Every year on my birthday, I buy myself a gift, often kitchen-centric. This year, after resisting for quite some time, I bought an Instant Pot Ultra. Monica was a bit dismissive at first, thinking it’s just another toy, and said as much. After we’d used it a few times – enough to experience what it’s really capable of – she said, and I quote, ‘Why did it take you so long to buy one of these?’
Instant Pot – Do you need one?
Do you need an Instant Pot? In a word – Yes.If you cook and you honestly don’t know what an Instant Pot is, then I’d kinda have to believe that you’re living in a cave and singing your fingers over an open fire. Instant Pot is a brand name for a Canadian designed version of an electric, programmable pressure cooker. That said, comparing this to your gramma’s old 500 pound aluminum behemoth is like equating an AMC Pacer to a BMW. Yes, these things claim to do a bunch of things well, and with most consumer goods of that ilk, it really isn’t the case – But with the IP, I’m here to tell you it’s all true.
Instant Pot was formed in 2009 by a bunch of Canadian tech nerds who cooked – That synthesis lead them to brainstorm a cooking device that would genuinely do things well, but faster than many common alternative methods. They state their ultimate aim as, ‘to enable busy families and professionals to prepare quality food in less time, promoting better eating and reducing the consumption of fast food.’ I’llgo so far as to say they’ve achieved that, in spades.
The Instant Pot Ultra – Not the top of the heap, but there isn’t much it can’t do.
There are several iterations, of course. The Ultra model we have claims a raft of functions, with settings for Soup/Broth, Meat/Stew, Bean/Chili, Cake, Egg, Slow Cook, Sauté/Searing, Rice, Multigrain, Porridge, Steam, Sterilize, Yogurt, Warm, and Pressure Cooker – It’ll even do a pretty damn good job of sous vide. Then there’s what IP refers to as the ‘Ultra’ program, which in essence just gives you a very wide margin of adjustability for most parameters of the various functions mentioned above. In other words, instead of being stuck with the maker’s idea of perfect for cooking beans, you can go in and tweak the settings to your needs, and for the record, this is, for my mind, actually important. Say you cook a lot of beans – You’ll quickly learn that they do not all do well with one cooking time – so being able to adjust that makes the machine very good instead of just OK at that task. For those that really don’t care for the extra bells and whistles, there are simpler models with less of that kind of thing aboard.
At the heart of these things is, of course, a microprocessor, so yeah – in essence, it’s computer controlled. With multiple sensors monitoring temperature, pressure, cooking time, and food volume, the IP takes a lot of the guesswork out of cooking, and has so far performed flawlessly for us – Take those beans again – From precooking, to sautéing ingredients for the final dish, to cooking all that thereafter, everything can be done seamlessly, in one pot.
Loading up an IP for the final run
And as we’ve known for a long time, pressure cooking – the heart of these things – seriously cuts down on cooking time for dishes that traditionally take quite a while. A primary impetus for my purchase was the fact that almost every posting member of the Vietnamese cooking group I belong to has one, uses it regularly, and swears by it. Even for something as sacred as broth for Pho, these folks go almost universally with an IP, and swear that you can’t tell the difference in the finished dish, vis a vis traditional low and slow methods.
sautéing in an IP
Pressure cooking also does great things for flavor, because all that you add is sealed in, and relatively little escapes. Add the ability to slow cook, or do fairly tightly temperature controlled souls vide, let alone all the specialty settings, and you’ve got a seriously powerful kitchen tool.
These things come in a range of sizes and versions, and the Ultra, as lux as it may sound, isn’t the top of the heap. They range from 3 to 8 quarts, and $45 to $200, as of a quick check today. If you cook a bunch, and you appreciate what these things can do, you really can’t go wrong with picking one up – The scary part is how many people own, and use, more than one IP – I’m not there, and frankly, I’m cool with that.
Now, final caveat – No, I didn’t get an IP for free, or less, or any other version of paid BS endorsement. I bought mine, fair and square, for market price, just as you’ll do. We don’t do the endorsement thing here – Never have, never will, OK? OK.
Got this message the other day, from Mike and Sally Poutiatine,
Hey Food-Dude,
Sally and I have a query – we noticed recently in Ireland that the produce there is SO much better than we get in our restaurants or stores in Spokane. We found eating either in a hole-in-the-wall pub or a 4-star Castle dining room the greens were equally good and way better than we find most of the time in Spokane. The veggies in general in Ireland were much better (though they tended to cook them about 10 times as long as necessary) – We found the same thing before when traveling in Italy, Japan and the UK in term of quality. Is it as simple as faster, more direct farm to table? Or do other countries just take green veggies more seriously than we do? Why is that?
