How to Master Last-Minute Meal Preparation

A reader recently emailed me an excellent question on making last minute meals:

Q: It's 2:45 PM and I have no clue what to make for dinner tonight. What do you do when you're in this situation?

A: I order a pizza.

Just kidding! Seriously, this is a common problem that at times strikes even the most experienced cooks, and it brings to mind that wonderful quote from former Gourmet Magazine editor Ruth Reichl about dinner planning: "if it's 4 o'clock and you're in your office and you haven't figured out what you're having for dinner tonight, the battle's half lost." The bottom line is you usually need to plan your dinners with at least a few days' lead time. There's just no way around it.

But most Casual Kitchen readers lead extremely busy lives, and inevitably there will be days when a pre-planned dinner just isn't possible. For those situations, we have a few solutions here at Casual Kitchen.

First, we always make double batches of whatever foods we cook. This way, we almost always have a stash of leftovers available in our fridge. There's no easier way to get a decent dinner on the table than to reheat something you've already made.

Second, try and keep a relatively well-stocked pantry, and focus your pantry supplies on food items that you can use to whip up a simple recipe at the last minute. Which recipes and which items, you ask? Well, start by perusing The 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen. Pick out the easiest recipes that appeal to you the most (I suggest starting with Black Beans and Rice, Chickpeas, Pasta and Tomato Salad, Red Lentils and Rice or Smoky Brazilian Black Bean Soup). Then, stock extra supplies of the key ingredients to those recipes in your pantry at all times.

This way, you'll always have an option or two for a simple meal, and you'll be able to get dinner on the table in half an hour or less--even on those days when you have absolutely no clue what to cook.

Readers, what ideas would you add?


Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Everett Bogue's exceptional book The Art of Being Minimalist. (This is an affiliate link for an e-book I strongly recommend to my readers--and if you decide to make a purchase, your purchase will help fund all of the free content here at CK!)


Related Posts:
If It's So Cheap to Cook at Home, Then Why is My Grocery Bill So Huge?
Spreading the New Frugality: A Manifesto
Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever on Food
Finding Inspiration In an Uncluttered Kitchen

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday May 28, 2010

Here's yet another selection of interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!
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Ten insights from one blogger's experiment in local eating. You'll be surprised by some of the conclusions. (Banging on Pots and Pans)

An interesting article on "The Slaughterhouse Problem." Regulations are so onerous for establishing slaughterhouses that small, more humane meat producers can't get their meat to market. (Food Politics)

Things to consider when buying a dehydrator. (Well Preserved) Bonus post: Tips to make the most of farmer's markets.

A great step-by-step tutorial on how to dice up an onion in a flash. (Home Ec 101)

Set up your own redneck container garden! (The WASPKid Diaries, via @Suburban_Farmer)

Recipe Links:
An intriguing and easy dish you can serve even the most militant vegans: Vietnamese Braised Tofu in Caramel Sauce. (Eats Well With Others)

Laughably cheap, laughably easy and seriously healthy: Pasta with Mushrooms, Peppers and Onions. (Cheap Healthy Good)

Easy instructions and pictures on how to roast a Leg of Lamb. (Amateur Gourmet)

Off-Topic Links:
On the necessity of knuckleheads. (The Cobb Blog)

A 15-year-old selects "Liberal" from a drop down menu and views his page a few times a day. What does that do to his willingness to evolve his mindset? (Ben Casnocha's Blog)

How to write for new readers. (IttyBiz)


Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Porotos Granados, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Squash

Ever since a dollop of orangeish, textureless goo landed on my plate 35 years ago, accompanied by a lie generations of parents have told their children (Try some, you'll love it!), I've always hated squash.

Until now.

Today I share with you a recipe that is so good, so healthy and so easy to make, that it got me to reject an anti-squash bias that I've held for some 35 years. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do.

