Month: January 2020

So something really exciting happened tonight. I called my parents and was catching up when my mom started telling me about how she has started bringing re-usable utensils to lunch every day. She then started telling me about the salad container she bought. To top it off though, the really big win is that my dad is now bringing in a re-usable container to get his lunch in every day. This isn’t something I asked them to do, but instead something they decided to try after me telling them about my project. I was not expecting it and am super impressed with them. I know they are already slightly annoyed with all of the dish washing associated with it but it sounds like they are going to stick it out. Go Mom and Dad!

On another note, I made a risotto tonight that turned out really well. Putting the recipe up now! I’d highly suggest this, but mostly because risotto is the first meal I made for Leah. It made her stay with me after taking her to a mime show the date before. Yes, that’s right, I took her to a mime show on our third date and she still married me. If it can make up for that, it can work wonders for you too.

One of the things that has been the most challenging about going plastic free is the total lack of snack foods. Our options are seem so limited. We have nuts and got a few snacks through loop (wasabi peas, peach rings, and oyster crackers). While they are great, they aren’t really doing the trick.

There’s nothing quite like chips. To quote my friend, “they are delicious and unhealthy and their packaging gives me rage and I want some now.” So, last night, I decided to make some. It started easily enough. I sliced some potatoes and washed the starch off of them. All that was left to do was to fry them. This is where this process got tough. I didn’t have that much oil so I could only fry a handful at a time. This took about 5 minutes each but added up. Overall, I spent about 2 hours making chips. Don’t get me wrong, they are freaking delicious, but sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze and this felt like one of those times. I also used the last of my canola oil and haven’t figured out where to get more without plastic. I think next time, I am going to try to bake them so I can do them all at one and don’t have to worry about the oil. They won’t be nearly as delicious/unhealthy but I think it will save a lot of time.

Tonight, we had a bit of an epiphany. We went out to dinner at a tex mex restaurant down the street. As we were leaving, we asked if we could buy some of their chips instead of having to make our own. They were so nice about it. They gave us a bag for free and said that we could stop by whenever and give them a few dollars for some more. It was so much easier than all the effort of making them. I am pretty excited to try this elsewhere as well. It’s nice to know how to make all of these things from scratch but the convenience factor is starting to seem preventative from making being plastic free sustainable from a lifestyle perspective. I’m looking forward to trying to figure out more arrangements like this moving forward.

Leah and I also got our first order from a new CSA called Imperfect Foods. The general idea behind it is that about 25% of produce gets thrown away because it doesn’t look good enough to be sold in a grocery store. For example, a carrot may be a little crooked. While the carrot is still totally fine, it just doesn’t look like someone expects it to when going to purchase it. This CSA gives these fruits and veggies a second life instead of letting them end up in a landfill.

Our order came and was great. We got a bunch and it all came loose in a box with minimal packaging which was really exciting. The one exception was cherry tomatoes which came in a plastic container. Fortunately, moving forward, we will be able to choose what we want and can avoid smaller items like cherry tomatoes and berries. We are looking forward to cooking something up with these.

Today Leah and I walked down to Eastern Market again for some more cheese. I had come up to a solution to our cheese problem, cheese roulette. Since they were going to use a new piece of plastic on the larger block of cheese if I requested a slice, my plan was to go with my tupperware and just request whatever cheese other people were ordering at the time. I am sure whatever we got would have been delicious.

Fortunately, when I approached the counter, I explained that I had a weird request and starting explaining how I went plastic free. The woman behind the counter was really nice and before I even got to explaining cheese roulette, she told me that some cheeses they could put the plastic wrap back onto and others they couldn’t. This changed a bit from last time and I was thrilled. What I really wanted was parmesan and cheddar which were both hard enough that the plastic could be re-used. Needless to say, this was the most excited I have been since I started this. The thought of not having cheese again was unbearable. She kindly cut the cheese into blocks that would fit in my containers and I left quite thrilled.

We have also started to run out of frozen fruit for smoothies so bought some mangos to cut up ourselves and freeze. I have not come close to finding berries anywhere though that don’t come in plastic containers. This sucks and it may just be that we need to buy them in bulk when they are fresh over the summer and then freeze them for the year. In the meantime, they are going on the irreplaceable plastics list.

We also stopped by Hill Kitchen to pick up some more containers and a tortilla press. Since the year began, we have found ourselves going through containers like crazy. We constantly have leftovers and are storing dried foods like grains as well as our homemade pasta. It totally makes sense, if you aren’t buying your food in packaged containers, you are going to need containers at home to store it in. We were more than happy to invest in this.