My immediate response was this, ‘Oh, I am SO making this the next blog post – Great question!’
Simple salad with real lettuce – A whole ‘nuther animal
The serendipitous part of the question is this – Earlier, while watering our very bountifully producing little veggie and herb garden, (a daily ritual I not only love, but seem to need), I was contemplating the same thing. Our stuff tastes so much better than 90% of what we find for sale – The only thing that rivals it is found in trips to our local farmers market, and through good CSA operations. And therein lies the short answer – While M and I choose not to accept the produce status quo here, most Americans accept (and have been indoctrinated to expect), relatively shitty produce. That is not good, and it needs to change.
Typical Grocery Store Produce – Bletch!
The first thing that comes to most folks minds when they experience this is the natural assumption that some combination of basic factors are better over there – Better soil, environmental conditions, and so on – But truth be told, that’s a bunch of hooey – writ large, there’s demonstrably nothing special about european soil, etc, that makes their produce taste better than American produce. This has been pretty well studied, and it comes down almost solely to the fact that most world food cultures other than ours value flavor and taste in their produce more than we do – That’s it. That said, we could be, (and more and more folks are), growing stuff every bit as good – it’s just not often sold in mass market grocery stores.
Mighty ‘Mato’s – Not your typical grocery store fodder
Let’s take tomatoes as an example – Many will cite the famous Italian San Marzano as the ne plus ultra of tomatodom, but truth? There are a lot of shitty San Marzanos, gang. Like anything else that gets wildly popular on a worldwide scale, production needs outstrip high quality real quick – And by the way, those things are basically Roma’s, a paste tomato variety – They’re great for sauce when grown right, but for other stuff – Not so much. Here on this side of the big pond, (where tomatoes originally come from, after all), you can bet there are some amazing ones. We make a point of planting Mighty ‘Mato grafted tomatoes each year – They’re a thing developed by Dr. Jim Baggett of Oregon State University. Grafting makes them stronger, more disease resistant, and boy oh boy, do they yield – And they’re stunningly lovely. Yet despite all that, they don’t lend themselves well to being sold en mass, so… Or take the case of horticulture Professor Harry Klee, of the University of Florida, creator of the Garden Gem. That’s an incredibly tasty, hearty, disease resistant variety with a great shelf life – But at roughly half the size of the ‘average’ grocery store tomato, virtually nobody appears interested in bringing those to you and me. And here’s the kicker – The Italians have ordered tens of thousands of Garden Gem seeds – Insult to injury for American consumers.
Lettuce, real lettuce, just doesn’t ship, store, or last all that well…
How about lettuces? Well, M and I grow those, and let me tell ya, those are exactly what I was thinking of when I was watering the other day – A simple salad we’d made had taste and texture, because of the lettuce – Shut up! Ah, but those aren’t nice, uniform, large, tough, resilient heads you can ship and display and sell for days, so, they’re out too.
Real Celery isn’t insipid – It’s flavor packed and seriously crunchy
Celery, maybe? Celery?! Tasteless, boring celery? Well, in the store, yes, that’s exactly what it is. Our plants are anything but. They have bold flavor to match a crisp, crunchy texture – The leaves alone are potent and complex – But they don’t grow in big, tight, uniform bunches either so again, no go.
Herbs should never come in plastic containers…
Whatever you name – Chiles, peas, cucumbers, radishes, and any herb there is – You’ll find them in the store, but what you’ll find in this country is chosen for the unholy trinity of shipability, shelf life, and the appearance of relative bounty – Three things you and I definitely do not need.
Wanna take a guess at how many folks know that this is how artichokes grow?
Mike followed up with this thought, ‘I have always assumed that the produce we get from our stores is tasteless because the distance from producer to table is so far – and I am sure that is part of it. But your observation that we have grown used to bad produce is insightful. We eat bad produce because we just don’t care about produce.’
Sad but true, my friends. There’s a local garden here in our area, much beloved, and big enough to regularly supply local grocery stores with produce in season. It’s pretty, and it’s fresh, but frankly – It’s a local version of the same stuff we always see – It’s chosen for those three criterion I mentioned – And as such, there’s really no magic there.
