Content related to Cooking, Brewing, and Recipes
I usually head into January with a commitment to eat fewer animal products. While I am full vegetarian, I love dairy products, particularly cheese. In my carbon footprint research a year ago, I discovered that cheese is the third-worst food you can eat, after beef and lamb. With a heavy heart I recommitted to cutting back on dairy, starting with a full-vegan January.
Some of my most controversial, infamous, and still-talked-about Facebook posts of all time involve something that seems to draw opinions from even the most reserved people I know: expiration dates. Many people believe that the “sell by” or “best by” dates stamped on food are the end-all, be-all, definitive line between “safe” and “not safe” for food, and in almost every case that is not accurate.
After a long, cold, lonely winter, I was more than ready to get back out in the garden and enjoy the warmth and the flowers. With some inspiration from my friends, I made and canned syrups made from my violets and honeysuckle, and I have been drinking them in cocktails as I sit and watch the world come back to life.
In general, it appears that CSAs can help out in the area of reducing one’s carbon footprint, but not why we think. It’s not so much because the food is local; rather because they generally encourage you to eat more in-season produce and less meat. In this final post, we’ll review what aspects of your food purchases make more (or less) of an impact.
Between land use impacts, methane produced by animals, animal feed, and the processing of animal carcasses, there is a significant impact from meat and dairy products, as compared to vegetables. However, all foods pack a punch in the carbon footprint arena when it comes down to the energy required to grow or preserve foods out of season, or when we don’t use what we buy.
When making responsible purchases, it’s easier to factor in things we can see (e.g. packaging) over things we can’t, such as farming practices, cold storage, and transportation footprint. In doing research for this series, I’ve been learning how my own choices with respect to food purchases, while well-intentioned, were grossly misinformed, and how some choices count for a lot more than others.
While buying local food is beneficial for local farmers, it doesn’t make that much of a difference to the environment. Transportation-related greenhouse gases are a drop in the bucket compared to GHGs associated with land use, farming, and methane produced by cows. Looking at the numbers shows that it’s what you eat, not where it comes from that makes the biggest impact.
Subscription services to healthy, farm-fresh produce promote health for the people who eat the food and financial viability for the farmers who grow it. Many people believe the biggest value of a CSA program is the low environmental impact of buying local, but this first post in a series on CSAs looks at whether eating local food is really the best way to save the planet.
I’ve never met a beet that I liked, and this love/hate issue divides my family in two. What’s a girl to do when beets show up in the farm share box? This week on the blog, I divised a version of “The Dating Game” for myself to try to answer the ultimate question: are beets in any way redeemable? I remain skeptical.
In an attempt to limit my personal demand for plastics and keep those items out of the waste stream, I’ve cut back on takeout and delivery food as much as possible. Now that I’m cooking more, I’ve tried to turn first to what we’ve already got stashed in the back of the cupboards before shopping – and that has been an eye-opening experience.