The other thing that we have been missing are tacos and chips. There’s no better snack than chips with salsa and hummus. We haven’t had it in so long and have been craving it. One of my go to meals that I like to make also are tacos. It’s another one that you can make with whatever veggies you have lying around and comes out delicious every time. Making our own tortillas instead of the ones that come wrapped in plastic bags seems to be the only way to do this. I did some reading online and a tortilla press seems like the way to go. You can make tortillas and cut and fry them to make chips. As you can imagine, they didn’t have a huge selection of tortilla presses but they did have one! It came in a cardboard box. I kind of assumed that the press inside came wrapped in plastic because, why not package it twice? When I got home, I found out I was right, it was wrapped in plastic on the inside.

This didn’t seem like it was worth returning it over. I had scoured craigslist prior to making this trip and shockingly enough, no one was selling a tortilla press. The way I see it is that it’s the least of the evils. One bag around the press is much better than all of the plastic I would have used buying pre-made chips and tortillas.

So, I have now made Oat, Almond, and Soy milk. Here are my thoughts on them.

Taste

The almond milk tasted the best to me. It was thick and creamy and had a great flavor.

The soy milk was actually the thickest, I think due to the fact that you cook it for 30 minutes to help turn the strong bean flavor into something sweet. That also evaporated about a quarter of the liquid for me leaving quite a thick milk. It was a little too sweet for me. I think it would potentially be a great substitute for baking but I haven’t tried that yet.

The oat milk was my least favorite. It was a little thin and for some reason, the nut milk bag wasn’t able to strain the oats as well so it has a little texture to it. Other than the texture though, it just wasn’t as thick and rich as the other two.

Level of Effort

Oat milk is by far the easiest to make. You don’t need to plan ahead. Just put some oats and water in a blender, strain it, and voila. The fact that you can just make it is a huge plus.

Almond milk is next. It’s basically exactly the same as the oat milk but you have to plan ahead and soak the almonds for 6 hours before you blend them with water. While this really isn’t too difficult, it does make it less feasible if you’re in a pinch and need something quickly.

Soy milk by far takes the most effort. You need to soak the soybeans for 12 hours. You can attempt to take the skins off of them after this which most recipes I’ve seen online recommend. Then, after blending and straining it, you need to cook it for 30 minutes while stirring it pretty constantly so it doesn’t burn on the bottom. Then, just for good measure, it needs to be strained one more time to remove anything that does solidify while cooking. While in actuality, none of this is too labor intensive or difficult, it’s a lot compared to almond and oat milk.

Cost

Oats and soybeans are definitely less expensive than almonds. The following prices are what I found at Whole Foods. They may fluctuate elsewhere.

Rolled oats: $1.49 per pound. Oats are pretty light so a little goes a long way. You can make a half gallon of oat milk for $0.60.

Soybeans: $1.99 per pound. These are also pretty inexpensive and go a long way. You can make a half gallon of soy milk for $0.95.

Almonds: $8.99 per pound. These are hands down the most expensive but still way less than buying almond milk in a carton. You can make a half gallon of almond milk for $5.60.

Final Thoughts

Despite the fact that it’s my least favorite taste-wise, I’ll probably make oat milk most frequently. The taste doesn’t matter as much in a smoothie which is where the majority of my milk consumption comes from. I will make almond milk to use in things where the flavor matters more like cereal (if I can find a way to buy it in bulk) or just for drinking. I’d also like to use almond milk less frequently as almonds take a lot of water to produce and something like 98% of all almonds in the world are grown in CA. While they are delicious, I feel like I don’t need to make a water intensive product produced in an area struggling with drought an every day part of my diet. Soy milk, due to the comparable level of effort to make, will probably be reserved largely for making tofu. I would like to try baking with it thought at some point as well.

You can check out the recipes for each of them on my Recipes page.

I finished making my first batch of homemade tofu last night and it turned out so well. It’s infinitely better than store bought tofu, but definitely a bit of a pain in the ass to make. I started by making soy milk the day before (and a batch of almond milk too). I’ll write my thoughts on oat/almond/soy milk this weekend.

I don’t have my own recipe for this but instead, followed this one from Mary’s Test Kitchen. I liked this one because it’s made with just soy milk, lemon, and water. Most other recipes recipes seemed to use Calcium Sulfate or Gypsum Powder which seemed way more difficult to get my hands on without any plastic. It also has a video on youtube that makes it easy to follow along.

A couple of notes about how this recipe went for me. First, after heating up the soy milk, you add in the lemon juice to get the soy milk to curdle. This is a little gross so it’s best to forget what it looks like at this stage. But just in case you want to remember it, here’s what it looks like, but only at the beginning of the process before it gets really gross looking.

Second, I used my milk bag to strain the curdles and press the tofu into its shape. This worked really well for the process itself. It was hard to shape it nicely but all the liquid strained well and I didn’t have to use cheese cloth which I surely would have thrown away. The only really problem is that the tofu really sticks into the milk bag making it a total pain to clean. This took much longer than after making milk and I definitely still didn’t get it all.

