the (almost) zero waste watermelon

Watermelon is in season here, and it's one of my favorites. Next time you enjoy one, though, don't throw the rind away...use it to make preserves! They're delicious (probably because of all the sugar), it's one more way to cut down on food waste, and it wasn't too much work at all.

The recipe is here - the only advice I would give is that although the finished product is quite soft, the rinds were still rather crispy for me until I let it cool and sit for a while. Then, however, they were wonderful and delicious. And now the first batch is gone. Guess I'll just have to eat more watermelon.

Enjoy!

Sea Salt Scrub (in under 5 minutes, for under $5)

I've been wanting to write about some homemade health and beauty products for a while now, but the thing is, I like to actually try stuff before I write about it. And the problem is, I'm a bit of a hoarder. And, well, ok, I'll confess: when we moved to California (over a year ago), we were moving from a state with no sales tax. And what's more, we had a moving company, all paid for, to move whatever stuff we had. So, I headed over to Costco and stocked up. Like a crazy lady. I must have bought at least 100 rolls of toilet paper. Enough dishwasher tablets to stock a busy restaurant. So much lotion that the woman at the checkout probably thought I was filming another Silence of the Lambs movie.

Point is, I haven't needed a lot of cosmetic products since we've moved (and there's a lot that I still don't need - I predict that at current rates of consumption, I'll have celebrated my first and possibly second wedding anniversary before I need to buy more deoderant).

Finally, though, yesterday, I found a need for a product I didn't have stashed away! We were all out of exfoliating scrubs of any kind. I saw my chance and jumped on it, whipping up this batch of sea salt scrub super quickly - and cheaply.

Here are the directions:

Take 1 Cup of sea salt, and mix with 1/2 Cup of grapeseed oil (heads up on this one, I thought it came in a green bottle - nope, the oil itself is green! Which is a little odd, but now you know what to expect). Add 5 drops or so of essential oil (I used lemongrass). Mix it all together really well.

To use, just rub into skin, and rinse off (don't use on open cuts - that'll really hurt). It exfoliates and moisturizes! Also, I haven't tried it with this particular scrub, but I was at a spa with a friend recently and they used a salt scrub to clean her rings and make them all shiny and new looking.

And the best part is, I know there are no little plastic particles hiding out in there waiting to make their way down my drain and into the oceans. The packaging is reduced, because I'm buying stuff I'd either buy anyway, like the salt, or buying in larger quantities than if I purchased a scrub from a salon (to make 5 or 6 batches of this, I'll have one salt container and one grapeseed oil bottle to recycle, rather than 5 or 6 scrub bottles to recycle). The final cool thing is that the ingredients cost me about $22 - but I have enough left over to make a few more batches of this stuff, and the essential oil, which was the most expensive at $10.50, will last for many many batches. Plus I can use the grapeseed oil and the salt for cooking as well. I'm certain this is cheaper than buying a salt scrub at a spa, and I'm also certain it works just as well. Even if it is the color of pistachio icecream.

On the menu...

I haven't written much about what we've been eating lately, but I've made a few good culinary discoveries of late.

First: Goat cheese, when mixed with hot pasta, veggies, and some fresh herbs and garlic, makes a wonderful sauce! The heat of the pasta should melt the cheese for a nice thick, creamy sauce. If the cheese is too thick, add some of the hot pasta boiling water to thin it a bit. We had this last night, using only basil (which smelled so good I almost ate all of it before it ever hit the pan), grape tomatoes, and sqaush (lightly sauteed first). I have a picky eater on my hands, so when he asked for a second serving I knew I'd done well! Credit for inspiration on this one goes to "Serving Up the Harvest" by Andrea Chesman.

Part of the aforementioned pickiness is a strong aversion to salad. This is balanced by a fierce love of any food that is Indian. So I thought I'd see which side of his personality would win by making this curried chick pea salad - the Indian food lover totally beat up the salad hater! Another victory! (Hint - my picky eater hates anything sweet in his meals, but the raisins really do add a nice touch in this dish. I used the golden raisins rather than the traditional dark ones...they blend right in with the chick peas and I don't even think he realized they were in there!)

I mention this salad not only because I am very proud that I have finally made a salad that somebody in this house besides myself will eat, but because it's a great example of how I've learned that recipes are suggestions, not laws. In this recipe, I substituted lemon juice for the lime, skipped the red peppers altogether, and used green onions instead of red. I also don't buy curry powder (this is sort of a made up thing, it's really just a combination of other spices) so I threw in some ground cumin, ground coriander, garam masala, and a touch of red chili and turmeric for good measure. Really, my recipe was fairly different, on paper, than what the site instructed - but the end product, I'd venture to guess, was substantially similar. What's more important, it was really good!

