Imagine the amount of food that ends up in the trash during the Thanksgiving holiday season. What if we told you that America alone wastes 305 million pounds of food on Thanksgiving, creating a carbon footprint equivalent to 169,000 cars driving for an entire year? Pretty shocking, right? But there's a way to make a difference. During this episode, I'll share how you can play your part in reducing food waste at your Thanksgiving table. As a Kitchen Activist, you'll make the world a better place, one dish at a time. I will guide you through a simple yet practical 11-step process to reduce food waste, save money, and serve a meal your guests genuinely appreciate.
Have you ever heard of sustainable cooking? Let's break it down for you. It's all about shopping your pantry and fridge, purchasing ingredients from farms that use sustainable methods, and cooking from scratch. Not only does it save you money, but it also promotes a healthier lifestyle. But that's not all; I have a plan for your leftovers, too. Let's join forces to make this Thanksgiving different. Let's make our kitchen choices matter. After all, it's not just about cooking a meal; it's about cooking for positive environmental change. Join me towards a greener, cleaner, and more sustainable Thanksgiving.
Email me at info@eatlesswater.com for a copy of the 11 action tips.
Be resplendent,
Florencia
Click here for the free How to Eat Less Water CONDIMENT STORAGE TABLE. It is a printable list of popular condiments that belong in the pantry and those in the refrigerator that can be hung in your kitchen for easy reference.
Download the TEN TIPS to EAT LESS WATER SUMMER PARTY PLANNING GUIDE for all the tips, steps, and info on celebrating like a kitchen activist with your friends and family.
Find gifts designed to serve well-being at the Eat Less Water Shop.
Get a copy of the EAT LESS WATER book.
Reach me at info@eatlesswater.com
Imagine the amount of food that ends up in the trash during the Thanksgiving holiday season. What if we told you that America alone wastes 305 million pounds of food on Thanksgiving, creating a carbon footprint equivalent to 169,000 cars driving for an entire year? Pretty shocking, right? But there's a way to make a difference. During this episode, I'll share how you can play your part in reducing food waste at your Thanksgiving table. As a Kitchen Activist, you'll make the world a better place, one dish at a time. I will guide you through a simple yet practical 11-step process to reduce food waste, save money, and serve a meal your guests genuinely appreciate.
Have you ever heard of sustainable cooking? Let's break it down for you. It's all about shopping your pantry and fridge, purchasing ingredients from farms that use sustainable methods, and cooking from scratch. Not only does it save you money, but it also promotes a healthier lifestyle. But that's not all; I have a plan for your leftovers, too. Let's join forces to make this Thanksgiving different. Let's make our kitchen choices matter. After all, it's not just about cooking a meal; it's about cooking for positive environmental change. Join me towards a greener, cleaner, and more sustainable Thanksgiving.
Email me at info@eatlesswater.com for a copy of the 11 action tips.
Be resplendent,
Florencia
Click here for the free How to Eat Less Water CONDIMENT STORAGE TABLE. It is a printable list of popular condiments that belong in the pantry and those in the refrigerator that can be hung in your kitchen for easy reference.
Download the TEN TIPS to EAT LESS WATER SUMMER PARTY PLANNING GUIDE for all the tips, steps, and info on celebrating like a kitchen activist with your friends and family.
Find gifts designed to serve well-being at the Eat Less Water Shop.
Get a copy of the EAT LESS WATER book.
Reach me at info@eatlesswater.com
Welcome. I'm glad you're here. Together, we will turn our shared concern about the state of our environment into a force for change. It will require you to reimagine the role of your home kitchen as more than a warehouse of food or a room where we cook and gather to eat. The time has come to enter your kitchen with eyes open to the transformative power it harnesses for the planet and you. The home kitchen has always been ground zero for positive environmental and social change. Waiting for you to take your position as a kitchen activist Now that you arrived, you will change the world with what you eat. Welcome, I am so glad you're here.