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Porotos Granados
(modified from Jay Solomon's Vegetarian Soup Cuisine)

Ingredients:
2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, coarsely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped (retain some seeds for extra heat)
2 large tomatoes, chopped

1 Tablespoon paprika
1 1/2 Tablespoons dried parsley
2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

5 cups water (can add more if soup is too thick)
4 cups squash, any type, cut into large-ish chunks
1 1/2 cups frozen corn
1 15 ounce can pink beans or kidney beans, rinsed and drained

Directions:
1) In a large pot, saute onions, garlic and jalapeno in the oil for 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat. Add tomatoes and seasonings, reduce heat to medium and saute for another 5 minutes.

2) Add squash and water, bring to a boil, and then simmer on medium low for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3) Add corn and beans, stir well and simmer for another 10 minutes. Serve in bowls over rice or brown rice.

Serves 6.
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Recipe Notes:
1) For the beginner cooks out there, here are two ideas to help you can save on prep time for this recipe: First, while the onions, garlic and jalapenos are sauteing you can chop the tomatoes. Second, you can do some portion of the squash processing (peeling, digging out seeds, or chopping) after you add the tomatoes and spices to the saute mixture.

2) For those of you still not sold on squash, we've also made this stew using potatoes instead of squash. It's delicious that way too. Enjoy!



Related Posts:
Groundnut Stew: A Classic and Exotic Vegetarian Recipe
Quite Possibly the Easiest Lentil Soup Recipe You’ll Find Anywhere
Attention Vegetarians and Vegans! Fresh Corn and Tomato Soup
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Tapas-Style Potato Chips (May 2008)
I can barely do justice attempting to describe the sheer fun of making these. You'll never go back to store-bought chips!

How to Lie About the Soda Tax (May 2009)
In which I expose a textbook example of data-mining and manipulated statistics in the New York Times. Things are not always as they seem.

What Have You Given Up That You Don't Miss? (May 2009)
We're in a bad recession, and the thought of cutting back on unnecessaries doesn't seem quite so quaint anymore. But what we found out was that we didn't really miss the things we cut back on.

Dealing with Trolls (May 2009)
Once you have your very own troll dedicated to criticizing you, you can say you've truly arrived as a real blogger. Read this post for two ways to handle trolls.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday May 21, 2010

Here's yet another selection of interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!
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Ten (actually eleven) extremely easy ways to get yourself to eat less meat. (Cheap Healthy Good)

Here's a great roundup of links to several sites with lists of inexpensive recipes. You'll even find Casual Kitchen's 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes in there! (Dude, Where's the Stove?)

The author of the book The No Asshole Rule talks about why both men and women leave bigger tips when lightly touched by their waitress. (Work Matters)

If you're a woman who wants to make it in the world of professional cooking, please read this article. (Eat Me Daily)

Recipe Links:
A fascinating variation on regular risotto: Pistachio and Gorgonzola Risotto. (Closet Cooking)

Easy, vegan and intensely flavorful: Ranch-Style Beans. (Cupcake Punk)

A delicious and easy Salmon with Spicy Cilantro Sauce. (Chow & Chatter)

Off-Topic Links:
Eight surprisingly useful tips to stay focused and motivated when working from home. (Lazy Man and Money)

A new study shows (and so it must be true, right?) that the further you lean left politically, the less you know about economics. (The Volokh Conspiracy)

Why banning the computer after 11:00 PM might be the best habit change you can make in your life. (Tynan.net)

What's your side hustle? (Escape From Cubicle Nation)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

How to Get the Benefits of Organic Foods Without Paying Through the Nose

Nearly all frugal cooks struggle with the "organic foods" question. We all want to eat healthy, environmentally friendly food, but is the significant extra cost of organic food really worth it?

I've got good new for you. You can capture almost all of the benefits of going organic without paying up for inflated organic food prices. All you have to do is make a few minor changes in how you purchase and handle the produce you already buy.

Here's how:

1) Don't think organic, think local.

When we think about the benefits of organic food, the environmental impact of pesticides usually comes to mind first. However, there is an even bigger negative environmental impact embedded in your produce that most shoppers don't even consider: transport costs. Transport costs drive up the both the price and the carbon footprint of your food. If you can source a meaningful portion of your food from farms within 100-200 miles of your home, you will save money and have a positive impact on the environment.