Anyway, here is the final product sitting in some cold water!

Our first delivery from Loop arrived today! I was really excited for it. The idea of getting essentials delivered in reusable containers is really appealing. Especially when it comes to essentials like cleaning solutions and olive oil.

The delivery came in two, large, reusable boxes. Rio is a 65 pound dog and looks small next to these. He also doesn’t like to be overshadowed so was quite sullen upon their arrival. He really does hate not being the alpha, but it’s pretty sad that he can feel dwarfed by a couple of boxes.

Anyway, I was immediately skeptical when I saw the plastic tie that kept the containers closed.

At least it’s recyclable though!

We ordered tea, wasabi peas, 2 quarts of ice cream, shampoo, conditioner, some veggie burgers, multi-surface cleaning spray, and tea. It all came in metal. Each of them came in metal containers. The shampoo and conditioner had plastic pumps at the top, but these will be cleaned out and re-used so that’s ok. The containers like the tea though, come sealed with a piece of plastic around the top.

So, while the containers are totally re-usable, which is a big step up, they are still not plastic free. The ice cream and veggie burgers came in a styrofoam cooler with plastic frozen packages to keep them cold. This is all re-usable so a step up, but not ideal. Loop claims to recycle all of this. On their website, they say:

“Nothing at Loop is ever disposed, everything is reused and when we can’t reuse we recycle. Single-use items, like zip ties found on your Loop Tote and plastic seals around some of our products ensure the safety of your product. While we work on ways to eliminate waste, we promise they won’t be sent to landfills but to our parent company, TerraCycle, instead!”

They also claim a reduced environmental impact, getting to 35% after containers get 10 uses. This seems to be a bit lower when you factor in delivery though.

Overall, I think this is still a huge step in the right direction and love that major corporations are signing onto this type of initiative. I still think there is room for improvement. I would still highly recommend using them but will be looking for them in a brick and mortar store to reduce carbon emissions from delivery and having two huge boxes in my house until I am ready to return all of the items.

Leah and I are two very different types of cooks. Leah likes to find a recipe ahead of time, buy ingredients for it, and know what meals will be available over the course of the week. I typically see what we have in the fridge and throw together a meal. It lets me change up what we eat and buy the fruits and vegetables that look the freshest. We decided to compromise and plan out two meals every week and then let me wing the rest of it.

For this week, she chose a meal that requires tofu. Tofu is all sold in plastic so we are going to take our first stab at making our own. This looks like a bit of a tedious process though. It’s going to require making soy milk and then using that soy milk to make tofu. We went grocery shopping today to get everything we need and are going to take a stab at starting to make soy milk in the morning. I’ll let you know how it goes and post some recipes.

I decided to make one of my thrown together recipes tonight and it turned out really well. I made a stuffed acorn squash with a quinoa and veggie filling. Check out the recipe here!

It’s been a pretty busy week here so apologies for the lack of posts. Some exciting things have happened.

First, and maybe most importantly, FOOD. Leah was about halfway through cooking dinner on Wednesday night when I got an email that our favorite restaurant in New York City, Emily, was opening a location in D.C. that night called Emmy Squared. Despite the fact that we were about 15 minutes from eating, I convinced Leah that it was worth it to make reservations for 9:00 that evening and for us to eat her spaghetti squash and lentil marinara the next day. It was 100% the right move.

For context, Emily has the best burger either of us have ever had in our entire lives. I have brought friends and coworkers there and told them it would be the best burger they would ever have too. I have been told similar things before, and usually the hype ruins it. In all cases except for my brother, who can be a contrarian by nature, Emily has lived up to the hype.

The night was amazing. We each had a burger and split a pizza. Matt, the head chef who started the restaurant, came over and introduced himself and said hello. Leah freaked out. This, for us, was meeting a celebrity. He couldn’t have been nicer and sent over a dessert not yet on the menu to try on us.

With all that food, it’s a good thing we brought our own to go containers. Leah and I did some serious work though and only brought home two slices of pizza. While there, we also found out that they deliver on Caviar. The appeal of having pizza from Emmy Squared delivered was really high. Unfortunately, we forgot to ask what their to-go containers are made out of. So, we are just going to have to go back to eat before ordering delivery from them to confirm that it will be plastic free. Fingers crossed that it is though! Adding another plastic free delivery option would be amazing.

This weekend was also Leah’s sister’s 30th birthday. We went out to celebrate on Saturday night. After a fancy dinner, and some quiet drinks, we ended up at the Hawthorne. This is basically a large, 4 story house with a bar and dancing on each floor. There was a bouncer that had to let you up to the next level of each floor and the whole place was filled mostly with recent college graduates. There was a solid 15 minutes where I was pretty convinced I was the oldest person in the bar. I was proven wrong when someone saw some older men standing by the dance floor.