Speaker 1:This is the Thanksgiving episode. This time of year is my favorite, but I'm sure you feel the same, that it just feels like it goes too fast. It comes upon us faster, it seems like, and it happens too fast, but it's also a good time for us to figure out ways that we can slow down. I know that that's what I'm thinking about right now is how can I savor the season? Because this season really is, for me, about bringing people together that you love around the table, having gratitude for everything that we have in the people, especially the richness of people and relationships that we have in our life and to share food and communion with. So this also is an important episode for me, because it is the biggest food waste time of the year the entire holiday season, but especially Thanksgiving. So chew on some of these statistics. For example, on Thanksgiving, we throw away in the US 305 million pounds of food. This waste has a carbon footprint of 1.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to 169,000 cars driving for a full year. So just let's just pause on that. So the amount of waste that's produced on one day is equivalent to 169,000 cars driving for a full year. Food holds so much power. It holds power to heal and to repair if we understand how we can do things better, and one of those ways is to waste less food. That same food that we waste on Thanksgiving Day alone is equivalent to 1 billion billion gallons of water. It's important to start with that because we can understand what's at stake and figure out ways that each of us individually can do better.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to take you through a list of 11 steps where you can be a kitchen activist this year and reduce that food waste. We can all contribute to the solution, but it takes intention. All of us. We're going on doing what we need to do and sometimes we just aren't thinking about these particular things, but once we are, then it's pretty simple to make some changes and, quite frankly, these changes that we'll make to save food is also saving money, and we all know that the cost of food has just gone up. For example, we're wasting about 40% of our turkeys, but if we were to reduce the size of our turkeys by 40% and also reduce the amount of money that we're spending on those turkeys by 40%, wouldn't that be nice? I'm going to take you through this list of 11 steps. I also have the list available. I guess the easiest way to do this would be if you want this list, just send me a quick message and I will send it to you. I'll also work to put this on my Instagram account and my Facebook account and some kind of slide show so that you can see what these tips are.
Speaker 1:So number one is to write down a list of all the dishes you bring onto your Thanksgiving table. So, for example, turkey ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, pecan pie, cranberry sauce, all of it. Write down every single dish that's brought to your Thanksgiving table. Whether this is something that you're making all on your own, like your family, or this is something that it's kind of a potluck style and everybody's bringing to the mix, it doesn't matter. Write down all of the things that you could think of that show up on your Thanksgiving table. And right here it's important to say I don't want you to think that you can't do any of these things if you're not hosting Thanksgiving, because why can't we also bring these kitchen activism pieces to any Thanksgiving table? So if it's your mother who's hosting or a cousin or a sister or a brother who's hosting, or a friend, I'm sure that they wouldn't mind having the help to dial back food waste at their Thanksgiving meal.
Speaker 1:So the second step is to assess the popularity of each of those dishes. Are there any of those things, any of those food items that people wouldn't miss? For example, our family is not a big green bean casserole family or cranberry sauce family. What are those things that you have on your list because you feel like it's always been, it's been the tradition, or somebody along the way brought that particular dish and so we just do it without really thinking about it. And so let's just say, for example, if there's like green bean casserole. Going back to that, let's just say there's a few people who like green bean casserole, but there's always like this big casserole.
Speaker 1:That's next, which is how can you adjust your original menu to reflect the preferences of your guests? Omit those unpopular dishes and adjust those quantities to match what the preferences are of your guests? And ways that you can find out what your the preferences are is to take a poll with like Google Forms if you're technologically savvy or have somebody who is that can help you to get something like that together. Or just have a family meeting. Last year when I did this and we, it was my family and it was another dear friend of mine and her family who joined us. There's always a question of what do you want us to bring, and I, for the most part, we took care of the meal, but I had the list of the dishes that we were considering and then I sent her that list and said how many people in your party like these things? And so there was just one or two or three people who like particular things and I added it to our list and I understood what are the things that we could just cross off the list and how much really do I need to make for particular things?
Speaker 1:The other thing is just to reimagine the meal altogether. So this is with adjusting your original menu like to reimagine the meal altogether. If it comes down to really that nobody likes those traditional menu items, why force it? Why not just have a new tradition? Maybe instead it should be lasagna, or what we've done in the past is chicken bozole. It could be something new altogether. The big point for me is coming together, not necessarily having to eat the same thing every year if it doesn't work for your family, but instead just coming together and sharing a meal together that is nutritious and delicious and that you can all feel the gratitude to be around the table.
Speaker 1:So the fourth thing is to reevaluate the turkey size. Like I said earlier, we throw away about 40% of all turkey every year on that day collectively about $293 million worth of turkey. So do you manage to eat all the leftovers of your turkey, or do you get tired of those sandwiches before the meat has gone bad, and do you and your guests have a plan for that turkey? In other words, if you're having a big turkey, you can have turkey-based recipes to send home with leftovers of turkey. The rule of thumb is a pound of turkey per person. That rule of thumb obviously is not working because if we're throwing away 40% of our turkey, then we need to dial that back. I would say, really, it's probably closer to a quarter pound, to a half pound per person, and if you are taking that poll and you're finding that only 10 of the 20 people who are coming to your Thanksgiving table are going to eat turkey, then you're just going off of those 10 people and it's not a pound per person, it's a half a pound per person. So I mean you're really talking about small size, a really small size for a turkey. So then maybe instead of a turkey it should be a chicken, because turkeys are bigger birds so it is harder to get smaller turkeys. What I've done in the past when we've only had Thanksgiving for myself and Michael and the kids and my father my kids don't eat turkey, eat very little of it, and Michael and I do not like having leftover turkey for days and weeks. So we roast a chicken, because a chicken you can roast like a three pound chicken. So that is what we tend to do is to roast chicken, and chicken is much easier to keep moist than a big turkey, so that's another idea.
