THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST podcast will give you bite-size action steps in each episode you can implement NOW in your kitchen, the most effective place to grow well-being for people and our planet. The host is the award-winning author of EAT LESS WATER and Kitchen Activist Florencia Ramirez.
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST
What If Your Kitchen Paid You Back $6,000 For Turning It into A Vehicle for Change?
What happens when a family transforms their kitchen from chaotic to organized? From having no shopping list or meal plan, to setting aside time each week to plan meals before heading out to the store? For Eva, a member of the Kitchen Activist Collective, it sparked a revolution that saved her marriage from food-related arguments, put $6,000 back in her pocket annually, and gave her a powerful way to combat climate anxiety.
Eva began with a simple yet profound step: organizing her kitchen, one of the four pillars of Kitchen Activism. She turned a frustrating space into a welcoming one by decluttering cabinets, creating designated spaces for everything, and establishing systems everyone could follow. The impact was immediate—no more hunting for utensils, duplicate grocery purchases, and significantly less food waste.
Once the organization was in place, meal planning, another step of Kitchen Activism, followed naturally. Eva and her husband developed a Sunday routine: checking what they already have, planning meals for the week ahead, and shopping with purpose at both the farmer's market and grocery stores. Their guiding principle? "Don't buy it if you don't have a plan for it." This intentionality eliminated the waste from buying produce without a strategy and reduced their takeout frequency by at least a third.
The financial benefits were substantial—$50 weekly grocery savings plus reduced restaurant spending added up to roughly $6,000 annually. But the non-monetary gains were equally valuable. Eva discovered she didn't hate cooking; she just hated deciding what to make when her energy was lowest. Her husband uncovered a passion for cooking that transformed their division of kitchen labor. Most importantly, their household tensions around food shopping disappeared.
The most powerful aspect of this kitchen transformation is how it is connected to larger environmental action. By reducing food waste, supporting local farmers, and decreasing packaging from takeout, Eva found a tangible way to combat climate anxiety. As she beautifully puts it, when you're "on the deck trying to save the boat, you're going to feel better than if you're inside in a corner."
Ready to transform your kitchen into a force for personal and planetary good? The Kitchen Activist Collective is open for new members. Join us to discover how your everyday food choices can become powerful acts of change.
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Reach me at info@eatlesswater.com
Hi, my name is Florencia and I'm so glad you're here. I'm so excited about this conversation I'm going to dive into in a few moments with Eva, because Eva gives us a real clear example of how, when we're intentional with grocery shopping, when we meal plan which are just a few of the core strategies that I talk about in kitchen activism and also within the Kitchen Activist Collective we can transform what's happening in our homes. I wanted to bring Eva on as I have a quote on my website with you, eva, quote on my website of with you, eva, and you said and I love this quote because it just goes to the heart of many things that we don't think about, because when we think about meal planning which is how much money we save and also about how it I always talk about the connection between meal planning and being an environmental activist. But what I love about this quote is you talk about something even more so this is what you said the action steps I've learned inside the collective have saved us at least $50 weekly on groceries and even more by reducing takeout.
Speaker 1:My husband used to buy the same groceries every week, whether we needed them or not. Now, with meal planning, he only buys what we need and we often shop together at the farmer's market. Being part of the Kitchen Activist Collective has been a game changer for our budget, kitchen and relationship. No more arguments about groceries. With that, I want to introduce you and your voice and your story onto this podcast. Thank you, eva, for coming on.
Speaker 2:Hi, florencia and everyone. I'm really happy to be here, take part in this podcast Wonderful. So when I read that quote, what does that bring up for you, if you want to just talk about what you were thinking about when you gave me that quote and you told me that story? Another bag of potatoes, and we already have five pounds of potatoes stored up in the pantry.
Speaker 2:It has always been a point of tension how many, really?
Speaker 2:How many onions do we need in a week?