Our group decided to take a round of shots when we arrived. Someone handed me one in a plastic shot glass. I hadn’t been to a college bar in so long that I didn’t even think about a drink coming out in plastic. I looked around and realized that all their drinks were served in disposable plastic cups. It makes sense. Plastic cups are cheap and it was a packed bar full of drunk 22 to 25 year olds. Them bumping into each other on the dance floor with glass cups would be a disaster. But, when I think back to my college days, it really is amazing how much plastic is consumed and disposed of solely for the purposes of drinking. I am not really sure whether or not there’s an alternative. As a former college student, I am going to go out on a limb an assume that responsible drinking isn’t an option. This is one that I am going to have to think about some more.

The long weekend is ending on pretty positive note though. I made what I think is my best pasta and sauce yet. I think I finally am close to getting the sauce right and will share it next time we make it. The pasta was also much better. I changed my recipe to follow one by Thomas Keller that he provides on masterclass.com. I am pretty sure that I can’t post that here as the class is a paid service. The gist of what is different though is that it’s made entirely with egg yolks. I used one whole egg and the rest, just yolks. The difference was noticeable. It also left us with a pretty solid amount of egg whites to scramble up with some veggies for breakfast which was nice.

Another change to the pasta I made was preparing it the day before and drying it out before cooking it. It felt a little silly but was totally worth it. It made it so much easier to figure out when the pasta was done. It was the first time I got a truly al dente pasta that I made myself. It’s also nice because it means I can make pasta for the week pretty easily. I’ll update the pasta recipe tomorrow with instructions on how to dry it out.

Lastly, we were talking to one of Leah’s closest friends about my new years resolution and she recommended a new company to us called Loop. Essentially, they are partnering with major companies to provide common products in reusable containers. The idea is when you buy something, you put down a deposit on the container. When you have finished with the product, you send the container back. They will then clean it, refill it, and re-use it. They have a lot of common household items like surface cleaners and laundry detergent as well as foods like olive oil, ice cream, and dried pasta. We are really excited about this and placed our first order tonight. Our order should be coming this week so I will let you know how it goes!

So in preparation for the democratic debate tomorrow night, Leah and I took a stroll to buy some whiskey tonight. We grabbed our book bag, put Rio on the leash, and started strolling. To my horror, when I went in, virtually every bottle of bourbon had a plastic seal around the cap. Fortunately, my favorite kind of whiskey, BARRELL, had no plastic on top!

Unfortunately, this is not the cheapest of whiskeys. I think my savings from the oat milk is going to be more than spent on alcohol. I’ll have to keep searching for a less expensive option.

This weekend, one of my wife’s best friends was in town visiting. Oh man did she pick a beautiful one. It was literally in the 70’s on Saturday… in January. This was at the same time amazing and wildly disconcerting. We loved every second of the warm weather and yet, at the same time, I couldn’t think back to a time in my childhood when it was ever even close to that warm in January. This should have strengthened my resolve.

The three of us spent the day walking walking around with Rio and ended up at Eastern Market. We decided to get some veggies while we were there and while I was paying for them, Leah got in line for some cheese. I joined her in line, excited to get one of our favorites (which also has some sentimental value): truffle cheese. It’s this delicious hard cheese that has veins of truffle running down it and it’s delicious. We had some the night we got engaged. I don’t think she knew I had gotten it from this stand so was excited to buy some. We had some containers with us so I figured it would be easy. Leah went back outside to keep her friend and Rio company and I began to order.

The truffle cheese was the first thing I asked for and there was a piece that was already cut… and wrapped in plastic. I explained to her that I was avoiding plastic and asked if she could cut me a new piece so I could just put it in my container. Unfortunately, as she explained, that larger piece was also wrapped in plastic and due to food storage standards, every time it is unwrapped, that piece of plastic is thrown away and it is re-wrapped with a new one. Essentially, she told me that if I wanted to give up plastic, then I was going to have to give up cheese too. This, was the worst. Cheese is one of Leah and my favorites. There are times when we will get some fancy cheese and just eat it for our entire meal. In that moment, I just was just not ready to give this up. I caved.

I told her I would take the small pre-wrapped piece. She offered to take it out of the plastic so I could put it in my container for instagram. This, I was really not thrilled by. I almost walked away. I am not a fan of social media and this was not the point of what I am doing. I had come this far though and really wanted to get this for Leah so I took the cheese. I then asked about one more goat cheese that I was eying in line. It was wrapped in wax paper and had a natural rind covering it all. This is definitely unusual and not the norm though.

I left feeling pretty defeated. Apparently, what I am doing appears like an instagram stunt and I am giving up cheese for the year. This is one I definitely need to figure out but for now, am placing on the irreplaceable plastics list. Hopefully, we can really stretch out the cheese we have until I find a solution.