Speaker 1:Five write out your shopping list with the quantities. So this is, if you're making one dish or 10 dishes, it doesn't matter if it is a potluck style and what you're bringing to the table is, let's say, the sweet potato casserole. Write down what your shopping list is and have an understanding of how popular is that dish, how many people are really gonna eat those sweet potatoes at the table? Number six shop your pantry and refrigerator first, always, always, whether this is for Thanksgiving or any other day. Shop your pantry and refrigerator first. See what you have on hand, before you duplicate and set yourself up to waste.
Speaker 1:Number seven shop your farmer's market next. If you are in a region where your farmer's market is still open, because I understand many farmers markets are already starting to shut down. Mine here in California stays open all year long and I feel tremendous gratitude for that. But shop your farmer's market next. And when I say farmer's market, because there's things that do not shut down here, regardless of where you are, that are under the umbrella of farmer's market. So when I say farmer's market, that also includes those small shops, those small food producers who are really working hard to produce food using the best ingredients that there are, like, for example, that baker that's fermenting bread and is using organic flowers, or even biodynamic flowers, like we have here in our area. Shopping those places first before you go to the grocery store, which is number eight. Shop your grocery store, last Number nine. Purchase ingredients grown on farms that aren't using chemical pesticides, like your farmer's markets, your certified organic products in the grocery store. And things to look for are dry farmed, biodynamic, holistic, manage rotationally, graze, no till fair trade. These are all things that I discuss in my book Eat Less Water and also here on this podcast.
Speaker 1:You can go back to the episodes that I talk about specific ways of how we can support regenerative farming methods, which for me, I like to think of it as farming practices that give back more to the land and water and people than they take. But the actual definition of regenerative agriculture is returning carbon into the soil, so carbon farming. The soil is alive with microbiology, then that means that soil can hold more water and the farmer doesn't have to apply as much water to that particular crop and the soil can draw down carbon, which means it's taking carbon from the sky and putting it into the ground and taking that out of the atmosphere, which is the leading cause of climate change. So you can see that these action steps that I'm sharing with you are climate action. This is climate action at its best, because if we are each doing it at the individual level, it will add up and it will make a change for the better.
Speaker 1:So number 10 is to cook from scratch, and this is one of the reasons I love Thanksgiving so much is because it does get many of us who don't normally cook from scratch all the time to cook from scratch and because when we cook from scratch and this is why I advocate for scratch cooking as much as you can If you're currently cooking from scratch one time a week, how about try two times a week or three times a week? So, in other words, wherever you are now, let's work to increase that, or particular things that you always like to eat, instead of buying dressing, making your own salad dressing, instead of buying those tortillas, just making your tortillas from scratch or your pancakes from scratch, those kinds of things. So when you cook from scratch, you control the story, your ingredients tell and the dishes will have far fewer ingredients and no food additives like palm oil or binders or xanthan gums or any of those non-food ingredients that our bodies are really having a hard time figuring it out how to process it right when. It's not good for the planet to have all of these non-food ingredients and it's not good for our bodies either. And the last one is to have a leftover plan number 11. And those of you who know me know that I used to really be into numerology. I was really fascinated by it for a minute, and 11 is a number that means illumination, so I like that this is 11 tips because it is illuminating a new way to look at Thanksgiving and to really start to dial back our food waste. The 11th is to have a leftover plan to send food home, have people bring reusable containers for their leftovers so that they can freeze it, and have recipes for people to think about how they can use those leftovers. And then also for yourself, as you build out your menu for the week following Thanksgiving or even the week of Thanksgiving, really think about how you can incorporate leftovers into your Friday, saturday, sunday following Thanksgiving or a few days the following week. But really, if you do a good job for those previous 10 tips. Then you won't have a lot of leftovers at the end, and that's really what we're trying to achieve is to minimize the leftovers and to minimize that waste.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this. Like I said, if you are interested in having this list, I'm gonna work to have this on Instagram or Facebook my page Eat Less Water but I have this list to written out so you can email me at info at eatlesswatercom for a copy. I hope this lands in your inbox just in time as you're starting to think about shopping and planning for your Thanksgiving this year. I'll be back here next Wednesday.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me. Together, we will change the world with what Be well. Let's stay connected. Sign up for my newsletter and receive more tips in your inbox weekly and 15% off your first purchase at the Eat Less Water Shop. You can also find me on your favorite social media space, at Eat Less Water. Please remember to hit subscribe and leave a review, even if it's only the star rating, because every one of them will increase the chances of other like-minded folks to find us. Thank you for joining me on this journey to Eat Less Water. Together, we will write the story of wellbeing for this planet we have the privilege to call home. Meet you back here every Wednesday. There is power in the collective.