These culinary triumphs aside, what I'm surprised to find in the past few weeks is that I've run through my vegetarian repertoire, and since deciding to cut out most meat at home, I am scrambling to find more good vegetarian main course recipes. I guess I'd never realized how cooking meat once or twice a week really gave me a lot more variety of choice in my menu planning. I don't miss the meat itself, I miss the options it gave me in deciding what to cook, if that makes sense.

Breakfast and lunch are easy enough - I've never really eaten a lot of meat at breakfast anyway, and lunch is easy enough to eat salads with lots of nice eggs, nuts, and beans thrown in to make sure I'm getting enough protein so my mom won't worry about me. Dinner is where I'm struggling, though. I like a fair amount of variety in my diet, and I've made all the chili, tacos, eggplant parmesan, calzones, bean soups, and fritatta recipes that I know recently and feel like I've hit a bit of a wall.

I guess this is where I should confess I'm a bit picky too. When I eat meatless meals, I don't like to feel like I'm eating a large portion of a dish that should really be a side. I also don't like meat substitutes. Soy products really bother my stomach. So that leaves me with lentil or pea/bean based meals, for the most part.

So I need your help! My sister is sending along a recipe for black bean fritters, which sound awesome, but I'd like some other suggestions too. Please share! What is your favorite vegetarian main dish recipe that doesn't contain tofu? I'd love some creative ideas! Do you have a recipe laying around that you've been wanting to try but haven't found time for yet? Let me know...I'll test it out for you!

If you'd like to leave a comment with your favorite or just something you're curious to have tested, please do so, (or email me...the link is on the sidebar) and I'll try one each week and review it. I'm looking forward to everyone's ideas!

Tin cans are made of plastic????

Since my decision to become a flexitarian a while back, I've been cooking slightly differently. We're still eating fish and seafood, but no more meat purchased for cooking at home. I’m so grossed out by what I read in Fast Food Nation that I frankly have no desire to buy, touch, cook, or eat meat anytime soon anyway.

The result, for the most part, has been great. I’ve made delicious eggplant parmesan, a spicy vegetarian chili, and this week, some wonderful tacos.

Part of the challenge for me has not been simply not eating meat, but what to eat in its place. I really don’t like tofu, or any of those other soy fake meat products. They hurt my stomach, for one thing. I never feel good after eating that stuff. Ever. Maybe I have some sort of intolerance, who knows? I also don’t care for the textures, or for the most part, the tastes. Beyond that, they just don’t seem like real food to me. I know lots of people really enjoy them, but for me, it’s just not a good option.

So I wanted tacos this week. Obviously ground meat was out. I considered fish, but didn’t really want the battery stuff with all the oil and fat involved. There’s fake taco meat out there (I think it’s called Smart Round or something), but that’s one of the worst on my stomach, so no way. That basically left beans – which is totally fine, except for now I’ve been reading about how cans may actually pose a danger to us because of the plastic (?!) lining, which contains potentially hazardous levels of BPA. BPA is the chemical you’ve probably heard of that can leach into your drinking water if you use plastic bottles. Bad news folks…it can also apparently leach into your food from tin cans! What’s really scary is that according to one site, one of the food items that is almost always guaranteed to contain BPA in the can linings? Baby formula. Scary isn’t it? See this article for more on BPA. It sort of makes me think that any health benefits of eating organic canned foods are probably cancelled out.

So anyway, I didn’t have any canned refried beans for making tacos, and I didn’t really want to go out and buy any after all I’ve been reading. I’ve also been trying to buy less canned food and more bulk items for environmental reasons - less packaging, less energy to transport, less waste. Cooked beans actually freeze pretty well, and although they take a while to cook, it’s easy to do large batches all at the same time.

Assorted varieties of beans account for probably 2/3 of the canned items I use. I’m a bit of a food snob, so I refuse to eat canned mushrooms, peas, carrots, etc. I do occasionally buy canned beets to throw in salads. I’ve been trying to get away from that, but this one is more of a pain. It takes what seems like forever to cook them, and it really heats up the house. The end result is a fair bit better, but I’m concerned about the energy costs of doing it this way. More research would be needed.

