Yummy Surprises and Just a Little Garbage!

Yesterday was a particularly lucky day for my mouth. Honestly, any day that food is available to me and my family is "lucky", because there could be a famine, I suppose. But, since food is a ready option in my life (for which I give thanks), what qualifies as luck are actually things that are nice and out of the ordinary. On top of that, Zach and I are striving to eat in a way that does not produce much garbage. This is trickier than it seems for a couple who love food and variety, and we have a long way to go.

To start, Zach bought me a doughnut on our way out of town. Doughnuts are something I never actually want to eat or even think about until someone says "doughnut". Unfortunately the craving starts at that moment and does not stop until the doughy mess is in my mouth. But it was just the one and I truly savored it! (The unfortunate thing is all the garbage that comes with a doughnut- the wax paper wrapper and the ginormously sized bag. Grrr, that's too much for a pastry. That HAS to be the last one.)

After I dropped Zach off at his job, I went to help my Grandma with housekeeping. By housekeeping I mean drinking coffee and talking politics. Then it was lunchtime and she had made her home-y beef roast with gravy and her own pickles. This is, for me, the ultimate comfort food, made even better because it was beef from an animal that grew up across the road from her house, on my Dad's farm, and the pickles grew in her garden in a former life.

Remember Old Mother Hubbard, with her bare cupboards? Well Grandma is not anything like her. When she went to her cupboard for the pickles it was practically busting open with canned goods. Before I knew it she had filled a box with Mason jars of applesauce (apples from my Dad's farm), plum sauce (plums from my aunt's tree), foraged elder berry jelly, and green beans (that she grew). It was an anti-garbage dream!

Every Friday is pizza day at our house, which used to mean either buying the plastic wrapped slab or ordering a grease-bomb in a box destined for the trash can. Now, we have a recipe for pizza crust that is strong enough to pick up, crispy and tasty, a crust that is perfect for any kind of pizza we can think up. Being that yesterday was Friday and we were out of town all day working (ok, Zach was working, I was doing "housework") we knew that there wouldn't be time for pizza making when we got home. With his brilliant insight, Zach had made up two taco pizzas that were just waiting in the refrigerator to be baked while I was at work on Thursday night. On our drive home I called the chicos to preheat the oven. They even put the pans in when the oven was hot. Ten minutes later we walked in our door to fresh-baked pizza.


Now that we avoid the individually-wrapped or boxed pizza problem, we do, admittedly, have to put on ingredients that come in their own packaging. We use cheese that comes in a plastic wrapper and sauce in a glass (recyclable) jar. Our taco pizza also had black olives and refried beans, both in tin (recyclable) cans, and we did debate whether or not to use crunched up tortilla chips on the top. They do come in a non-recyclable plastic bag... but they taste so good. In the end, we did opt for the chips. Our mouths are happy about that, and it didn't add too much to the garbage can.