When life gets cold…make pesto. With the night air approaching freezing in North Carolina, my backyard basil recently began browning. I picked all remaining leaves with some two-year-old help. Of course–much to my chagrin–I was a little too late for some of the basil… After harvesting our year’s pine nut crop procuring plenty of pine [...]
California, not content with having achieved the goal set in 1989 of recycling 50 percent of its waste stream, just passed a bill requiring the state to keep 75 percent of its trash out of the landfill. Way to set the bar high, Cali! — — The Occupy Wall Street gang gets plenty of donated [...]
The BBC caught wind of the study profiled here on Wednesday and interviewed the researcher and a TV chef, posing the slightly sensationalistic question: Do Celebrity Chefs Cause More Waste? — — “Were you eating this apple” he asked a moment later. Yup, he was pointing to my apple. I nodded. “Come on down, pick [...]
Everybody loves having their theories confirmed. This bit of qualitative research from the University of Manchester did that for yours truly. I’ve long believed this formula to be true: Heightened expectations for cooking homemade meals + Busy lifestyles = More waste. Now I have some sociological support for that theory, along with some interviews that [...]
Late last week, the UK Government scrapped “sell-by” dates. Food items will no longer be allowed to carry that date label that’s aimed at retailers but confusing for consumers. At the same time, the Government, in the guise of the Dept. of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), offered authoritative guidance to distinguish between “use-by” and ”best-before” labels. In [...]
Hot off the press: New data on retail and home produce waste from our friends at the USDA’s Economic Research Service. I’ll break this down further in a future post, but in the meantime, take a gander. — — Exciting News: The NY Times Online reports that The Grocery Manufacturers Association is planning a three-year initiative to [...]
With Wildly Affordable Organic, author Linda Watson communicates that organic/sustainable isn’t necessarily synonymous with expensive when it comes to food. As the subtitle puts it: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet. Hard to argue with that. WAO carves out a neat niche in the crowded cookbook world. That’s partly because it is a [...]
Here’s an interesting look into how a composting company (in this case, EcoScraps) comes to be. — — The ValuWaste system helped Iowa hospitals save some serious cash from avoided waste. As in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. — — Rolling Stone(!) had a brief, not-so-timely news blurb about the finding that one-third of [...]
The NYT had this great piece on root-to-stem eating on Wednesday (sort of the veggie/summer garden version of snout-to-tail). Now I’ll eat most things, but carrot tops? There are uses, but no runaway successes. — — Not to be outdone, the WSJ’s Juggle blog ran this helpful post on making the most of your CSA [...]
Today, if you’re like me, you’ve got a real abundance. The day after a cookout, the most prevalent remains tend to be buns. And so, because a hefty portion of us will have done some Independence Day grilling, I hereby declare July 5 to be National French Freedom Toast Day. (Think of it as a cousin [...]