The other items that I eat canned are artichoke hearts, corn, and tomatoes. I’m not sure that there are any easy solutions other than a radical change in what I cook. I go through a fair amount of artichoke hearts in a year. I froze some from my CSA this spring, but it won’t be enough to get me through the year. Tomatoes will be the same issue. I use probably a can a week in sauces, soups, curries, etc. Unfortunately, according to Organic Grace, there is virtually no brand guaranteed to be BPA free. I’ll keep looking – does anybody know of any guaranteed BPA free brands out there? I know glass is a reasonable alternative for items that aren't sold in bulk. Although the lid may contain BPA as well, if the jars are stored upright, the lid shouldn't actually be touching the food, and it's a much smaller area than the entire container.

In the meantime, I’ll be avoiding canned items as much as possible. For my tacos (which were Delicious!) I made the following, super easy refried bean substitute:

1 C. (approx.) cooked chick peas
½ onion, chopped
1 T. (approx.) chopped fresh cilantro
½ t. red chili powder
½ t. cumin powder
½ t. coriander powder
½ t. salt
Olive oil for sautéing

Saute onions until just starting to get soft. Add beans, heat until warm. Add spices except fresh cilantro. Mix, and mash the peas a bit using a fork. Add water about 1 T at a time until desired consistency is reached. Add fresh cilantro just before serving.

This was barely enough for the two of us, they were that good! Next time I’m going to try making a double batch and freezing some for an even easier meal when I’m pressed for time.

I had previously tried making my own tortillas as well, but that was less of a success, so this time I just stuck with a pack of the pre-made from Whole Foods. One cooking adventure at a time!

Leeks, leeks, more leeks...

Leeks
Originally uploaded by adactio

Something a bit unexpected has come up in the challenge to eat more local food. I had realized I'd have less of some things I normally eat, such as pears, red peppers, or bok choy, and I was okay with that.

What I hadn't quite counted on was just how much of some other things I'd be eating. Our CSA box is meant to provide a family of 2 - 4 with veggies (with some occasional fruit) for a week. We're only two, and I will say we have a hard time eating all this produce every week.

Salad greens and spinach there have been plenty of, but that's an easy one. I just make salads. Other things like chard and strawberries I've only received once and it was easy to use them up.

Three items in particular though, I've received lots of: radishes, leeks, and asparagus.

I've made a big batch of potato leek soup. I've pickled some asparagus - it's supposed to be great in bloody marys. The radishes are good chopped and put on bread with butter.

The problem is, I still have lots of all these veggies left...and I need to use them up. So I'm asking for your input...anybody willing to share a great recipe using leeks, asparagus, or radishes as the main ingredient?

Post it in the comment and I'll give it a try in the next few days. Thanks in advance for sharing!

I can't believe it IS butter!

Butter for Apple Crisp
Originally uploaded by madaise

I didn’t quite expect this news so soon, but wealthy, industrialized nations are running out of food. Japan has a severe shortage of butter – they’ve basically run out. This article explains some of the contributing factors. The scary news is, it seems like this is just further expansion of a trend we’ve seen in places like Haiti and Egypt in the past few weeks, and not an isolated incident to be brushed aside as irrelevant. In fact, as this article points out, Canada and the US are already seeing rationing and shortages, especially of rice (even Jay Leno mentioned it on his show tonight). I’ll admit we’ve been stocking up on 20 pound bags of rice, when we can. Each store will only allow us to purchase one or two bags at a time. We also haven’t been able to purchase fresh curry leaves (not related to curry powder, but still a staple of Indian cuisine) for over two months now. They’ve just become too expensive for the small shop where we buy our Indian groceries to even bother stocking them anymore.

So I’ll continue trying to grow stuff on my balcony, but this just reaffirms my belief that the more I can make and do for myself, the better able I’ll be to deal if and when I find myself facing a shortage of something more serious than curry leaves.

I was thinking about how I've been learning to make yogurt, sour cream, and assorted other dairy based products, and I realized that part of the problem with buying only processed, packaged, preservative laden foods is not just that they are unhealthy (which they are), but that they allow us to mentally separate from what we eat.

I was thinking some more today about chickens. I had to admit that if I ever had my own, I’m pretty sure they’d just be for eggs. I don’t know if I’ll explain this very well, but I don’t actually like animals all that much, to be honest. I have a cat that I adore, and believe to be the cutest feline ever born, but I don’t feel the need to pet dogs I see while I’m out walking, and in fact I go out of my way to avoid them. I don’t think I ever want a dog of my own, and I’m not sure I ever want another cat either. Anyway, point being, as much as I wouldn’t peg myself an animal lover, I also don’t think I could stomach killing a chicken. Buying the meat on a tray wrapped in plastic allows me to detach. This is the obvious, classic vegetarian argument.

