Have your cake and eat it too!

We talk a whole lot about how to reduce your footprint/impact/waste/consumption ect. etc.  We need to talk about more! More cake and cookies and donuts. Okay, maybe more is less with these decadent items. But have you ever thought about baking or cooking more efficiently? We should still be able to do the things we love (as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone or involve wastefulness), and I happen to LOVE baking and cooking. Ask any of the staff here, they’ll tell you.

So my love of food and environmental conservation can live in harmony, with a few tips I’ve discovered over the years.

First tip, waste not want not. About 50% of the food produced is wasted (read more about food waste here). Plan ahead and portion your sizes to the amount of people and days you can tolerate eating a dish. There are handy meal conversion sites or many recipe sites have an option for conversion right on the page! Make a cake for a birthday party but have lots left over? Store it in the fridge or bring it to work instead of letting it fester in the fridge for a week then throwing it out. You’ll get some of those brownie points people talk about. Also, be sure to label things that go in the fridge and freezer, and try to keep a certain shelf for items that need to be consumed soon/quickly.

Be sure to read the whole recipe before you start, the recipe may ask for a cooling, freezing or resting step. If you didn’t plan for something to chill in the fridge overnight, you could be without dessert.  For this reason, I usually wait to preheat my oven. Many recipes begin with: “preheat oven to 350F”, and while this might be fine for a simple recipe that doesn’t take long to put together, you’ll be wasting a lot of energy with that oven on for 30 minutes prior. Ovens