Speaker 2:Or how many bananas or tomatoes? Those were his go-to for some reason, because he would leave to the supermarket without having checked the kitchen or having a list, and so we would end up with an overflow of those things and, of course, a lot of it goes to waste because you don't get to use it before they spoil. So, having been more conscious about making grocery lists, we have a board in the kitchen where we write what we need, and he doesn't leave the house without checking the refrigerator, the pantry, to see what we need. And also, with all of us, he sends a text, a group text Does anyone need anything from the grocery store? So everyone in the house because we have three young adults in the house can send in their grocery list things that they are running out of, not things that they just want, but things that they know they don't have in the freezer or the pantry. So this has well saved a lot of money. Not only money, but also it has lessened the waste that we produce in the kitchen.
Speaker 1:So your husband does the grocery shopping and has done that the way that you have structured your marriage. Take us back to what are his jobs around food, what are your jobs around food and how do you manage that? Before you started the Kitchen Activist Collective and started some of these strategies that I heard you talk about, like shopping the kitchen first, for example, take us back before that the pre-meal plan days what did it look like? And then we'll go into the post. You gave us a good overall general sense of what it's like, but I wanted to dial down a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Before COVID my husband's job always took him away from home, so he spent a lot of weeks even outside of California.
Speaker 2:So he would come back on the weekends but he would leave during the week. We didn't really have a lot of interaction with him really during the week. So I was the main cook and the main person that would go to the supermarket and it was a lot for me. But having a full time job during COVID, he was grounded and he became interested in the kitchen because he has owns like that but didn't have the time for it. So he became very involved in the kitchen and so there were a lot of growing pains with that, because then he wanted to be involved in the grocery shopping and so he would take off and that's when he started wanting to be that person to do the groceries and so I was happy to relent that part of it, except he would come back with things he didn't need or a lot of jars of something like a lot of jars of he would forget if he had already bought jelly like, and then he would bring another jar of jelly the next week.
Speaker 2:So if they would yeah and jelly, something that would last forever, so they would end up with five jars of jelly of the same jelly in the pantry. So there were a lot of I would say more duplicate shopping, and that's when it all started. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So he was taking over on shopping during COVID, but who was cooking?
Speaker 2:Yes, that was still me, but then he started wanting to do some of the cooking. So he started trying his own recipes and trying to learn how to cook on his own and, because that was his favorite way of doing it just by trial and error, without a recipe. Without a recipe, yeah, and very interesting, he created very interesting meals what was something you remember?
Speaker 1:don't remember exactly, just things that were not very edible but that was in the early days, because right before we got onto this call, you just had a wonderful meal that he cooked for all of you, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, he has been getting better and better and the best part is that he really likes it. Yeah, he has really discovered that cook with him. So it's great because he does a lot of the cooking when I'm busy. Because he's after COVID, his employer didn't bring him back to the office so he has been working from home all this time since COVID. So now he has practically taken over the kitchen in many ways.
Speaker 2:So we share the kitchen for the days that I am not at home because I'm still out there working outside of the home. So he gets to cook on those days. So he's been cooking a lot lately, like today it's a sunday, so it's either me or him that cook on sundays. We usually make enough food because we know we're gonna be busy during the first part of the week, so we usually make enough food to last for monday and maybe tuesday. So we plan whoever cooks on sunday, we make enough and it not. It doesn't have to be enough for main dish, but we can create dishes that can be used as a side dish for something else that we may make.
Speaker 1:So your Sunday midtime meal is your batch cooking, and then you sit down and have that. So for today just to give us, because I love to know what it is. I need examples, and I need examples also because it gives me good ideas. Right, that is also what we're doing here is cross-pollinating. It's beginning with today, with Sunday. What did he make and how are you planning to incorporate some of the leftovers into Monday and Tuesday? To incorporate?
Speaker 2:some of the leftovers into Monday and Tuesday. Today he made cauliflower and potatoes in a masala sauce like a tikka masala sauce. It's a big batch and rice.
Speaker 1:So did he double? Would you say he doubled or tripled the recipe?
Speaker 2:No, I would say he doubled the recipe. There were two heads of cauliflower potatoes and in the sauce and rice. That can be a whole meal really for tomorrow, but today we used it as a side dish with we just returned from Germany last week Because he's German, he's German, he's German, and so the kids were complaining that the restaurants in Germany they don't make schnitzel as good as he does, which is true, he makes a really good schnitzel, he makes schnitzel. So schnitzel is pork chop but you pound it to make it very thin and then you bread that and I don't know, I don't know how to make it. He makes it.
