Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 31 - Joshua's Birthday Dinner

I made dinner for my son's birthday last night.  He turned 22.   He had to work all day, but I made him a birthday dinner.  Since he loves anything with tomato sauce but he'd given up meat for Lent, I made tomatoes with pine nuts over bow tie pasta.

The sauce turned out well (I was trying to recreate a recipe from a long time ago) but it wasn't enough.  I should have bought 2 jars of tomatoes to feed six people.

I got the pasta at Mom's organic.  I think it was $1.99 a lb.  The olive oil is a new brand to me.  I picked it up somewhere, not sure where.  I usually buy the medium priced olive oils.  The parmesan cheese in a jar (front left) is one I bought weeks ago at Harris Teeter.  I think it was something like $4.99 but it has lasted us a while now.  I am surprised at how much grated parmesan cheese is in that jar!  The little bottle of pignoli or pine nuts, I got from the international market section of Bed, Bath and Beyond, also a few weeks ago, and the jar of tomatoes I picked up at Whole Foods.  It was the only jar of chopped tomatoes.  The other brands were canned or in those plastic vacuum boxes.

This bread was the biggest hit!  DELICIOUS!

I bought this lovely parmesan bread at a local bakery.  The boy behind the counter thinks I'm a little looney because I bring in my own bag.  He is very industrious in making sure all the loaves are bagged asap after they come in to him from the original bakery (they don't really bake them at this store but in another town about 20 minutes away.)  You have to make sure you get there pretty soon after it opens, in order to get bread that hasn't already been bagged!

I made a green salad to go with the pasta and bread.  I found that nice netted bag when cleaning out one of my kitchen drawers!  It is perfect for greens.  I have a little cotton bag I used for the bulk mushrooms.  The carrots, green onions and green pepper all were loose in the produce section.

This cake looks a little sad.  We did add some candles for Josh to blow out!

And for dessert we had lemon cake.  Since Josh doesn't care for icing, I just dusted it with powdered sugar.

So the plastic that went into this meal:

-The jar lids probably have plastic, but the glass itself is pretty much 100% recyclable.  I think some places recycle the lids for the metal content.  I can't tell if my recycling company does.  It looks like they probably do because they don't explicitly forbid them.  They just say they recycle glass jars.  No mention of lids.

-the tomato jar had a plastic seal around the top
- the inside plastic bag for the cake mix
- the inside plastic bag for the powdered sugar
- salad dressing included:  olive oil, balsamic red wine vinegar, chopped garlic from a jar, dijon mustard, salt and pepper.  All these bottles/jars probably came with little plastic seals around the top.

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Here's an article about a neat idea!  Someone has invented a small reactor that can fit on ships that uses plastic as fuel!  I am confused about how much the reactor pollutes as it burns the plastic?  I guess I need to read the article again more closely! But what struck me is all the garbage floating in the waters in the photos.  So disgusting!  Here in our country we do have the infrastructure to somewhat maintain some level of cleanliness but since I've become more aware of plastic pollution, I have noticed more and more litter.  Our trash could easily get out of control.