Zero Waste Cooking This Past Week

I feel like this week I got into a groove for being super conscientious about zero waste menu planning.  Of course it was easy this week because a lot of activities haven't really started up yet.

My delicious homemade soup, salad and yummy gluten free muffins!

                                           
But still!  For instance tonight I made homemade vegetable soup.  I used chicken broth I made myself from a chicken that served us for 2 meals (Meal 1 was roast chicken; Meal 2 was quinoa cooked up with leftover chicken and veggies).  I made the broth in the slow cooker I've borrowed from my daughter.  To make the soup, I put in potatoes, mushrooms, carrots and onions.  It was delicious!  In addition to that we had a tossed green salad with lettuce, red bell peppers, cucumbers, celery, mushrooms and green onions - all bought package free in the produce section.  We had homemade salad dressing.  And we had muffins (King Arthur gluten free - there is a plastic sleeve inside the cardboard box).  So the amount of plastic used was:

1) Chicken bought from the CSA frozen and in a plastic bag.
2) Carrots were from a big 5 lb bag.  I usually buy carrots loose but when I was at the store, their only loose carrots had these huge tops on them still which were completely saturated in water from that spray they do to supposedly keep veggies fresh.   Well, I can't figure out how to use carrot tops so that means paying a lot of money for the leafy part I don't even use.  So I opted to go with a big bag of carrots instead.  But this was unusual.
3) Muffin mix plastic inner sleeve.

Another thing I did this week was to make peanut butter cookies.  These are gluten free and almost zero waste.

Peanut butter - I took a clean jar into Mom's Organic Market and ground my own peanut butter.
Sugar - Domino's in a paper sack
Vanilla - glass jar
1 Egg - cardboard egg carton

1 cup of pb, + 1/2 tsp of vanilla + scant 1/2 cup sugar + 1 beaten egg.  Bake at 350 for anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes depending your oven, how dark your pan is and how crisp you like your cookies.

We've discovered these cookies also make good breakfast cookies.  Get your coffee in your to go mug, two or three cookies and a banana.  Nice quick breakfast you can eat in the car!