Speaker 1:Oh, but that sounds to me like a milanesa of pork.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, okay, a milanesa of pork, and of course that's fried, and then accompany that with, depending on the region, right? But here, because we are multicultural, we can have it with masala cauliflower and rice. For tomorrow we'll have just the masala cauliflower over rice for dinner or for lunch and possibly Tuesday. I have planned now for usually on either Monday night, if we run out of something, or Tuesday night. It's my day then to cook, and then I'm going to be making pasta very simple because I'm really busy. So I'll be making pasta with pesto, just basil pesto that I'll make from scratch and they love that, so the whole family can eat pasta. That'll probably be good, or maybe some leftovers can be used for lunch the next day. Wednesdays is our flex day. We're all over the place, everybody's everywhere else. The leftovers is our first come, first serve in the fridge. Whoever comes can have the leftovers, and we have eggs. That's our go-to if you run out of leftovers.
Speaker 1:And where are you getting your eggs from? Oh, we have chickens, your backyard chickens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our backyard chickens, so we make a lot of things that have eggs. Yeah, so he made also today. This morning he was very busy, very industrious. This morning he made some apple pancakes, german apple pancakes with slices of apples. So we buy apples and that's another thing he loves to have always in the kitchen is apples so he'll slice them up and he'll make apple pancakes and we'll have that for breakfast the next day, because they can be stored in the refrigerator. You just warm them up and they keep very good.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned that your kitchen has changed now versus how it was before you started meal planning. So the meal plan is something that you started to do when you were introduced to it with a kitchen activist, and that was, for you, the turning point. The turning point, what about meal planning? Shifted everything in the way that your husband started to shop for food. How was that transformative in your kitchen?
Speaker 2:I think the first thing that I transformed was not the meal planning, it was organizing the kitchen. And I remember specifically in your book the part about organizing the kitchen. And the kitchen was not welcoming for anyone Because you had to find everything, and if you have to dig into drawers to find the one thing you need, it's really difficult to find pleasure in cooking if everything is organized. So that was my first. The first thing that I did is was organize the kitchen. Now everybody knows where everything is and where to put it back. So this thing in back, because we don't have space in the cabinets in our kitchen. So we bought this whole cabinet in the back so that we can store the bigger pots, the bigger appliances or pots that we need in the kitchen right in front.
Speaker 1:So those pieces of furniture happened after you began the kitchen organization?
Speaker 2:Yes, actually right before, we decided we're going to organize and we need more shelf space and we needed to get rid of like half of what we had. I was going to ask that we have very small cabinets, so I wanted everything organized in the cabinets and I didn't have space for the Dutch oven, for example, things like that, or like your special dishes or whatever. So they came to this piece in the back. So there's a lot of space in here, the shelves and that's where I put the bigger pots like to make tamales.
Speaker 2:Those huge pots to make tamales and things like that get stored here and now I had space for all the things that were left from my cleaning, and we have space in the kitchen to store things, so then it became really easy listening to this and not watching this on YouTube, then what I'm looking at behind Eva is a black pantry with glass on the doors and If you can see, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:It's very nice, this is where you can organize.
Speaker 2:It has a lot of space to organize.
Speaker 1:Yes, I see the rice cooker. So that's where you keep all your appliances in the bottom part.
Speaker 2:Yes, your food processor is there because it's bigger and I don't have space for it in the kitchen.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the areas where you can see through the glass doors. I can see how beautiful and organized everything is so it's your wine glasses and it just and it feels good.
Speaker 1:Right, like it feels good. It shifts everything in the kitchen when it's organized. Just something so simple that we all have control over. Right? There's so many things that we don't we can't control about what's happening in the world or the environment, but there are many things that we don't we can't control about what's happening in the world or the environment, but there are many things that we can control, like how organized our cabinets are, or that we can go through everything and get rid of the things that no longer serve us but might serve somebody else. So what did you do with the? Was it difficult to let go of the extra mugs or extra glasses or the extra set of plates, for example, that nobody was using but maybe were gifted to you by somebody? How did that work out for you?
