It's true. Zero-Waste has completely transformed the way I look at and purchase food. Gone are the days when I could just pick up a bag of Celery from the local grocery store. I now have to make sure what I purchase is bagless, and hopefully tagless, sticker-less or rubber-band-less: which is VERY difficult, if not sometimes impossible to get during the Connecticut winters. I can't wait for summer, when farmer's markets are plentiful and happy to give me my celery naked!
I would like to just share with you a few food tips that I have found has helped me on my Zero-waste grocery shopping. Ready to dive right in?
HUMMUS: In a jar? Did you know you could make hummus? But even more important, did you know you could make, and freeze hummus? YES! I am not really excited about cooking every single day, and I don't have a lot of time, as I am sure you don't either. What I do is I bring my cloth bag with me to my local Whole Foods and fill it up with Garbanzo beans. I bring the beans home, stick them in a crock pot with a lot of water, and cook them until they're tender. Because I appreciate visuals, here is a short video to give you an idea of how easy this process is to cook dried beans:
Once your beans are cooked and drained, you can make a hummus recipe of your choice! I liked this one, because it doesn't use any tahini. Frankly the hummus didn't even need the tahini, it was delicious without it. When you make a large batch of hummus, you can transfer them to glass containers and freeze them. When you want some hummus, bring it from the freezer to the fridge and let it thaw overnight. The taste is just as good as fresh!
BROWN SUGAR: I apologize there isn't much in my jar, I have to make more because we use this often...This was a light bulb moment for me. For a while I kept asking myself 'how can I be able to have brown sugar without the plastic from the grocery store?' I thought about going without, but then my children love making chocolate chip cookies, and I just can't deny ourselves the pleasures of cookies. Then I wondered- what makes brown sugar different from regular sugar? The answer is molasses. WHAT?? That's it? Brown sugar is simply regular sugar with molasses mixed in! O.O!! And the difference between dark and light brown sugar is the amount of molasses you put in! This is a tutorial of just how easy the whole thing is (and I love this guy's accent...)
I found some molasses in a glass bottle at the store, grabbed my sugar, and made my very own! I will never buy brown sugar at the store again.
TACO SEASONING: This was kind of a "duh!" feeling, where I learned that taco seasoning is simply a blend of seasonings put together. I will no longer be buying the little taco seasoning packets, I'll just make myself a large batch of it here at home!
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! And as a side note, yes, I buy real lemons now instead of the bottled lemon juice, and I squeeze my own lemons. Lemons take a while to go bad at the bottom of my fridge, so I always have some handy, as well as lemon zest if a recipe calls for it.When I run out of lemons, I get more. So let's squeeze those lemons, make our own taco seasoning, grab the hummus and let's have a fiesta!
OLIVE OIL: This was a very recent find, and I was so happy that I almost danced in the aisle...Well I probably did...But nobody was watching...At least I don't think so...
I found this gem at The Village Market in Wilton, Connecticut. They had a huge metal container with a sign that said I could purchase and refill olive oil. YES! SCORE! That's one less bottle to recycle!
POWDERED SUGAR: Sorry again that this container is almost empty, can you tell we are partial to sugar? Did you know you can make powdered sugar too? You just need a high powered blender, and off you go! Here is a short video that shows how it's done:
NUTS: I get all my nuts at the bulk food section inside of Whole Foods. I bring my cloth bags with me and fill them up, and then take a picture of it on the scale instead of printing out a sticker. When I get home I transfer them to a jar. This particular one is SO YUMMY, because it has multiple nuts and some raisins in it, making for a salty/sweet treat that I eat by itself, or put on top of yogurt. And speaking of yogurt, I hear you can make that too, but I haven't explored it deeply enough yet to understand where one gets the "live cultures" that you put into the yogurt. So...Yes, I've been buying Fage Yogurt until I can figure it out myself (FOR SHAME!). I suppose this calls for a future blog post where I learn about yogurt!
WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE: A recipe called for Worcestershire Sauce, and I had already run out of it. Instead of buying more, I made some myself! Here is the recipe I used. It tastes really good, and went well with my recipe. I have it in the fridge for future use, just like my regular Worcestershire sauce...And then I found out the original recipe uses anchovies....yuck. I promise, this recipe is the shizzle!
OLIVES AND CRUMBLED CHEESES: A plastic container?? *gasp!* This container is still well used, and will be used until it is not usable anymore, and then it will be recycled and replaced with something more sustainable. I like to bring it to the store with me to use in the salad bar section. But before I go there I make sure to get the tare weight on this container at the customer service counter, so I will only be paying for the contents inside and not the container. I personally love olives and feta or blue cheese on top of my salads. The Salad bar is a beautiful place to go and fill up a container's worth of things that normally have plastic with it. I love bringing these delicious delicacies home. Who says that zero-waste cannot allow us to have crumbled cheese? Not me! And now you won't say it either, because the secret's out.
I just want to quick touch on a few more things that has changed how I purchase food:
CHEESE: I bring my jar to the cheese counter and they weigh the tare weight of the jar, then fill it with sliced cheese....Except the Deli woman at the Danbury Connecticut Whole Foods refuses to put the cheese inside my jar. She will put it in plastic and say to me that I can transfer it to my plastic jar myself, and then gives excuses of how my jar could be unsanitary...Yes, it's been a real pain...Fortunately the boys at Caraluzzi's will fill up my jar with any kind of cut cheese or deli meat I wish, though lately we have been eating less of it because it's a little cheaper.
MUSHROOMS: You don't have to purchase mushrooms in a Styrofoam container with plastic wrap over the top. Whole Foods allows you to pick loose Crimini or Portabella mushrooms from a basket. I fill up my jar with them, and give the tare weight for that jar at checkout.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS: I found some chocolate chips in bulk at The Big Y in Bethel. They are milk chocolate, not the dark chocolate I love to dearly (I'm looking at you, Ghirardelli). But they do allow us to have the chocolate chip cookies I love so much!
PEANUT BUTTER: I have yet to try this, because I still have the peanut butter containers I am finishing off from before my zero waste days. Whole Foods has an amazing fresh peanut butter maker, where it can grind up those peanuts into a paste and into your container. I can't wait to try that out!
Why am I going through all this trouble??
I remember the weeks right before something clicked in my brain, when I bought another order from the PEAPOD Stop and Shop delivery service. The amount of plastic that I was throwing away from bags to containers to whatnot that simply transported all of my fresh produce was just...ridiculous! If I could just make a few changes to how I shopped, and with my buying power choose only plastic free things, this would help the earth in a small (but over time maybe big) way. I used to feel helpless whenever I saw how many ways our environment is going down the drain. Changing to a lifestyle without plastic has allowed me to take some action, however small it may be, towards tackling the big problem of single use disposables. The Starbucks hot chocolate I had a few years back, with the plastic top that I threw away in the trash... That top is still on this earth somewhere! My choices affect my earth, and as much as you hate to admit it, so do your choices too. We are all stewards of this planet, and we need to do our part, however small it may be. Small changes make a big difference over time, and you never know who is watching your example!
Thanks so much for listening, this lifestyle means so much to me! I know if you do some searching at the stores closest to you, you'll be surprised at what you might find, just like I did.
Cheers,
Laura
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