Produce magic begins at home
The good news is that things do seem to be changing for the better. Folks of many generations here are growing tired of paying for crap, which is forcing Big Agro to change, some anyway. We see far more varieties of apples than days of old – Same goes for lettuce, onions, chiles, and so on – And there is stuff therein that is quite good, if we choose wisely. More and more stores are stating straight out where stuff comes from, which is good, and if you do your due diligence, there’s quite a bit more to be sussed out.
A lot of that process means really, truly checking out what you’re choosing – Do you squeeze, poke, prod, and sniff what you’re buying? Do you find a produce person and ask pointed questions? That might be anything from, where is this from and when did it get here, to what’s the harvest date on this, (there is damn near always a harvest or packing or production date), to ‘I don’t know how to tell a good (your selection here) from not – how do you do that?’ In any store worth your hard earned dough, they’ll be able to answer those questions – And if they can’t, (or you don’t ask), shame on you – You get what you pay for.
Mike’s next query was, ‘So what do we do in the US that shows the care and quality that we found in the seemingly universal high quality of Irish produce?’
The good news is that there are things to be found here, and that trend is slowly but surely growing, all over the country – If you read the Rancho Gordo bean post, there’s a shining example. Try those, and suddenly you’re thinking, ‘why am I buying these plastic bags and cans full of tasteless crap when these are out here?’ I’ve seen it first hand with stuff from our friends CSAs in Minnesota as well – How folks react when they have celery that has taste, what good lettuce is like, and so on.
That’s what fresh produce looks like, gang
As for a specific answer to Mike’s last question, I’d say this – If they come here planning to cook, and have facility for such and then go to an average grocery store, what will they get? Mostly crap, unfortunately. If they’re smart, which I think many are, they’ll seek out and find farmers markets – those are the gold standard here these days. In our relatively little town, there are dozens of producers offering gorgeous produce, grown with genuine love and care, just as we do here at home – I’ve had everything from rainbow carrots with amazing taste and crunch, to tiny fingerling potatoes that were melt in your mouth delicious, with a slight tang of the earth they came from as a back note.
So if there’s a unified field theory as to how we go about changing the status quo, this would be my three cents worth.
1. Always grow a garden. You can do this, damn near no matter where you live or what you live in. From window sill to big ol’ plot – Do it – You’ll get better produce, and perhaps more importantly, tending a garden and playing in dirt is good for your soul.
2. Find a Farmers Market near you and patronize that. You’re supporting the little, local folk, and nobody deserves that more – And again, you’ll generally get far superior produce to anything in a chain grocery store.
3. Find a CSA operation Netra you and patronize that. That’s Community Supported Agriculture – we’re the community, and the growers can be anything from those same folks who sell at farmers markets, to larger scale folks who do most of their selling through CSA – Again, no one I know is more deserving of your patronage, and frankly, no one I know is more deserving of great produce than you are.
Yet another alert reader let me know that the print function for posts seemed to have disappeared, further noting, ‘I’m pretty sure you used to have one…’
Glad somebody was paying attention, ’cause clearly I wasn’t, and yeah, I sure did have one.
Anyway… Print services have been restored. There’s a little green button at the bottom of each post. Click that, and it’ll give you options to print, convert to PDF, email, and such. You can also edit, pruning off my long winded harangues and just printing recipes and what not, too.
Recipe development isn’t easy – Even the best can screw it ip from time to time, which means it’s always caveat emptor for the home cook.
We made a dried apricot tart this weekend, which we tweaked to our liking, (or so we thought). It cam from a recipe M found online. I’ll bet you’re expecting to see that tweaked recipe down at the end of this post too, yeah? Well, truth be told, there will be a recipe at the end, but it won’t be this one -we need to talk about recipe development.
The recipe came from what we shall call a Very Established And Respected Public Source for writing about food. Whether it’s Monica or me that gets an itch to make something and turn it into our own, we both do our due diligence – AKA, research. I work in the food biz, she does not, but the roots of the process are similar regardless of whether it’s her, me, or us doing the work. If it’s me doing the lion’s share, I tend to use resources like The Flavor Bible, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, and various other regional or genre experts for thoughts on ingredients, technique, and the like. Monica tends to go for a mainstream recipe, which she studies and then alters to achieve what she is after.
Fact is, both routes are just fine and work pretty much equally well. Granted, I have more arcane food knowledge in my noggin, and as such, I tend to model on or alter recipes less than she does – But that doesn’t mean my method is better – it may take fewer tries to get where we want to go, but that’s really neither here nor there when it comes to the end result. It would be disingenuous to say I create more recipes than she does because of differences in method – I create more because I do the majority of the cooking and developing – There’s really nothing more operative in that regard.