Speaker 2:For me it's not difficult, but my husband yes, for my husband it's very painful to let go of things. So I had two piles. One was like the ones that were going to go directly to the trash because they were even too old to donate and then the donation pile.
Speaker 2:So I started organizing them into piles. So he kept sometimes wanting to take things from the donation pile. So every time he wanted to keep something I had to ask him what are you going to use it for? Where are you going to store it? So he went through that process of having to let go of those things and they were going to go and someone else was going to use them and they weren't going to go to the trash. Someone else was going to be able to enjoy that his favorite mug, anyway but it was necessary because we had been hoarding so much through the years.
Speaker 1:So he had many favorite mugs, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, Of different shapes.
Speaker 1:And I think I need to also mention that you are in my writing group, eva's in my writing group. She is an incredibly talented YA writer and I have been showing you my chapters of the Kitchen Activist, which will not be out until next spring, so you have a sneak peek of the kitchen organization chapter, which, in the Kitchen Activist Collective, is something that I'm putting together. We would have these seasonal kitchen organization parties, so we would come together and all be on Zoom and just help each other with ideas, getting feedback from others of good ideas of how to store things, but also just keeping each other accountable and creating a space where we can do that, because it's not a one and done thing. It's like you have to continually keep it organized, but once you have a system in place, it's a lot of maintenance because you've already moved out the things that no longer serve you.
Speaker 1:You've already bought the pieces of furniture that worked in the shape of your kitchen and your space that work, and so those, the harder pieces, you've already done the first time and then it just becomes maintaining it because, you do want to cook more, like how you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1:If you want to cook, if you open up a cabinet and everything is shoved in and you can't find the spatula, it also takes longer for everything and we don't have the time to spend digging through all of our things to find simple essential kitchen tools that we need to cook a good meal.
Speaker 2:You hit an important point. You waste so much time trying to get or dig out of your drawers what you need or the pot that you need. That is so much time involved in finding everything. So you are saving a lot of time by spending the time to organize your kitchen. And also the maintenance is very important. If someone else is putting away dishes and they're in the wrong place, you have to take time to put it back where it belongs and let them know where it actually belongs. That's part of the maintenance. And also not buying things. Unless you mean to replace something that you already have. Just stop accumulating things. So no one can buy things here for the house unless it's coming to replace something that's broken practically.
Speaker 1:And that also helps the environment. Right the overconsumption that we do often because we don't know where our things are so we duplicate. Not only are we duplicating food when our kitchen, pantry and refrigerator is not organized and so you don't know that you actually had that one ingredient in your refrigerator because it's shoved to the back of the refrigerator so you've lost it, but that's also the case with our kitchen tools. The essentials were we didn't realize that we had you know that again the spatula, and so we go out and buy it. But then when we do go through the process of kitchen organization we find that we had four.
Speaker 1:I hadn't remembered about the kitchen organization and that was what you had tackled first For meal planning, when I had asked you how much money were you saving as a result of meal planning after you had gone through the Kitchen Activist, the beginning part of a pilot program that I had put together, and you had told me that you save about $50 a week on groceries. So when I did the calculation, that's about $200 a month on groceries, which adds up to about $2,400 a year. The larger population, the statistic is anywhere between that $1,800 to $2,400 in a year that you can save when you waste less, or that's actually how much we are wasting every year by throwing food away. That's not used in time. Because you also talked about your cooking more often, because when you cook more often then that means you're eating out less often. And so I did the calculation on that, because there's five of you in the house and I estimated that if you cut back, would you say you've cut back a third, at least a third of the time that you were eating out.
Speaker 2:Because now you're cooking more often.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree. Well, that would be another savings of about $347 a month. Does that sound like a fair calculation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's easily because it's five of us. Yeah, so I know we're not together all the time, but if there's always food at home, that person is not going to go and spend it outside.
Speaker 1:So that adds up to an additional $4,000 a year. So overall, your combined savings by just meal planning is about $6,000 a year. Isn't that it just when I did the calculation, it just sounds astounding, right? When we actually put the numbers down on the page and do the calculation of how it adds up very quickly. Yeah, it's phenomenal of how much money that you're saving, but that's attached to how much food you're not throwing out, that you're saving as well.
