Cooks suggest ways to protect Earth
Diane Sheya, Ivy House Herbs cooking instructor: "I compost, and it goes back into my garden. I buy food and other products in bulk. Even if I have a party, I don't use paper products. I use dishes and run them through my dishwasher. We also use the curbside recycling offered throughout Salt Lake County.
"I grow my own herbs, and you can do that and dry them yourself to use in the winter months. Come summer, any leftover dried herbs can be used on the barbecue grill, like you'd use wood chips, to give off lots of flavor."
Jane Boyle, Kaysville: "I plan to get reusable (fabric) grocery bags. I like a few paper/plastic bags, but I get overrun with them. I use my Crock Pot/outdoor grill/microwave in the summer so I don't have to heat up the kitchen. That keeps the air-conditioning bill down. I run errands only one day a week. I try to find the grocery store with the most deals that I want instead of traveling to lots of different ones."
Lettie Flatt, executive pastry chef at Deer Valley Resort: "When I was 20 years old, I read Frances M. Lappe's 'Diet for a Small Planet.' It changed my life. The author outlines a way to reduce the waste of our agricultural resources with a diet that uses the Earth more efficiently.
"We follow a plant-based diet, and we buy about 75 percent organic. We buy bulk to reduce packaging. We recycle as much as we can. We use our empty cottage-cheese cartons to store food. Our freezer looks like it is full of Nancy's Organic Cottage Cheese (which, by the way, is so good we can't eat regular cottage cheese anymore). But in those cottage-cheese containers is leftover soup and rice and homemade pesto from last summer's basil crop."
Ruth Kendrick: "I try to do an oven meal when I turn it on: meatloaf and baked potato, squash — dishes that can all be cooked at once in the oven."
Connie Hickman, Rush Valley: "I save gallon milk jugs to cover tomato plants from the cold. You can use baby food jars to store nails, screws and bolts. Or glue baby food jars together in the shape of a Christmas tree. Drill a hole through the lids and string lights through the jars for a Christmas decoration. I also save and decorate gallon-size ice cream buckets and fill them with fruit for the neighbors at Christmas."
You can be the first to comment on this story.