What often gets overlooked, at least by me, however, is the mental and physical detachment we also have from other foods we eat. Like yogurt. As long as I’d only bought it in a tub in the store, I hadn’t really thought about what it was that made it yogurt. Now that I’ve made it, I actually understand what it is. I’ve made bread, and soda, so now I understand what makes the bubbles in each of them. It’s kind of like those cheesy public service announcements say: “The More You Know”…

Last week, I made butter! I know that the Japanese butter shortage is just a reflection of a general shortage of milk products, but I wonder if they’re still able to buy cream? Because that’s all that butter is!

I know that knowing how to make butter won’t help me in the event that my area experiences a serious shortage of milk products, but I think the more I know about how to make the foods that I eat, the better prepared I’ll be to deal with the sudden unavailability of products I’d previously taken for granted would always be on the shelves of my local store. I don’t know how it breaks down financially, but I’m pretty sure that if I don’t save money, it won’t cost me any more to make versus buying ready made butter…plus I’m reducing the amount of packaging I’m introducing to the landfill, and it's super easy for me to find local cream where I live.

I’ll direct you to Crunchy Chicken for the more specific instructions, but basically, it’s super easy, and goes something like this: put cream in a jar, making sure to leave plenty of air in the jar, and put the lid on. Shake like crazy till it solidifies (I shook for less time than Crunchy’s directions, I read others that said they shook longer…she describes the stages, though, so you’ll be able to figure it out). Use a spatula to squeeze the liquid out of the solid, pour it off (saving it for later use). Add a little salt, and enjoy!

Sour Cream

Sour Cream
Originally uploaded by midnightcomm

Here's another thing I eat kind of a lot of, and figured out how to make for myself...sour cream. It's really good! It's not quite as easy as the yogurt, but if I said it was hard, I'd just be whining (which I tend to do sometimes...)

All you need is a pint of cream, and a quarter cup of buttermilk.

Rinse the bowl for a few seconds with really hot water, then let it return to room temperature (I think this is to kill any bacteria that might be lurking).

Pour the cream into the bowl; mix in the buttermilk. Let it sit in a warm place. I did the same thing as with the yogurt: heat the oven to 200 before you put the bowl in, then turn it off, and let it sit for about 24 hours or so.

The recipe I had said to strain it through a cheese cloth for a couple of hours. I tried this, but the one I had was too loose, and it all just slipped through. Basically, all this means is that the sour cream is a little more watery than what I buy from the store...but it still tastes great!

Less packaging, less waste, and I know exactly what's in it!

If you're into making bread, you can use the leftover buttermilk (it only comes in larger containers in my store) in place of regular milk for that. Or, you can wait for my next recipe secret to find out how to make your own...oh boy!

DIY Ginger Ale

Wilkinson Ginger Ale
Originally uploaded by yoppy

I figured I’d continue on with the beverage theme. I’m not a big soda person. I’m originally from New England, so if you drink something called tonic, cola, or pop, we’re talking about the same thing here. I enjoy it now and then, and I’ll drink it if it’s in the fridge or sometimes if I eat in a restaurant. It’s a now and then thing for those times I don’t feel like water, coffee, or tea. I never thought about the impact too much, because unlike water, I can’t exactly turn on the kitchen faucet and have Diet Coke come out.

I did start wondering though, since I’ve been hearing so much about the environmental benefits of eating local, so I did some quick research. According to Coca-Cola’s own website, they use more than 2.5 liters of water for every liter of soda that is produced. Put another way, they waste more water than what ends up in the bottle. I’m not sure how they calculate these numbers, but assuming they’re painting the best picture possible, it makes sense to believe that this is a bare minimum. If I then consider the cost of transporting the finished product to the store and such, it starts to seem like there are a whole lot of resources being used to produce one beverage.

In addition to all that, I don’t really know what goes in to a bottle of store bought soda, but I imagine it involves lots of artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives. Common sense kind of tells you that those things aren’t that great for you.

So I decided to see if I could make my own. There’s no additional packaging, no transport impact, and I use only the water that I put into the bottle, plus what I use to wash it after. I found a recipe to make ginger ale that seemed relatively easy on wikihow. They also have instructions for cream soda, root beer, and even “Open-Cola” (I didn’t even know that term applied to things besides software).

