cooking
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The cleaner plate club: Making sustainable food realistic for parents
What does it really take to bridge the worlds of the "Monsanto-hatin’, farmers-market-shoppin’, card-carrying CSA member" and that of the harried working parent?
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Five packaged foods you never need to buy again
Did you resolve to eat fewer processed foods in 2012? Not sure where to start? Once you've made the switch with these basics, you may never go back.
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Cooking grease is now so valuable that people are stealing it
Who says that clean energy policies don't create jobs? The boom in biodiesel has created not only a new commodities market in cooking grease, but a new business opportunities for security professionals -- not to mention providing work for thieves and black-market fences, which is a kind of job? That’s because fryer oil is now such a valuable resource that people are straight-up stealing it.
In recent years, a couple of state governments have realized that cooking grease has a use as a biofuel source and have regulated grease collection. At the same time, though, some less-than-savory characters have realized the grease’s value as well and are boosting it, costing some small rendering businesses losses on the order of $750,000 per year. And so the world comes to this impasse, as described by The New York Times:
The grease is often stored in black Dumpsters that reek of death, in back alleys, which is why pickups usually take place in the middle of the night.
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Now we’re cooking: How to get Americans back in the kitchen
Photo from the video Tamar Adler Talks About An Everlasting Meal.Editor’s note: It’s unanimous these days: Cooking food from scratch at home is one of the best ways to eat sustainably without breaking the bank. It also enables eaters to easily support food producers who use environmentally sound, ethical, and humane practices. But most Americans […]
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Ask Umbra: Is silicone cookware safe?
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Can I recycle my silicone hotwater bottle? Also is it really OK cooking in silicone baking dishes? What IS it? Marcea C. Totnes, England Photo: Scorpions and CentaursA. Dearest Marcea, Something about your final question has caught my fancy — the wistful perplexity, the beseeching helplessness, the […]
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Chow-to: Clean sardines
By now it’s become conventional wisdom that eating low on the food chain is more sustainable. In the case of fish, that means sardines, anchovies, sand-dabs, and other small, short-lived fish. Despite recent news that our small forage fish need to be better managed to avoid future problems, if you’re going to eat fish at […]
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Chow-to: Stop worrying and love your kitchen timer
Getting used to cooking while doing other things does more than save you time. It changes your eating habits, making it easier to go green in the kitchen.
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Food Studies: the science of cookie texture
Water activity and moisture migration sound complex, but make all the difference between chewy and crispy cookies.
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Food Studies: culinary school culture shock
A Singaporean culinary student discovers farm-to-table on a school trip to California.