Twelve Practical Ways to Cook Sustainably.
Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast
Episode 31
12 Practical Ways to Cook Sustainably
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is episode #31 called 12 Practical Ways to Cook Sustainably.
What if I told you that I could give you some 12 simple tips that you could implement today that would save you about $2000 per year? Would you do it?
Well, the easiest and simplest place to start is right in your own kitchen. Making you home kitchen more eco-friendly doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Just start with one simple change, which will lead to another and another. That is the point of this episode, practical ways to make your kitchen more eco-friendly by cooking sustainably. As you will see later on in some of my examples and suggestions, is that from a sustainability prospective, one simple change can make a huge difference.
Now you likely think that I must sit around on the deck of my cabin, staring at the view, and just thinking up this crap. But I have to say, that I did not get where I am today in a few simple steps. I live off the grid 100% of the time and produce much of my own food. But getting there was definitely a process. Just remember that what I am going to suggest here are very simply things. But, you would be surprised at the number of people that never really think of doing these things.
Did you know that according to the USDA, everyday in the United States approximately one pound of food per person is wasted. There is an average of about 76 billion pounds of food wasted per year.
Now in Episode #23 called Waste Not, Want Not, Pollute Not, I went into a lot of detail regarding food waste in the US. You can listen to that episode if you want a lot of the details so I don’t want to go into that here. But, the greatest portion of food waste in the US is at the household level and 2/3 of that is due to spoilage. And that is only the tip of the iceberg. Because food waste goes much further than simply throwing things away. It is also about all the energy and resources that went into producing that food that now goes into the trash.
As you have heard me say before, a big part of living sustainably is about making better choices. In so many ways it is our choices that drives the market place. In fact, companies spend millions of dollars yearly on market research and advertising because they are trying to figure out what kinds of choices you make.
I know all of my listeners have gone to a website and had a pop up at the bottom that says something about the “cookies policy” and how is used to enhance your website experience. Well, that is related directly to targeted advertising and marketing. After all, why would they display an ad to you about women’s clothing when you are really looking for a four season tent.
Anyway, what I really want to do in this episode is to give you practical ways to utilize your food so that you cook in a more sustainable manner. After all, this will save you almost $2000 per year.
Use the Whole Bird
I want to start with a very useful tip that I am going to call “Use the whole bird”. I know that this is going to sound ridiculously simple but you would be surprised at how many people do not do this sort of thing.
Anyway, I like talking about this because it always reminds me of my younger sister. By her admission she is not much of a cook despite having raised two children. I cringe to think of how much money my sister and brother in law used to spend on restaurant food because they practically never cook. But due to the COVID pandemic my sister was forced to cook at home a lot. One day we were having a conversation about recipes and she told me that she’d just made the best chicken noodle soup she had ever had.
She simply saved the carcass from a chicken, boiled it to make broth and used that broth to make chicken noodle soup. I laughed and said I’d been doing that for many years. She laughed and said “Well I did start with a store bought rotissoure chicken.” I conceded that that was at least one step in the right direction.
Now what I’ve done so many times is save the carcass from cooking a whole bird whether chicken or turkey, and then use that to make soup. In fact, as we speak, I have 1/2 of a turkey carcass in my freezer.
So, what you should do simply as an exercise, is purchase a whole chicken and see just how many meals you can get out of that one chicken. For example, cook the whole bird and make a meal out of it. Pull all left over meat off the bone and set it aside. Put the bones in 4 quarts of water, with some spices, and a little celery and onion, boil it to make about a gallon of broth. Use the left over meat in another meal, use it in a pot pie, or even use it for sandwiches. The broth can be used to make soup and can also be added to a pot pie.
I do remember one Thanksgiving we were having dinner with friends. After dinner I helped to debone the remainder of the bird. We had this large pile of bones on the counter and as soon as they opened their garbage can to throw out the bones I quickly asked if I could have them. I made four different meals out of that one carcass that was about to go in the trash.
Grow Your Own
There is nothing more sustainable than growing your own vegetables. By doing do, you eliminate all the resources it takes to grow vegetables commercially, package them, and transport them to the market place. Not to mention the fact that homegrown vegetables are healthier and taste a whole lot better. Even if you don’t have a lot of room, put some tomatoes, peppers, and herbs in small pots just outside your door and reap the benefits.
