Happy New Year!

Wishing you and your family the best for 2013 from Mexico!

I look forward to my book and Bulk app releasing in the new year.

May the benefits of the Zero Waste lifestyle spread and transform lives across the globe! 

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Zero Waste Home Essential: Metal Scrubby

A little comment on the blog related to butter wrappers confirmed one of my mottos last week. "There is no such thing as TMI", I like to say. Overall, it is the details that we cover and share on this blog that define the Zero Waste lifestyle. Every bit of information, no matter how trivial, can help someone's Zero Waste journey. In a new series called: A Zero Waste Home Essential, I will be occasionally sharing with you the little things that I have found to be essential to my Zero Waste.

Today, I am sharing one of my favorite tools:

No matter how trivial it may seem, a stainless steel scrubby is essential to my cleaning routine!

It has allowed me to clean my stove's toughest messes effortlessly (above, after canning tomato sauce), and without any cleaning product at all. I simply soak the stain in water and scrub. Over the years, it has saved us a great deal of money: I no longer need to buy specialty (often toxic) stove cleaners and (short-lived) green scrubbies. I have had the same scrubby for three and a half years. Since stainless steel is a ferrous metal, I could recycle it as scrap metal through my curb recycling...that's if it ever decides to fall apart!

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Pâté Recipe

Boy was my lunch delicious today. So good that I thought the recipe deserved getting shared with the world for others to enjoy. Looks like Nutella doesn't it? Well it's chicken liver pâté. 

Pâté is one of those things that until a few years ago, I was convinced had to be purchased in order to be enjoyed.

Well, I found that it is not true. The recipe is so simple, affordable and quick to make that it is a perfect picnic dish and cocktail appetizer.

Ingredients

Please refer below for more information on the origin of my ingredients

1 stick butter

1 lb. chicken liver

Couple rosemary sprigs

1 bay leaf

1/4 cup white wine or 2 tbsp. brandy (preferred)

Salt and pepper

Melt a 1/4 stick of butter in a large skillet

Add chicken livers and herbs and saute until thoroughly cooked (pink inside - 5 minutes)

Add a splash of white wine or brandy to deglaze 

Compost bay leaf, set aside rosemary sprigs, and blend chicken livers with the remaining butter 

and 3 tbsp wine or 1 tbsp brandy.

Season to taste, garnish with the rosemary sprig and voila!

Enjoy with baguette and cornichon (optional: a green salad).

How Zero Waste are my ingredients?

Butter: As mentioned before, I stopped making butter because of cost, and butter remains the only food that we purchase in disposable packaging. The box goes into the recycling; the wrappers get washed and added to my collection for a planned art piece. Looking at three years worth of wrappers... I realize how important butter is to this family ;)

Chicken liver: The meat counter at Whole Foods put them in my jar. Chicken liver is a discard of the meat industry and am happy to take it off its hands for a super low price!  (I bought two pounds that day, as seen in picture above)

Rosemary: As mentioned before, we do not have a vegetable garden due to the nature of our property (we are perched on an oak-covered hill). We do grow a few things on our deck, but not rosemary. I consider the wild my vegetable garden. So when I need rosemary, I take the dog for a walk and forage.

Bay leaf: California bay trees grow like weeds in our neck of the woods. They have even become invasive. Since they carry the sudden oak death disease, we have cut the ones that keep sprouting on our property. When I need a leaf for cooking, I pick the neighbour's branch that leans over our property (convenient foraging).

White wine: I have to say this recipe is good made with white wine, but fantastic made with brandy. I made this batch of pâté using wine from a local winery, Le Neebia, that refills our bottles.

Salt and pepper: I purchased fine sea salt and whole peppercorn from the bulk bins at the grocery store, using my cloth bags.

Cornichons: I fill a small jar at the olive bar of the grocery store.

What are you eating for lunch?

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Welcome to the French!

After a couple of weeks tending to family affairs, I come back from Thanksgiving week to a pleasant surprise. Our story has taken France by storm after an article for which I interviewed a couple of years ago was posted on LeMonde.fr. Yesterday, it became its most shared story!
Needless to say I am very excited and touched by the interest of my native land!
Bienvenue to French visitors!