My point with that last paragraph is this – I hear a lot of folks who seem almost embarrassed to say that they made something their own, when ‘all I did was tweak a recipe.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. Fact is, even great chefs, legendary chefs, do exactly that. That is why, almost every post here includes some variation on the phrase, make it yours – Because when you put your stamp on it, and then repeat it, and it becomes a beloved standard for you, then my friend, that recipe is 100%, no doubt about it, yours.
So, what about this recipe would warrant me stating that it definitely needed further development? Well, frankly, it’s because the finished tart sucked. Bad. Now, that said – the caveats – Yes, it’s possible we screwed it up, (we didn’t), or that our ingredients were sub-par, (they weren’t), but the fact is, that recipe just was not designed or explained well at all. I knew it, truth be told, and so did M – But this was again, from a very reputable source, so we thought, what the hell, we’ll give it a spin – You have to do that sometimes, because there may well be magic where you least expect it, and if you don’t try it, you’ll never know. I gotta say though, in this case, it used some ingredients that are not cheap, so springing for that stuff and ending up with sub par results should not make a consumer happy.
We really tried with this thing. Again, we added a couple twists of our own, but nothing earthshaking – We didn’t have mascarpone in house, so we subbed cream cheese, heavy cream, and sour cream – That’s a certified, A-OK cheat, by the way, (but again? I knew better, and we did it anyway – My bad…) We also added a few dried cranberries, because they go nicely with apricots, and well, why not? And… It sucked. We ate a piece each, and the rest went to the squirrels and jays, (sorry, fellas). So why did that happen?
The answer to that requires digging in a bit deeper. First off, reading all 30+ of the review comments left by folks who made the recipe, (which supposedly received a 4 out of 5 star rating), it became immediately evident that almost no one said outright that this was a great tart recipe. In fact, overwhelmingly, people had trouble interpreting it, and said so – It was too vague, didn’t speak thoroughly to method, ingredient handling, or proper bakeware. Another healthy chunk said, in so many words, that it didn’t taste good – it was dry, had too much crust, the apricots shouldn’t have been left whole as shown, and so on. Several folks complained about the custard.So how did this thing score so highly? Good question.
I noted the following. The ‘custard’ was, in fact, mascarpone, eggs, sugar, and almond extract – Which is not custard. The recipe never stated how thick the crust should end up, and frankly, the mix they used was more of a pie crust than a tart crust, and yes, there’s a difference. It called for bringing 2/3 cup of whiskey and 30 dried apricots ‘to a simmer and then set aside’, which is insufficient to soften dried fruits, or to burn off the alcohol. It listed an egg yolk in ingredients that didn’t make it to procedure, and a couple of tablespoons of water showed up in procedure that were not in the ingredient list.
Do you see booze covering this fruit? No – No you don’t…
This was not from a home blogger, gang. This was from a major publication with over 100 years of experience – And they screwed it up. I’m not saying that to make them look bad – I’m really not – I’m saying it because it illustrates how tough it can be to create and share a good recipe, what can happen if you don’t, and why there’s a big time caveat emptor consideration for home cooks with damn near any recipe.
So, what did it actually take to fix this thing? A little more work, a few less sort cuts, and a little better narrative. First off, we made a real tart crust, (and for the record, for a 9” to 10” tart, that should be around 1/4” thick, and thinner yet if you’re doing tartlets). Secondly, softening dried fruit in booze is costly, especially if you use the proper amount, which means enough to completely cover and submerge 30 some odd apricots – You can see from our image that the proscribed amount wasn’t even close in that regard. And in any event, doing that is simply not as effective as hot water – If you want the taste of whisky or whatever, a quarter cup in a sauce pan over medium heat, simmered until the raw booze smell dissipates and the liquid thickens slightly, then cooled and added to the custard, will do the trick much better. And finally, custard is custard, gang. That’s milk heated gently and mixed with eggs, which act as a thickener – again, mascarpone doth not a custard make – That stuff is basically cream cheese that is already quite stiff. Adding eggs and sugar and flavoring to that will not make a custard – It’ll make an eggy, sweet cream cheese, which is not, repeat not, what we’re after here. So – All that said, here’s what we did for the one we ate all of.
Real Custard, yeah?