2) Don't assume that food lacking an organic label is grown unethically or unhealthily.

Many farmers find it extremely burdensome to meet all the government requirements to qualify for organic labeling. If you take a bit of time to visit with the growers and vendors at local farmer's markets in your area, you may find they grow their food more sustainably and responsibly than the letter of the law.

On the other hand, if you insist on having an official-looking little "organic" sticker on your produce, you'll quite often pay a 50-100% premium, and yet your food may still be trucked in from thousands of miles away with a significant carbon footprint. Don't fixate on a little magic sticker. Instead, find opportunities to buy local and support responsible food growers in your region.

3) Local means in season and cheap.

Everybody knows that in-season produce is the cheapest produce. Which brings us to an enormous and underappreciated advantage of going local: when you buy your produce locally, you're guaranteed that all your fruits and veggies will be in season--because that's the only time they grow! Your produce will always be at its cheapest and most plentiful.

Unfortunately, consumers increasingly expect to see tomatoes, apples, citrus and many other fruits and vegetables available year round in their grocery stores. And those consumers who fixate on magic organic stickers and who want to buy out-of-season produce are simply asking to be separated from their money.

Don't get fooled by the phony reality of your grocery store. It's not normal, quite frankly, for a North American shopper to buy apples in the spring and citrus fruit in the late summer (and vice versa for my readers Down Under). Instead, take advantage of seasonal foods as they appear in your grocery store over the course of the year. You'll pay significantly less and you'll enjoy higher quality food.

4) For many fruits and vegetables, the benefits of going organic are negligible.

Many fruits and vegetables, because of their fundamental structure, are equally healthy whether they're grown organically or not. Fruits and vegetables with thick rinds or peels (melons, grapefruits, oranges, lemons, limes, bananas, etc.) will be well-protected from any pesticides because you remove the rind before eating. Likewise, fruits and veggies that you peel or husk (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, corn, onions, garlic, etc.) will have several layers of protection between the food and any pesticides.

Furthermore, many sturdy vegetables (turnips, beets, collards, kale, parsley, etc.) don't require much in the way of pesticides, simply because they are already bug resistant and extremely hardy.

Finally, with fruits or vegetables where you eat the skin (apples or green bell peppers, etc.), just take care to wash the produce carefully with a scratchy sponge and warm soapy water. This will eliminate any potential pesticides from the food, allowing you to eat it entirely safely.

Don't buy organic just to buy organic! You can get most of the benefits--and avoid all of the extra costs--by following these four simple tips.

Readers, what solutions would you add to the conversation? Do you pay extra for organic produce? Why or why not?

A different version of this post ran several months ago in the Tech Savvy Mama blog.

Related Posts:
Does Healthy Eating Really Cost Too Much? A Blogger Roundtable
Spreading the New Frugality: A Manifesto
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
Scarred For Life By a Food Industry Job

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Brand Disloyalty (May 2009)
One of my most important--and strident--posts on consumer empowerment. Never let consumer products companies profit from your blind loyalty.

A Rebuttal of "The Last Bite" (May 2008)
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's close-minded, alarmist Malthusianism. In this post I tear apart a particularly flagrant example of Malthusian thinking from The New Yorker.

Brown Rice: Dietary Penance (May 2008)
Brown rice isn't just a healthy and nearly complete food, it can also serve as a cure for a multi-day period of overeating. Read this post to find out how. (See also my post on Spicy Brown Rice, an easy, quick meal when you don't feel like cooking!)

Mexicali Pork Chops (May 2008)
Despite the fact that this recipe is a bit of an ethnic reach for The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, it remains an excellent, inexpensive and easy recipe.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday May 14, 2010

Hello readers! I'm finally back home in New Jersey after an incredible, life-altering four months in Chile. Although I'm happy to be back home (and happier still to be reunited with Laura), I confess I don't think I've ever been more sad to have to leave a place in my life. Look for some upcoming posts on the food (and drinks!) we experienced here in this unique and amazingly friendly country.