Make friends with a farmer
Right along with growing your own vegetables, you can make friends with a farmer by shopping at a local farmers market. This way you can purchase fruits and vegetables while they are at their peak of freshness and nutritional value. The number of farmers markets have grown from just under 2000 in 1994 to over 8,600 that are now registered with the USDA. So take advantage of this valuable resource.
Presently, nearly 50% of the fruits and 40% of the veggies we consume are imported. That is simply incredible. So patronize your local farmers market and take advantage of an often over looked valuable resource.
Embrace the ugly
We are so conditioned to purchasing “perfect” looking fruits and veggies. If there is even a single blemish, the average person will not purchase something. So I would suggest simply accepting the fact that not all fruits and vegetables are going to be perfect. So, purchase those pieces of produce that are not so perfect. If you do, then you reduce the possibility that it will actually go to waste and in the big scheme of things you reduce the over all food waste in the country.
I distinctly remember going to the supermarket about 2 years ago and noticing a pile of bananas that were obviously over ripe and almost looking kind of sad. They were marked down by 75%. Since I had no way of utilizing that many bananas in recipes and freezing the end product, I purchased a huge pile and promptly starting dehydrating them. That was 2 years ago and I am still using those bananas in cereal, trail mixes, or just eating them as a snack.
Save your vegetable scraps
There are so many ways that you can utilize veggie scraps instead of throwing them away. For example, you can use broccoli stalks to make a delicious soup. You can also combine the tops, bottoms, and skins of onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, and parsley to make a tasty vegetable broth.
All you have to do is start saving these scraps a little at a time and freeze them. You can slowly accumulate them because these scraps can be frozen for up to 6 months. Once the bag is full, dump it into a pot of water and fill it about 3/4 of the way full. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool and strain out the loose scraps.
If nothing else, you can actually regrow several types of vegetables. This can easily be accomplished by using a few small containers on your window seal.
I distinctly remember when I was a kid and we would save vegetables and regrow them. For example we would take half of a potato and plant it in the ground. We would save tomato and cucumber seeds from things we bought at the supermarket and use them in next years garden.
But thanks to clever genetic engineering you cannot do that any more. This is because produce plants are now engineered so that if you try to save the seeds to grow new plants, they will not produce any fruit. They will still produce a plant and still flower but they will not produce any fruit. I see this all the time when I toss a piece of vegetable material into the compost pile. If it happens to have seeds in it a nice plant will grow with no fruit.
How you can get around that is by regrowing some of them. For example, you can take the bottom stalk that you cut off of celery purchased from the supermarket, place it in a small amount of water and put it in the sun. It will slowly regrow a bit of celery. You can do the same thing will lettuce, onions, garlic, and several other veggies. In fact I will have a link in the transcript of this episode to several articles about regrowing veggies.
One of my favorite things to do is to buy a bundle of green onions at the beginning of the growing season and plant them in a pot or small bucket. Once the greens grow nice and tall, I snip them off, chop them up and place them in the food dehydrator. Once dried, I place them in an air tight container. Once the onions grow new stalks I repeat this process. At the end of the growing season I harvest the onion bulbs and eat those.
Start Composting
Whenever you mention composting everyone always thinks of this huge, smelly pile of compost in the backyard that has to be stirred and furthermore no one seems to know exactly how to manage it. Consequently, an enormous amount of organic material ends up going to the landfill.
The problem is that organic material breaks down much more rapidly if it is exposed to the open air, which is not the case if it goes to the landfill. A study conducted by Yale University estimated that almost 22% of the material that goes to our landfills is organic based and it could be composted.
It is not difficult to learn how to compost. Despite being on the homestead, believe it or not for many years this is something we did not do. The problem is the elevation we are at and the fact that we get snow at least 6 months out of the year. The other challenge we have is the local bear population. A big compost pile would be just another thing to attract the bears.
So, we solved that problem by starting a worm bin. Now we have this small little, self contained worm farm in the corner of the cabin and that is where we place most of our vegetable scraps. And the best part is that it does not smell and it provides great fertilizer for the garden.
