Zero Waste + Mediterranean Diet Cooking

I've been trying to reduce the amount of waste I and my family produce since last Lent.  It's an ongoing learning adventure!  I've also recently decided to transition to a Mediterranean Diet for my family's health reasons.  I've found this is a little bit of a tough combination.  For instance, if your recipes call for yogurt or feta cheese all the time, but both these things typically come in plastic packaging, what do I do?   I run into that sort of obstacle all the time.

To summarize what these two things mean:

Zero waste - means putting a great emphasis on the 5 R's in my daily living habits. 

Refuse - wasteful packaging and unnecessary purchases.

Reduce -  whatever waste you can - choose the product with the least packaging that can be recycled for instance.

Reuse - For example, if you buy something in a glass jar, you can then reuse it to store leftovers, thereby negating the necessity of buying plastic wrap.

Recycle - recycling isn't as great as it has been sold.  Only 13% of the millions of tons of plastic we produce each year actually gets downcycled (you can't recycle plastic the way you would glass or cardboard).  However, recycling is still vital for controlling the deluge of trash we produce every day.

Rot - composting is a vital part of this.  Everyone should be composting at least some of the food scraps they produce every day.

The Mediterranean Diet is:

Mostly plant based - fresh, whole, local produce

Uses olive oil mostly for healthy fat

Lots of fresh seafood - high in omega 3's

Meat and dairy are used more as accoutrements to the dish rather than the main thing - should be grass fed.

Incorporates more legumes, nuts and seeds than the typical American diet.

Whole grains emphasized.

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One thing I've found about combining these two elements, zero waste and Mediterranean, is that I have to really cook seasonally.  Instead of finding a recipe and then going to the store or CSA or farmer's market to get the ingredients, I need to go to the store, CSA or farmer's market with the limitations in mind that both the zero waste and Mediterranean Diet place upon me.  I purchase what I can, and then I come up with a recipe that fits what I've got.

So today for dinner I'm going to try stuffed peppers.

I will use up the rest of my rice, bought in bulk, probably at Whole Foods, though it could have come from Mom's Organic.

My CSA has lots of bell peppers this week.  This doesn't even include a number of other peppers we've already eaten this week, just as raw veggie slices to snack on.

I probably got the onion and garlic in the loose produce section at one of the grocery stores I frequent in my travels around the area.

The ground beef I got from Whole Foods.  It is wrapped in compostable butcher paper, so I consider that zero waste on my part.  I try to get whatever ground beef is on sale.  If it is more pricey I get 1 lb, if it is a little cheaper another week, I'll get two lbs.  This week it was pricier so I only got 1 lb.

Two things not included in this photo: the olive oil I'll saute the onion and garlic in - it comes in a glass bottle with a plastic pourer.  I can recycle the glass but the plastic pourer thing is both unnecessary and probably doomed for a landfill.  Also not included is the chicken stock I'll probably cook the rice in.  On Monday we had roast chicken.  The chicken is from a local farm, pasture raised, but it does come wrapped in a plastic bag which I rinse out and then throw away - also doomed to go to a landfill.  Yesterday I made chicken stock out of the carcass with some celery and carrots (bought without packaging).

To go along with the stuffed peppers, I think I'll make fried green tomatoes.  I got this box from my CSA.

Blurry photo!

I'll let you know how things turned out!