Cooking Fresh

Our cooking fresh experiments continue to go well. Last night's dinner featured brown rice, snow peas cooked in with caramelized onions, chicken, and broccoli, zuchinni and squash stir fry. It all worked very well together. We produced almost no waste for this meal, throwing away only the outer skin of the onion and the stem ends of the veggies. No cans, no paper, no packaging. Even washing up was minimal as we used the same pan for all of the cooking, and as we all cleaned our plates there was very little water usage to wash dishes. All dish soap used was eco-friendly Clorox Green Works Natural Dishwashing Liquid Simply Lemon -- 22 Fl Oz. All surfaces were cleaned with eco-friendly cleaning products - Clorox Green Works Natural All Purpose Cleaner 32 oz (946 ml). Both products are made with 99% natural ingredients and are fully biodegradable. We are slowly trying to switch over to using entirely Green Works products, or possibly making our own cleaning products with various combinations of water, white vinegar, baking soda, castille soap, and borax.

Lunch today was white pizza with broccoli, chicken and onions. The dough was entirely handmade with only flour, water and yeast. I had to give JT a bit of a lesson on working that type of dough, but I think he enjoyed the lesson. The pizza was amazing. By making this entirely from fresh ingredients, and using veggies that we had already prepared for use in food, we created no waste for this meal. One pan and one mixing bowl needed to be washed, but we again used just warm water and the green works cleaner.

I don't think we've actually had to throw anything away other than the unusable portions of veggies in a couple of days. We're actively working on reducing the amount of resources such as water and electricity that we are using as well. The apartment had already been switched to entirely GE 26 Watt Energy Smart CFL - 6 Pack - 100 Watt Replacement bulbs, but we are also getting better about turn off lights when not in use.

Sooo... so far so good. :)