As always, here's another selection of interesting links from around the internet. I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!
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The five most important elements of a great homemade salad dressing. (Christie's Corner)

Are you prepared with enough food, water and supplies if a serious disaster struck your community? (Inspire2Act)

Five beginner steps you can take towards making healthier food choices. (Like a Bubbling Brook)

Recipe Links:
A must-try recipe: Baja Fish Tacos with Wasabi Sauce. (Banging on Pots and Pans)

Simple, flexible and delicious: Baked Eggs. (A Sweet Life)

A surprisingly easy Hot 'n' Spicy Shrimp Etouffee. (Coconut & Lime)

Off-Topic Links:
Living in a world where most writers suck. (Jason Sandford's Blog via @ElizabethSCraig)

Five tips for using email far more efficiently. (The Happiness Project)

Would you stand idly by if you saw someone being attacked? Would you be willing to intervene on behalf of a stranger? (Erin Pavlina's Blog)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Trusting Your Own Taste in Wine and Food

We have friends who simply cannot bear to drink a wine unless it has a 91 or greater score in Wine Spectator Magazine. Everything else is swill to them. Worse still, they simply will not go to any New York or New Jersey restaurant unless it has a Zagat rating of 23 or higher. To them, a restaurant that doesn't score well in Zagat's obviously can't be any good.

There are three distinct levels of tragedy in this.

First they guarantee that they'll always overpay for their wine and food. Second, they subsume their choices and wants to an unknown group of experts who can't possibly know what they like. And third, by doing these things, they'll never develop any genuine trust in their own tastes.

You might think that you can make better choices when you follow seemingly objective opinions from "experts." In reality, however, you are actually limiting your range of choices. Worst of all, you are building a habit of letting others do your thinking for you.

Here's the bottom line: Enslaving your preferences to others is the polar opposite of consumer empowerment, and it's contrary to everything Casual Kitchen is all about.

Here's a simple example why I think no one should subsume their choices and tastes to score, a rating, or any other seemingly objective measure of food or wine quality. A few months ago we had a wine tasting with friends, and I challenged everyone to blind taste-test two chiantis. I asked each person to tell me 1) which chianti they thought was the most expensive, and 2) which chianti they liked better.

None of us really has a "palate" in the winetasting sense. However, out of our group of four, three of us could easily tell which of the chiantis was the most expensive. Even more amazingly, all four of us still liked the cheaper chianti (which cost $15) more than the expensive one (which cost $35).

We chose for ourselves what we liked better, and happily, our choices ran counter to both the prices of the wines and the rating (apparently, the cheaper Chianti wasn't worthy of a rating because it didn't even have one). Did we prefer the less expensive wine because we have bad taste? Are our palates simply blind and deaf to good wine?

Does it really even matter? We like what we like. Isn't that a much better measure of your preferences than some wine or restaurant rating made up by people who don't even know you?

What is the insight here? It's that preferences are never objective, and your personal tastes will always be more important than the preference of any so-called expert.

Develop your own taste and your own palate. Don't rely solely on wine ratings or restaurant ratings. And most importantly don't pattern or reframe your taste preferences because of what some team of experts says. You can think and choose for yourself, and you don't need somebody else to tell you what wine tastes good or what food is desirable.

You are a better judge of that!

Related Posts:How to Start a Casual and Inexpensive Wine Tasting Club
27 Themes and Ideas for Wine Tasting Club Meetings
How Do You Define Truly Great Restaurant Service?
Ten Rules for the Modern Restaurant-Goer
How to Use Food and Wine Jargon Without Sounding Pretentious

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

What's Your Take on Going Vegetarian? A Poll of Meat-Eating Bloggers (May 2009)
I asked several of my favorite meat-eating food bloggers to explain their thoughts about converting to vegetarianism. Their answers? Surprisingly blunt and eye-opening.

