After a longer than expected break, I feel renewed creativity, and am wanting to get back in the blogosphere – and also back in the kitchen, which I’ve been desperately missing for the last couple months!
So things have slowed down ground to a halt around here. Various life events – awesome Pakistan trip, deathly plague of respiratory infection, new baby! New baby! (Not mine, my sister’s) – have kept me out of the kitchen for a little bit. Besides making obligatory pot of beans.
Yesterday my friend Gloria (who loves to grocery shop as much as I do) took me on a field trip…
After October’s Gourdfest and November’s Thanksgiving Extravaganza I’m worn out. This week we’ve been eating simply – scrambled eggs, sauteed…
An evite to Thanksgiving at our house. Remember that episode of Friends where the girls and the boys have switched…
My Paki Tacos are now my Award Winning Paki Tacos! I brought them for a work potluck and won Best…
Do you ever have one of those weeks where you feel burnt out, brain-fried, and instead of figuring out what…
October is here, the best time of year! Last year I posted a mix called Season of the Witch. This…
“Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients.” – Andrew Wilder.
A lot of people are not going to be eating processed food during the month of October – sounds fun, I’m in!
I don’t think this would be a huge stretch for our family; we eat pretty well most of the time. Of course, we are coming off a weekend of takeout (as our kitchen was in pieces, now we have a new floor and counters – beautiful!) but that’s really even more reason to detox with some decent food.
My first thought was that this will be a piece of (homemade, lovingly prepared) cake. Upon further reflection, I do foresee some things being a challenge. Bread for example. I pack Zoeya a sandwich for lunch at least once a week, and we often eat naan with dinner. Not a huge problem, just means a little baking on the weekends and whipping up some homemade roti.
Other things to consider are condiments and canned foods used in cooking otherwise whole foods. I’ve decided on a two pronged approach. Some things, like my sauces and chutneys, and even mayonnaise I’m going to make from scratch. Other things, like the coconut milk I use that contains stuff like guar gum (not an ingredient I usually have hanging out in the pantry) I’m not going to stress about.
A final challenge – isn’t Halloween in October? Not much I can do about that…maybe October is #unprocessed except for a couple funsize Snickers.
Here are 3 easy things you can do to be a just little bit greener whilst cooking and lunching.
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Cloth NapkinsAlthough it’s actually greener to use recycled paper napkins at restaurants, it is marginally greener using cloth napkins at home. (See this informative little article on TreeHugger.com). Yes you have to wash them and that uses energy, but (shh) I don’t wash them after every meal. Not fancy at all, in fact quite the opposite, I get the paper napkins out for guests. Even little Zoeya takes a cloth napkin in her lunch box. |
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Kitchen ScrapsThis surprised me, but it’s actually greener to throw your scraps away than to put them down the disposal. Down the drain, they will have to be treated with chemicals and will be strained out and sent to the landfill anyway. So shift your habit! Now I can feel a little better about all those months the disposal was broken. Of course, scraps in the landfill are not much better, leftover food will sit around releasing methane, so the best thing of all to do is compost. |
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BYOFBring your own fork! This is a big one for me, I bring my lunch to work every day and I forget to do this half the time and end up using one of the plastic forks from the break room. Reducing single-use plastic products is a really important thing to do; besides filling up our landfills, plastic takes a huge toll on marine life. This is something I’m really going to focus on. I use reusable shopping bags, we have a water filter instead of buying bottled water, and I’m really going to try to remember to pack my fork. |
