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 ...

When you live alone, buying food tends to be more expensive - than when you're two or more - because you have to buy smaller format of everything. Not only the price is higher for an equivalent quantity of food but especially it produces more waste. On the other hand, if you buy larger amount, there is a risk that the food will go bad before you have time to eat it. One option is to buy - rather - large amount and to freeze what you're not going to eat right away. I do that especially for grated cheese: I saved 2-3 bags so I can divide my 500 g cheese and can eat it little by little. Same thing with bread, not that I don't know when i'm going to eat it (every morning, toasted) but it would get dry before I even have time to finish the whole loaf. This trick works pretty with anything you need to warm up anyway, and you don't even need to use the micro wave. One onion if often too much for me for one meal (but, hey, you can't buy smaller amou...

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...

The honey jar is finished and what's left it's too sticky to collect (or even to wash). Why not pouring boiling water and infuse some tea in it? It will solve both these problems, and you won't waste a drop of honey!

When cooking fish sticks in a pan, no need to add oil or butter. There is already some fat in the breadscrumbs, so if you cook the sticks at low heat (4 maxi) and cover it, it won't burn in the pan. When I see my rice is almost ready, I turn the sticks, and turn the heat off. I have a vitroceramic cooktop so with the residual heat it slowly finishes cooking.

Initially published on 24/05/2011 I usually bring food from home at work (not in matpakke paper which is a waste but in a plastic box). Not something I prepared on purpose but leftovers from the day before's dinner. Yep, inFrance, every meal is "middag", as I understood it meant "warm meal". I think I just found where I would buy my lunch in case of "no leftovers": Coop and Ica in Tromsø sentrum offer "salad bar". You take a (throwable plastic) box, fill it with whatever you like and then pay the price per (kilo)gram. The more you fill, the more you pay. It's 129 kr per kilo at Coop (the one by Stortorget) and 119 at Ica. Cheaper then, but not that different. The food is basically the same: paprika, pasta salad, corn, cucumber, ham cubes, feta (Oh yeah!!:)) and so on. The advantage when you are not a big eater is that you really eat what you want. I paid 30 kr which I think is quite cheap (I don't ...

Initially published on 22/05/2011 I felt like showing you these documents. I found the first one on vegetarisme.ch For each type of diet, it gives you the equivalent in driven kilometers, for a year. Bio = organic food Conv.--> conventionnel = ordinary. First diet is without meat and dairy products, second is without meat and last one, with meat and dairy products. This one was published by ADEME (French environment & energy agency) and is about the quantity of carbon dioxyde produced for each kilo of meat. I guess that methan is not taken into acount here. However livestock and especially beef are responsible for a very important part of the methan emissions by mankind in the world. The good point with this document is that it makes me feel good to be fond of bacon rather than beef. But let's not hold out too much hope: concentration of animals has serious consequences on environment, at least because of the excrements and what they c...