Hawaii and its Love Affair with SPAM (May 2009)
Believe it or not, Honolulu throws an annual festival dedicated to SPAM. And yes, in this post you'll see a video of a really cute hula dancer giving a SPAM-dance.

Seven Ways to Jazz Up Your Morning Eggs (May 2008)
You'll never consider eggs to be a boring food after reading this post. One of my most popular articles of 2008.

How to Make Pickled Eggs (May 2007)
Delicious, easy to make and a visually arresting purple color. But for god's sake--don't wear white while making them!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday May 7, 2010

Here's yet another selection of interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!
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Ten cheap shortcuts that make cooking infinitely easier. (Cheap Healthy Good)

How to handle social pressure when following a diet that differs from your friends and family. (Choosing Raw) Bonus Post: How to build a meal-sized salad.

Five ways apartment dwellers can grow their own food. (The Good Human, via Almost Frugal)

An interesting history of the controversy surrounding raw milk. (Diary of a Locavore)

Ten tips for optimal vegetable storage. (stonesoup)

Recipe Links:
Laughably easy and tasty: Grilled Chile Lime Chicken. (Beach Eats)

Simple to make and cool-looking! Zebra Cake. (The Big Bite)

Okay, warning: NOT EASY. But this recipe for homemade Croissants looks doable by a normal person. I'm looking forward to trying it out in the coming weeks. (Fresh From the Oven)

Off-Topic Links:
On giving unsolicited advice. (The Art of Non-Conformity)

A short history of the most famous scream in Hollywood. (Metal Shed Movies, via Mary McKitrick's Voiceover Blog)

Good tips on successfully dealing with customer service representatives--from a person who used to work in the field. (Consumerism Commentary)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Meat Versus Miles: Why Less Meat is Better Than Going Local

I thought I'd share with my readers a few fascinating numbers that demonstrate the enormous environmental value of a low-meat diet.

1) Replacing your red meat intake with chicken, fish or eggs for just one day per week has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 760 miles less per year.

2) Switching to a vegetarian diet for just one day per week has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 1,160 miles less per year.

3) Switching from a standard American diet to a vegetarian diet has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 8,000 miles less per year.

4) Switching to 100% local diet has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 1,000 miles less per year.

Here's the thing. Lots of people are talking these days about their efforts to eat local. Some people go so far as to wear their locavorism on their sleeve like it's some kind of honor badge. And, yes, admittedly, even here at Casual Kitchen we advocate being mindful about any transport costs implicit in the food you buy.

But if you think through the numbers above, you can see that going local isn't the best thing you can do for the environment. Not by a long shot. You can go meatless for just one day a week and have a more meaningful impact. Best of all, it's also a great way to save money and add to the overall healthfulness of your diet. What's not to like?

Okay, let me share one more statistic, perhaps the most sobering of all:

5) According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the world's livestock sector generates more CO2 equivalent emissions than the entire transportation sector (see specifically page xxi in the Executive Summary).

Yes, you can certainly help the environment by buying your food locally, and I encourage you to continue doing so. But keep in mind that the transport industry is less wasteful and less awful for the environment than you might think.

What's truly wasteful is the enormous amount of meat in the standard Western diet.

Readers, what are your thoughts and reactions?

Sources:
* Points 1-4 come from Kate Heyhoe's exceptional book Cooking Green (by the way, I reviewed Cooking Green last year and strongly recommend it to readers).
* Point 5 comes from "Livestock's Long Shadow" a 2006 report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.



Related Posts:
Six Good Things About the Awful Economy
Almost Meatless: Cookbook Review
Review: Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe
Spreading the New Frugality: A Manifesto

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Easy Recipe Ideas for Cinco de Mayo (May 2009)
Ten easy and affordable Latin American-themed recipes straight out of the Casual Kitchen archives. (Don't forget the drink recipes!)

A Simple Way to Beat Rising Food Prices (May 2008)
A laughably easy way to save a ton of money on your food budget. And it's better for your health too.

How to Make Pickled Beets (May 2007)
Step-by-step instructions on the best way to eat the humble beet. A favorite post from 2007.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!