Eat Seasonally
Now you may have never given this much of a thought. But eating what is in season is a good way to reduce your environmental impact.
Growing up we had two working farm in the family. During the growing season we often produced far more than we could eat. Not only did we eat veggies fresh from the garden, but we canned the excess to eat over the winter. This is how we had fresh veggies year round and practically never purchased anything from the supermarket.
But if you cannot do this, then it is better to eat things while they are in season. Otherwise, you are consuming veggies and fruit that have been imported or trucked in from somewhere else.
Another thing you can do is buy veggies while in season and freeze them. For example, last fall at the end of the growing season, my local supermarket had this huge bin of acorn squash on sale for less than half price because it was the end of the season. Using my iPhone I did an on-the-spot research project to see if you could actually freeze them. Turns out it was easy to do. I purchased 10 of them, went home and spent a couple of hours peeling, chopping and putting them in the freezer. Here we are more than 6 months later and we are still enjoying them.
Up Your Veggies
It has long been an American tradition to have meat as the main course of the meal. I am sure we can all remember that commercial that aired for years with that catchy phrase “Beef! It’s what’s for dinner.” The simple fact is that meat production, in particular beef, has the largest environmental impact of any commercial food production operation.
Now I am not suggesting you become a vegetarian. I certainly have no intention of doing so myself. But, one simple thing you can do is actually make vegetables the main attraction of your meals and treat meat as the side dish. We already consume far more protein than we need on a daily basis so there is nothing detrimental about reducing your meat consumption.
Make a Stir Fry
This is something that is so simple to do. I go through our refrigerator about once a week and see what veggies we have. Typically there is a miscellaneous pile. If these veggies are just about past their peak freshness, I chop them up and make a stir fry or a small bowl of soup. This is not only nutritious but it cuts down on waste and saves you a lot of money.
Clean Your Bowls
Now I will admit that this may sound trivial. But every thing we can do makes a small difference. But, how many times do you cook something or mix something and once it is ready for the skillet or the oven, you leave a certain amount of food in the bowl that goes to waste.
I think of this every time I cook scrambled eggs. I pay particular attention to this because we do raise our own chickens and turkeys and sell eggs. Anyway, I commonly eat scrambled eggs in the morning. Once I pour the eggs into the skillet, after a couple of minutes there is always residual egg in the bowl, which is the equivalent of about 20% of one egg. So I always make an effort to recovery that and use it.
Now this make not sound like much. But if that amounts to one egg/week, then that is 52 eggs a year. And if only half the population in the US saved 52 eggs a year that amounts to 8.7 billion eggs a year.
So the point is to simply be mindful of the small things.
Consider Cheese a Treat
Believe it or not, cheese has a hefty environmental impact. According to the Environmental Working Group, cheese is third on the list, behind beef and lamb, for having the largest green house emissions.
So, consider cheese as a treat.
And I just want to mention one other simple bonus tip. And this is to make the effort to expand your cooking knowledge and skills. Simply try different recipes.
As I have mentioned before, I have no desire or intention of becoming a vegetarian, much less vegan. But I seem to work with a lot of vegetarians and vegans. Since I love to cook, I have an extensive list of recipes I have collected over the years and I am always eager to experiment with more. So, I routinely ask my vegetarian and vegan co-workers for tips on cooking. Needless to say, I have learned a lot from them.
I know that these tips are very simple and basic. That is part of the reason for my mentioning these things. If I make it easy, then perhaps you will incorporated some of these things in your life. I do have a number of links at the end of the transcript for this episode to give you some further reading.
As of August 2021, I have owned and lived on my off grid property for 25 years. If there is one thing I have learned, it is the fact that my lifestyle is a journey. Many of the things I know do are second nature to me. But, the more I read and experiment, the more I learn. That if the one think you can always do. So, I want to end this episode with one simple thought and one simple challenge.
As a way of life, adopt the attitude of continuous improvement through education. This way you can leverage the one thing you always control- how you use your mind to develop yourself.
This is your host Patrick signing off until next week. Remember to always live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.
Resources
20 Vegetables You Can Regrow From Scraps
25 Ways to Be a More Sustainable Cook
Less is Better: How to Make Meat the Side, Not the Star
Tips on Starting a Compost Pile