Dried Apricot and Cranberry Tart
For the Tart
1 Cup Pastry Flour
1/2 Cup Almond Flour
1/4 Cup Bakers Sugar
1/2 Cup Cold Unsalted Butter
1 Large Egg
Pinch Sea Salt
You can do the tart by hand, which is my preferred method, or you can do it in a food processor, which is M’s preferred method – Either is just fine.
In a large mixing bowl, (or the processor), add flours, sugar, and salt and combine thoroughly.
Cut butter into roughly 1/4” cubes. Add that to the dry mix and combine by hand or process until the mixture looks like coarse corn meal.
Add the egg and incorporate thoroughly, but don’t go overboard – you don’t want the dough forming a ball on its own – You can check for done by squishing a hunk between your thumb and dialing finger – It should stick together, but not feel dry, or fall apart, (it also should not be sticky).
Pull the dough and form it into a roughly 1” disk. Wrap that in waxed paper and refrigerate for an hour, at least, (and longer is fine – Even up to a couple days – You can also freeze it, so long as you refrigerator thaw overnight prior to use).
When you’re ready to go, preheat your oven to 375° F and place a rack in a middle position.
You’ll want either a tart pan or a pie pan to bake in – Either really is fine.
Lightly grease the pan with butter.
Place the dough between sheets of waxed paper or parchment, and roll it out to about 1/4” thickness.
Carefully peel one sheet of paper off the dough and place it onto your chosen pan.
Use a fork and liberally and evenly prick the crust.
Tart, not pie crust – Pretty? No – This is development, gang.
Cover the tart with a shaped piece of parchment, then use pie weights, beans, or rice to weigh down the tart.
Pie weights – Trust me, you need these
Bake at 375° F for about 20-25 minutes, until the tart looks firm and is beginning to pull away from the edges of the pan.
Remove from heat and allow to cool.
For the Filling/Custard
About 40 dried Apricots
1/4 Cup dried, sweetened Cranberries
1 small Lemon
1 Cup heavy Cream
2 Large Eggs
1 Egg Yolk
1/2 Cup Bakers Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Set aside about a dozen apricots and 6-8 cranberries.
Place the rest of the dried fruit into a mixing bowl.
Quarter the lemon, squeeze out the juice and add it to the rest of the fruit.
Cover the fruit with boiling water and allow it to steep for 15 minutes.
When the fruit is hydrated, pour off the liquid through a single mesh strainer, reserve the fruit.
Chop the reserved dozen apricots and the cranberries, set aside.
Preheat oven to 350° F and make sure there’s still a rack in the middle position.
In a mixing bowl, combine eggs, egg yolk, vanilla, and sugar. Whisk thoroughly to incorporate – You want to get some air into this mix, so take your time – 2 to 3 minutes or so.
In a sauce pan over medium heat, scald the cream – That is, heat it until small bubbles start to form at the edges of the liquid.
Remove the cream from heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes.
Slowly add the cream to the egg and sugar mixture, whisking steadily but gently – Don’t put too much of the hot cream in at a time – You want to temper the egg mix slowly, so that it doesn’t curdle.
Place whole apricots and cherries evenly across the tart, then carefully pour the custard onto the fruit.
Top tart with the chopped apricots around the rim of the tart, and the cranberries in the middle.
Apricot Cranberry Tart, the right way
Bake at 350° F for 35 to 45 minutes, until custard is firm but still jiggles a bit in the middle, and fruit is slightly browned.
Remove from heat and allow to cool for 30 minutes.
Garnish with mint, if you like. You certainly may add whipped cream or crème fraiche as well.
Plastic use is ubiquitous in the kitchen, and it’s time to take a swing at that
Antiplasticestablishmentarianism – There, I said it – In fact, I think I just invented it, (the word, anyhoo…) The word today is plastic, and as my tongue in cheek neologism is meant toimply, it’s a thing deeply entrenched in our world, and that’s not good – We need to do something about all the plastic in our kitchens.
The root word I bastardized means, in essence, that the user finds, ‘a nation’s policy or attitude corrupt and exploitative,’ among other diatribes. Frankly, I can’t think of a thing more demonstrative of that than our massive use and abuse of plastic – Not even politics. There’s zero doubt in my mind that this abuse focuses more around food than any other aspect of modern life.