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Simple jam making

With some time off between book edits this week, I was finally able to purchase the last remnant's of this summer's produce and tackle our family's canning needs before winter hits: 30 pounds of tomatoes and 20 pounds of fruit purchased from the farmer's market for $1/lb are now crushed, sauced, jammed and stored in our crawl space...  I never thought I'd get to it this season but now that I am all caught up, it feels so good to have it done!

Pretty, isn't it?

Some of you have asked for jam recipes. I follow a guideline rather than a recipe, but I thought I'd share it for those of you that have never tried making jam and are tempted to try. Jamming is an essential activity in our Zero Waste Home considering that we cannot find this sweet in bulk. With only two ingredients (no need for pectin or jelling additives), it is quick, easy, and simple - my kinda cooking ;). The only trick is to know when to take it off the heat: You want it to be neither runny nor overcooked (i.e, burned). 

Yum!

Jam Guideline

Heat equal weights of chopped fruit and bulk evaporated sugar in a large pot (it bubbles way up, so pick a container 3 times larger than the contents). Boil until jelled and pour into sterilized jars. And that's it!

To know if it has jelled, I do what I call a "Moses" test every so often. I run a drop of the mixture onto a cold plate and I strike it across with my finger. When the "red sea" stays open, i.e., the sides of jam do not close up on my finger's mark, it's ready. Cooking time depends on the water content of the fruit, but it always takes less than 30 minutes.

Sometimes I will also run the hand blender in the mixture before it starts boiling for a smoother jam (no pieces).

You can also use the instructions mentioned here to can your jam when you're done. I personally don't. I store it in a dark cold place and it keeps for over 6 months. Beyond that time, if mold grows on it, we simply scoop it up, and it's perfectly fine, but in our house, jam rarely lingers that long...

What will you be jamming?

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50 ways to wear a men's shirt: I did it!

Hi everyone!

Since my last post, I have dedicated my time fully to the book, but I am happy to say that I completed my manuscript and I am back to blogging! Thanks so much for your patience for the past four months (I can't believe it has been that long!)

The shirt experiment sure was a fascinating and wonderfully creative project. Many of you were skeptical about the idea; I was skeptical whether I could come up with 50 different looks, but I did it and I had so much fun doing it! For those of you who do not use Twitter, here is a recollection of all the looks that I wore. And below are my answers to the questions you asked!

Why did you feel the need for boots and platforms?

As explained on my previous post, I went from cold and rainy weather to very hot and dry weather. I also needed different shoes to dress the shirt up and down so it could take me from a fancy restaurant (thanks mom) to a hot sandy beach. I did not regret taking my selection of shoes. I put them to use equally.

Was there any cutting or sewing involved? 

No sewing or cutting involved, if it isn’t for removing the shirt’s labels (to be able to wear it inside out) and two button holes that I added to the bottom front of the shirt for maximum versatility.

Did you wash your leggings in between laundry days? 

My leggings and/or shirt would go into the laundry at the end of the week and/or when my mom had a full machine to run.

Do you not ever sweat or get dirty? 

I am human, I do sweat. However, I am careful about not getting dirty. I am one of those people that will paint a room, wearing my regular clothes and not get them stained.

How did you retain the brightness on the color of the shirt?

I wash the shirt as with most my laundry in cold water.

Did you get tired of wearing black? 

Since I changed looks every day, I got bored with neither the color of the shirt nor the shirt itself. I do however regret not packing my pair of shorts for the hot days that I wore the shirt as a top.

What about packing exercise clothes for working out? 

I am an active individual. I do not go to a gym to “workout”. I hike, ride my bike everywhere and wrestle with the kids: These activities do not require special clothing.

Did you find some styles to be too fussy? 

I personally enjoy dressing up on a daily basis and mixing dressy clothes with casual ones (I like that contrast). That said, some of the styles were more comfortable to wear than others.

Will you be including instructions for all this folding and twisting of a shirt in your book? Unfortunately my upcoming book will not include instructions on how to wear the shirt 50 different ways, it is already filled with a multitude of how-to's! But I am already considering this subject for a subsequent book!

Will you be sending your shirt to the Smithsonian? ;) I am not ready to surrender the shirt, it is the most versatile piece of clothing in my closet and I wear it on a regular basis!

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