Speaker 1:Saving as well or you're not going out to eat. I know for myself if I don't meal plan, I'll pick up food or I'll have Michael go pick something up. So it's not an intentional going out to eat, because I do love to go out to eat, but when I have it in the meal plan, oh, this, the Friday, we're going to go out to eat, and then I've chosen the place that we're going to go out to eat instead of oh, we're really hungry, what should we go get? And then you end up sometimes going to eat to a place that you wouldn't have chosen otherwise. Or there's lots of bags of takeout plastic and styrofoam and all the things that sadly come with takeout food. So I don't know if that is also what you experience when you don't meal plan.
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely yes. When you don't meal plan and there's no food, someone's going to go buy something outside, and this is with now, all the prices going up. It's really expensive, much more expensive than when we talked, even, and everything has gone up in price.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and going out to eat has gone up, so much, usually between $20, $25 a person.
Speaker 2:This is not restaurant food, this is just fast takeout somewhere.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the shopping part, because I know for myself, actually, when I'm sitting on the couch, my day has ended and I finally get to sit on the couch and then I think, okay, I need to make dinner. And there's that moment on the days that I'm really tired, cause I think naturally the rhythm of our day, like our energy level, goes down around the same time we need to gear up to cook. I think it's just like the natural rhythm and there's those days where I will think them and there's those days where I will think I don't feel like making anything. Maybe I could just have Michael go pick something up. But the thing that gets me over that hump is that I already have the ingredients sitting there, so I don't want to waste it because I've already spent the money on food and then I don't have to think about what I need to make.
Speaker 1:I have to go through that process, like what did I say I'm going to make tonight? Oh yeah, I'm going to make stir fry and I have all the ingredients there. I can do this because by the time Michael goes and picks something up and I would already have the meal nearly done. So that's breaking through those barriers that we place on between our energy level and in executing the meal. And then afterwards I'm so happy that I did and because my body feels good, I spent less money. It's just cozy because you're in your house and you're in your kitchen and you have your music on and just the whole thing. That was a long way to say how does it look for you when that time of the day comes and how you push through those ideas that I can't do this. I can't cook tonight.
Speaker 2:I have to speak only for myself because my husband I find him cooking sometimes at 12 midnight. He'll be cooking at that time whenever he's not like I get really tired, I just want to relax at the end of the day. But I'll find him cooking sometimes if I stop over for lunch during work and he'll be cooking during this break that he has, or like at night after he's done everything and he feels, oh, I'm gonna cook for tomorrow, he'll be cooking at yeah, like I said, like 10 o'clock he starts gathering his stuff, or sometimes midnight and there's a waft of onions going up. In my case, what I do is just make my life easy, so I only pick things that will take no more than 30 minutes to make. For example, the pasta that I have planned.
Speaker 2:The pesto is the easiest thing to make. Just throw it in the food processor. The ingredients you just pull them all out. Plug them all in the food processor, you have your pesto Taquitos. You can never go wrong with tacos. If you have tortillas and you have any leftover chicken, roasted chicken, you can make tacos. Just shred some lettuce and tomatoes and you have tacos. Just make it easy for yourself so you have energy at least I would say, 30 minutes is not a bad if you're very tired. But you're're thinking, okay, I know that I can just whip that up in 15 minutes, you're going to do it. But if you have planned this whole project, that is, that you know that is going to be like an hour before you eat, you're not going to do it because by the time you get done it's past your dinner time.
Speaker 1:And it can take 30 minutes because you don't have to go to the store to buy the things that you need to come home and then cook. Or even what I found when I felt like for many years feeling like I hated making dinner, like I dreaded that time of the day, and the game changer for me was meal planning, because what I realized it wasn't making dinner. I hated, it was thinking about what to make for dinner when my energy level was at its lowest.
Speaker 2:That's the part that I hate Correct, correct. Yes, when I say that I make it easy for myself is something that I've already planned, and when I plan what to make during the week is always going to be something that is not going to take 30 minutes, but the ingredients are in the fridge, right? Like you say, you make your list and when you go do your groceries either Sunday or whenever you haven't planned you make sure that you have those ingredients, because you went through your list and you knew what you didn't have in your refrigerator, what you need to have for that meal.
