar. Tastes delicious and the glass jar looks more appetizing too! Just be sure to have the jar weighed—tared—before you fill it so the cashier can remove the weight of the jar from the overall weight and you pay only for the nut butter. Customer service often takes care of this. Some refill stores have scales placed around the store for customers to weigh and mark their containers themselves. See my stories for 49 more simple ways to kick plastic.
If you want to live more sustainably but think it If you want to live more sustainably but think it requires too much work, start with passive zero-waste strategies, such as leaving the leaves. Raking up nutrient-rich leaves, bagging them up in plastic and sending them off to landfill where, like all organic matter, they emit planet-heating methane gas and then spending hard-earned cash on fertilizer and mulch is too much effort! Why work so hard? 🤷 If you don’t want to leave the leaves on the lawn—a thick layer can suffocate it—then rake them over to a flower bed or save them for compost bins.
Pumpkin spice season is upon us! I bought my first Pumpkin spice season is upon us! I bought my first pie pumpkin and kabocha squash but had no ground cinnamon 😨 No problem! I do have cinnamon sticks. So I pulled out my secondhand coffee mill dedicated (pretty much) to grinding cinnamon and ground some up very quickly. You really notice the fresh taste when you grind it yourself. If you try this, leave the lid on your mill for a few minutes after you grind the cinnamon to avoid releasing a cinnamon dust cloud. There are worse things but you may as well inhale your dish flavored with cinnamon rather than inhaling the cinnamon itself. See my blog for 9 more staples to make not buy.
If it’s broke, fix it! This well-loved purse be If it’s broke, fix it! This well-loved purse belonging to my daughter finally gave out so we dropped it off at the shoe repair. A week later—good as new! Cobblers can repair all kinds of things, in addition to shoes. If you don’t have a cobbler in your city, you may find a repair café for your damaged purses, bags, belts, shoes... Or if you’d like to repair something yourself, you’ll likely find a repair tutorial on YouTube, @ifixit, @instructables and so on. Save money, keep stuff out of landfill, conserve resources and reduce emissions! I’ve had my Birks repaired four times (so far) at this same cobbler. How many lives do you think we can get out of this purse?
Yesterday, MK and I stumbled upon a thrift shop, @ Yesterday, MK and I stumbled upon a thrift shop, @style_beyond_threads in downtown Mountain View. Oh and MK said later that I could post this on here... We reached peak stuff long ago. We’re running out of both resources and room for trash in overburdened landfills. If you need or want something, with a little patience and luck, you’ll often find it or something like it—or something better!—secondhand. You’ll save money, stimulate the local economy, keep stuff out of landfill, help create demand for a secondhand market, enjoy that feeling of satisfaction when you find something great... What’s the best secondhand find you’ve scored?
I stumbled upon the @use.less.car yesterday at a t I stumbled upon the @use.less.car yesterday at a tour of electrified homes. From the @use.less.car website: “The goal of this project is to get more people to consider, use, and advocate for car alternatives. Bikes (electric or manual), buses, trains, walking, handcycles, horses, rowboats, ferries, subways, dirigibles, and many other forms of transport consume less energy per mile than personal cars. Individual action matters—live like your emissions matter, because they do.” The car is powered by two cyclists, one of whom can steer and brake. It sat parked on display during the tour. Go to @use.less.car to see the converted bug on the road in action!
How to make easy tomato purée with fresh tomatoes How to make easy tomato purée with fresh tomatoes! 🍅 On the weekend, I bought two, 20-pound cases of dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes. After prepping my seventh baking sheet of tomato wedges to roast, while deciding between prepping and sleeping, I chopped up a few pounds of tomatoes, threw them into the slow cooker and chose sleep. In the morning, I ran them through my food mill, reduced the ensuing purée over low heat, stored it in a jar and froze it. So easy! I’m definitely adding purée making to my yearly ritual. In the fall or winter, I’ll transform this staple into pasta sauce or pizza sauce or tomato paste or add it to chana masala or minestrone soup or any other recipe calling for fresh tomatoes. If you don’t have a food mill, you can blanch and peel the tomatoes. If you don’t mind skins, leave them on. You’ll need to purée the tomatoes after cooking them. In lieu of a food mill, use a blender, immersion blender or food processor. You can store the purée at this point or cook it down. The slow cooker isn’t great for reducing liquid—it can’t escape—but I did one batch that way. A pot is much quicker. When we broke up with plastic, I had to figure out how to replace canned tomatoes—cans are lined with plastic (the stuff is everywhere!) and although many food manufacturers plaster the claim “Now BPA-Free!” on their packages, the can linings may contain something similar and just as bad. I don’t know if I would have started processing so many tomatoes had I not broken up with plastic. As a result, the tomatoes I eat now taste incredible! I go through this ritual every fall after the price of tomatoes drops. I pay almost half for tomatoes as I do at the start of the season. But as I chop the 150th tomato, I ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” Then in winter, after thawing out a jar to make a fabulous tomato sauce or other tomato-based dish, with that first taste comes my answer. The full directions for tomato purée in my recipe index.
My daughter MK and I made one last batch of fermen My daughter MK and I made one last batch of fermented salsa. (Actually, MK made it, I recorded...) This stuff tastes great pre-ferment but after... OMG. It has a tangy, intensely tomato flavor with a slight effervescence. Several years ago, a reader told me it makes her husband’s eyes roll up into the back of his head when he eats it—quite the testimonial! Chop up tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, jalapeño, garlic, cilantro. I use a my hands to crush the tomato pieces. You can also prep this in a food processor but omit the onions—the blades can make them bitter. Stir in salt and lime or lemon juice to taste. (We use lemon juice because we have a lemon tree.) Pack into clean jars, leave an inch or more headspace to prevent the salsa from gurgling out of the jar when it ferments and close the jar. This is essentially liquidy so I don’t weigh it down—it’s hard to weigh down soupy ingredients. Let it sit at room temperature until it bubbles and the color becomes more muted—both signs of successfuly fermentation. Stir it daily when you check on it and taste it. It ferments in about 2 to 3 days. Move it to the fridge when it’s done. We didn’t add a starter to this batch—it ferments on its own—but you could add one if you like. This recipe is highly adaptable!
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