I made a batch using an empty two liter bottle I rescued from the recycling bin. A 2 liter bottle of ginger ale at the store costs roughly $1.35. To make it, the ingredients cost about 95 cents, by my rough estimate (10 cents for the ginger, 5 cents for the yeast, 50 cents for the lemon, 30 cents sugar, water, negligible). The savings aren’t very significant, but in addition to the other reasons, I’d say it is worth it for me to make rather than buy, especially since it was super easy and the results were pretty tasty (even my picky partner thought so). Here’s the recipe:

1C. Sugar
¼ teaspoon active yeast
1 ½ tablespoons grated ginger
Juice from one lemon
Tap water

Use a funnel to pour the sugar into your empty bottle. Add the yeast and shake it around to mix them together. (The sugar is what the yeast will react with to make the carbonation. Yeast won’t react with artificial sweeteners.)

Mix the ginger and lemon juice together in a bowl or measuring cup. Add it to the bottle, and then fill the bottle with water to about one inch from the top.

Cap bottle tightly. Tilt bottle back and forth to dissolve the sugar. Let sit for 24 - 48 hours (until bottle doesn’t dent easily when you press on it). Don’t let it sit for too long or it will explode because of the pressure that is building up. Once the bottle feels hard, refrigerate until fully chilled. Open carefully and enjoy!

PS: Somebody was kind enough to remind me that "open carefully" really does mean just that...the pressure inside the bottle can be dangerous and cause the cap to come flying off at a high rate of speed, similar to what can happen to champagne bottles when they're opened. So make sure it's not pointed at anybody when you open it.

Speaking of champagne, the pressure and bubbles in the bottle are created when the yeast and sugar react in a fermentation process. Fermentation is what makes alcohol. Although the research I did indicated that the levels will be minimal, it's not impossible that you'll end up with a slightly alcoholic beverage. So enjoy responsibly.

Contains live cultures

Yogurt
Originally uploaded by Mom the Barbarian

I’ve been seeing packaging everywhere these days. Everywhere! I feel sort of like one of the people in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I honestly don’t know how I was not seeing it before. What’s really bothering about starting to notice all of this is that I know all of that packaging ends up in the waste stream eventually. Not buying products is the best (only, really) way to cut down on how much waste I put into the system. I think the “one day at a time” approach is best in overwhelming situations like this.

For today, I’m tackling the yogurt problem. Our household is half Indian. For those of you who aren’t aware, Indian cuisine is rather yogurt-intensive. Plus I like to put stuff in it and eat it for breakfast. It’s not at all uncommon for us to buy three of the large tubs at a time.

We recently spent five weeks in India. We ate a whole lot of yogurt while we were there. And guess what? None of it came from a store. I remembered hearing that when an Indian family returns from vacation, they need to go ask the neighbors for a spoonful of yogurt to start theirs again, since the live cultures are what actually turn it into yogurt.

Seeing how we had just returned from an Indian vacation, I figured this would be a good a time as any to start making my own. Making my own yogurt results in two of my key goals these days: I get zero packaging and save money. Also, it’s super easy. Really.

Here’s the recipe, compliments of my friend Sree (thanks!):

Total time investment by me: less than 15 minutes.

Ingredients:
Milk
Yogurt (with live cultures)

Take a bunch of milk. How much milk depends on how much yogurt you want to make.

Heat the milk just to boiling on the stove, or in the microwave (time will vary, but try 10 minutes, stir around a bit, then do another two). I used the stove top method.

Turn off heat and let milk cool to the point where you can stick a finger in it and leave it for a second (without serious pain).

While the milk was cooling, I set my oven to heat up to about 200 degrees.

Once the milk has cooled down, put a spoonful of yogurt into the milk. IMPORTANT: this yogurt must contain live cultures - it will say so right on the container. I didn’t measure it, I just dumped a good sized dollop in (it’s all going to be yogurt in the end, so I figure use a bit more rather than less. I probably put about 3 Tablespoons or so).

Beat this for a while with a whisk. Maybe a minute or so.

Turn your oven off.

Put the bowl into the warm oven, covered with a lid or cloth. Let it set about 10 or 12 hours. I reheated the oven to about 180 about 2 or 3 hours into it, but I’m not sure this is necessary. You just want it to stay sort of warm. You’ll know it’s done when it looks like yogurt.

Once you've made it once, you can start making a habit of using the last few tablespoons of each batch to make some more.

Bon Apetit!