Look through your kitchen as we have ours, and chances are, it’s a plastic rich environment, indeed. Granted, some of that is reasonable, to a degree – The large plastic storage jars with wide lids that we’ve had for years, for example, don’t seem all that bad, nor might the other, smaller storage boxes that get daily use. We bought all those because they were cheap, light, and they worked, of course. Plastic wrap? Got it, albeit it doesn’t get used much at all. Plastic bags? Oh my, yes, in everything from snack to gallon. Hmmm… The garbage and trash bags have been biodegradable versions for a while now, but all that other stuff – Hmmm.
We could probably assuage our growing guilt if we considered that we recycle diligently – Well, M does, anyway – She’s the recycle Nazi in our house. That doesn’t mean I cheat purposefully, but it does mean she has to remind me that wine corks and metal foil don’t go in recycling, and anyway, I haul the bins out to the curb each week – That aughta be worth some kinda dispensation, shouldn’t it?
All in all, according to a recent National Geographic piece, ‘The world generates at least 3.5 million tons of plastic and other solid waste a day, 10 times the amount a century ago, according to World Bank researchers. The U.S. is the king of trash, producing a world-leading 250 million tons a year—roughly 4.4 pounds of trash per person per day.’ To not know that plastic is choking our oceans, landfills, land in general, everything, you’d have to be living in a cave, under a rock. So the question is, what can we do about it, us little folk? That answer has to be formed with our kitchens in mind, because the lion’s share of the overall waste we produce, and especially plastic, lives there. The answer is, surprisingly, quite a bit.
One of the easiest things to do is get rid of plastic wrap and plastic bags, because that’s where most of the kitchen use comes from. There are reusable silicone zip lock bags and sheets out there, but they’re expensive, and frankly, that doesn’t seem like a very smart answer in a busy kitchen. Nobody that I could find makes recyclable zip lock or food grade plastic bags, yet, but I’ll bet it’s coming. In any event, it seems a lot smarter to just eliminate that crap.
Most community recycling programs don’t accept plastic bags in your curbside bins, albeit you can recycle a lot of that stuff at many grocery stores – The list of what’s OK to drop off there looks something like this –
plastic shopping bags (from any store — remove receipts, etc.)
food packaging (Ziploc-type bags)
bread bags
plastic liners from cereal boxes (do not include if they tear like paper)
product wrapping (such as covers a case of water bottles, etc.)
bubble wrap and air pillows (popped)
plastic shipping envelopes (remove labeling)
And you should make sure that what you drop off is clean and dry – Stuff with food waste on it is gross and unsanitary, no matter where you drop it off, and it’ll contaminate the clean stuff other folks left.
What they generally will not take includes,
frozen food bags
cereal box liners that tear like paper
biodegradable bags
pre-washed salad bags
candy bar wrappers
chip bags
six-pack rings
There are makers of many things turning to non-plastic containers, and they’re worth pursuing if you can – Our laundry detergent even comes in what is, basically, paper packaging and is biodegradable – It’s found in the ‘natural’ stuff, which most mainstream grocery stores have at least some of these days. Those biodegradable trash bags are very decent by the way – Not super expensive, and they don’t fall apart with stuff in them, either.
The best route to go in your kitchen is to eliminate plastic wrap and bags, and that’s what we’re going to do – We’re transitioning to solid food containers across the board – Yes some of those are plastic, but a lot are glass – they last for many years, and as such, really can change the waste equation to a significant degree. The other side of that equation is to not collect a whole shitload of plastic when you hit the store. There are string and mesh bags designed for produce that you can bring with you, along with your reusable grocery bags – And if you bring those, you can get by without further plastic just fine. Stuff like lettuce, cabbage, cilantro, and so on does not need to sit in a plastic bag to last in your fridge. Moist paper towel, or clean kitchen towels work fine – Your crisper bins probably work better without an additional layer of plastic anyway, truth be told. If you get your meat, fish, poultry and such from the butcher counter, you get paper wrappers instead of plastic and foam, and that’s very good indeed. And frankly, not buying stuff like pre-whatevered produce is not only better for the plastic count, it’s better food as well. Better yet, find your local farmer’s market and buy there instead of the big name grocery stores. And frankly, if ever there was a plug for shopping as many parts of the world still do – What you need for a few days every few days – This strategy would be it.
The big picture view of all this is changing radically – China and various other countries don’t want our trash any more, because they’re all generating a hell of a lot more of their own – That makes our first world problems 100% ours, and we really can’t afford to be callous and clueless any more. We’re taking some significant strides to clean up our act, and we invite y’all to do the same – If every household does what they can, it’s a firm step in the right direction.
UrbanMonique 