The Green touch

Yoghurt is another of the dishes I started to make to reduce my own waste. As I like to have dessert after a meal, I was actually collecting more than enough yoghurt pots to make homemade soap ;) (if you don't understand this joke, see "how to make soap" articles ). Making yoghurt is quite simple and cheap. You don't even need a yoghurt-machine, you can use an oven. Regarding the ingredients, just milk, and a yoghurt that will ferment the milk and transform it into yoghurt. And also anything else to flavor it (honey and jam for example). Quality is important here, both for the milk and the yoghurt. Milk Choose full-cream milk. It doesn't need to be cow milk; it can be any other animal milk. Vegetal milk too. I tried with soya milk (Go green, I haven't tried with Alpro) and it works, but I hear that with other vegetal milk you need thickeners. Yoghurt as a "starter" First you will need to buy a yoghurt, and then you can reuse one of...

Lately I decided to stop buying one of the three things I eat most often and make them myself. The idea was to reduce the amount of waste. One of them is garlic croûton. I like to eat "light" in the evening, especially when I have to get up early (eating beaf doesn't help falling asleep for exemple). I often have a corn and cumcumber salad which I like to eat with croûtons, otherwise it's boring :) But as I eat this dish quite often, I used to buy a lot of croûtons. I had to choose between croûtons emported from the US and overpacked european croûtons, which were, on the top of that, not particularly tasty. Now I make them myself, every two or three weeks. That's very easy, that's cheap, and they're delicious :) The first recipe I tried requested half a baguette, 6 garlic cloves, herbs and 50 cl olive oil, which is waaaaaay too much. The idea was to squeeze the garlic to bring out the taste as much as possible and mix it with oil. Quite a lot of ...

One of the basics, when you want to minimize your carbon footprint, is to eat locally-grown and seasonal vegetables. You're then sure that the product you buy has not travel that many kilometers nor was grown in a greenhouse (high electricity consumption); I am not perfect, I can't always buy Norwegian but I only but veg from Europe.  I don't know what is worse between both options, but choosing seasonal veg grown in Norway (or wherever you come from) is a guarantee to make the best choice. Here is the scandinavian calendar for vegetables (you can find your country's easily on google). This recipe's main ingredient is organic carrots grown in Norway. For 2 people: - 6-8 carrots - 2-4 potatoes - 3 tablespoons crème fraîche - salt - cumin 1 - Peel the carrots and potatoes and cut them into small pieces. The smallest they are, the quicker they get cooked.  2 - Cook the vegetables (about 15-20 mn) 3 - Remove the wate...

You have some bread left but it's a bit too dry for your taste. Just save it, and when you have enough you can make "pain perdu", which means "spoiled bread". For about 8 not-too-thick slices of dry bread 2 eggs 2 dl milk 3 tablespoon sugar butter (for the pan) 1 - Mix eggs, milk and sugar 2 - Put the bread slices in this mixture. 3 - When they have soften, melt some butter in the pan, and put the slices in it. When it's brown from both sides, it's ready! Eat them with extra sugar on top, or jam, or whatever you can think of. You can cook the rest of the mixture in the pan, as a sweet omelette. Bon appétit!

Today I made a cauliflower "gratin", with an organic coliflower from France (yeah!). It's not always easy to buy seasonal vegetables ( calendar for Scandinavia ) here, especially in winter so I try to at least buy european veg and fruits (short distance transportation). I used this recipe (French) but used one cauliflower only and ate it by myself. Here is what they say for 6 people: 1 kg cauliflower 30 + 40 g butter 30 g de flour 40 cl de milk 2 yolks 100 g cheese 50 g breadcrumbs nutmeg salt pepper 1 - Cut the cauliflower, wash it and cook them in boiling water (+ salt) for 15 mn. I always cover the pot; then low heat is enough. Drain the cauliflower NB: I should have cut it in smaller pieces or mash it afterwards. 2 - I reused the same pot and made a bechamel sauce: - Melt some butter - Once melted, add some flour until you get this consistency: - Add milk, little by little, until the sauce is homogenous and...

Initially published on 2/10/2011 For a few weeks I've had some time to cook desserts in the afternoon, especially egg creams with vanilla taste.  After trying our French version of custard (we call it "English cream"), I made a " crème brûlée " yesterday. I did not use any vanilla bean, imported from over the ocean, neither artificial vanilla sugar. I replaced all the sugar of the recipe by my vanilla-perfumed sugar I mentioned here , and I must say I am pretty satisfied with the taste, almost like real vanilla! I also made meringues, not that it required a vanilla taste, but it was just a way to not waste the egg whites. The good part about it, is that both recipes cooked at the same temperature and almost at the same time (what an optimal use of energy!) And now the recipes, in the order you should make them! Crème brûlée (original recipe from marmiton.org) - 3 eggyolks - 1 dl (full-fat) milk --> I actually put 0,2 dl (see ...

 Initially published on 20/05/2011 Cut a vanilla bean at its two extremities (do not split it). Put it in a glass jar. Fill with sugar. This will flavor your sugar for years and replace ordinary - chemical - vanilla sugar. You can also put in it the beans you actually split and used in recipes. It does not replace a real bean but in recipes that just need vanilla sugar it's perfect!

Initially published on 30/04/2011   Homemade milk jam on homemade bread... And I stuck the paper to the jar with...milk! This has not an obvious connection to environment except for the tips about how to rest your fridge. I just felt like sharing this delicious caramelized jam recipe which I think is French. The recipe I had found was the following: -        1 L milk -        500g sugar -        a vanilla bean (NB: Vanilla bean can be reused several times) I actually divided the milk and sugar in two and used vanilla-flavoured sugar (30g+220 g sugar (minus the vanilla sugar, hope it is clear enough) and I made one jar. For a first try, one liter was a bit too much. -        Put the milk and sugar in a pot and stir continuously until it boil. [NB: to prevent the milk from ?staining? ...