Speaker 1:So what is the day that you plan? When do you meal plan? When does that work for your family? Sundays Okay, so on Sundays, and what does that look like? Walk us through that.
Speaker 2:What does it look like? We get up in the morning. If we can make the farmer's market Sunday morning, we'll go to the farmer's market and then we're already thinking about what we would like to have that week either mushrooms or something that we know we can find in the farmer's market, and then we can incorporate into the meal. So we'll start with an idea okay, I'll need. Something else that I like to get from the farmer's market is passion fruit. You cannot find passion fruit unless you have a plant, but at the grocery stores you can't find them. So they'll have stuff like that at the farmer's market that you're not going to find at your regular grocery store. We'll get some passion fruit so you can make a refreshment for the week, or nuts or mushrooms. But we will sit down before we actually go to the farmer's market and think about what is it that we want to make for the week, and then my husband will say, oh, I want to make this, or that.
Speaker 2:He usually knows what he wants to make. He is really easy that way because he doesn't have to think about it. He knows what he wants to make that. So he makes it easy, so he knows his ingredients, and then he'll have to go to the refrigerator before we take off, and he also does part of the shopping. He makes sure that he has those ingredients when he goes to do his groceries, and that's part of the process. And then I'm the one who has to think about okay, what is it that I'm going to do? And usually I'll just ask the young adults, oh, what is it that they want? To have to get suggestions from the clan so that I can plan on that. But that whole planning has to be done before we leave to the farmer's market.
Speaker 1:So you go to the farmer's market, because that's what we do too. It sounds exactly like our Sunday morning we get up, we have breakfast, we sit down, we look to see first what we have in our kitchen. We shop our kitchen first. That's a huge action step as part of kitchen activism. So simple, just shop your kitchen first. But it's not something that I used to do. You just because oftentimes you're out and about, you're at the grocery store when you're thinking about what to put on your shopping list and you don't know what you have and you're going off of memory with all the other things that we're trying to remember. It's just, it was jam-packed in our minds. There's no way we're going to remember all the contents in our pantry, in our refrigerator, and then from there go to the farmer's market and then from there to the grocery store right yes, on the same day, so you go to the grocery store usually on yes, on the same day, so you go to the grocery store.
Speaker 2:Usually on the same day, because Sundays are the day that we usually use for meal planning and grocery shopping and anything else that needs to get done around the house. It's not just one grocery store, right? We usually split our grocery shopping, so he'll go to one grocery store and I'll do the other, so it's usually three places that we shop the farmer's market and our co-op type of grocery store.
Speaker 1:Trader Joe's. So that's how you divide it. But the farmer's market, you're together, because I've seen you at the farmer's market it's fun to go together and then you have a coffee, or yes, beautiful yeah. So let me ask you this, eva before you got into kitchen activism, how often were you going to the farmer's market versus now?
Speaker 2:I did visit the farmer's market before. I used to do it, but then I stopped for a while. But it wasn't with the same mindset. Like I would go to the farmer's market before and we would buy, let's say, before we had the chickens, we'd buy the eggs and we would bring produce, and then we didn't have a plan for the produce and sometimes that produce would, because you got so excited. You know the ideas on how you were going to eat better, and so you would end up buying all these products that then you didn't get to cook during the week. I'm more mindful now when I go to the farms market to not bring any photos. The phrase that I use a lot when we go shopping is don't buy it if you don't have a plan for it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like that just goes to waste. Yes, that's a really great mantra. Don't buy it unless you have a plan for it. Oh, I like that, it just goes to waste. Yes, that's a really great mantra. Don't buy it unless you have a plan for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only thing that doesn't fall into that is fruit, because fruit is always good to have it available, but everything else, any vegetable that needs to be cooked, you need to have a plan for it.
Speaker 1:Do you see meal planning as a form of activism or empowerment?
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely. If you reduce waste, you are helping the planet and you're helping yourselves, right? Because if the planet goes, I think, the planet will remain right, but I would like to also remain in the planet. We're helping ourselves by helping the planet will remain right, but I would like to also remain in the planet. We're helping ourselves by helping the planet.
Speaker 1:It was a demonstration where I had young people with me for climate action and one of the young she was in high school at the time and she was writing on the poster Save the Earth. And I said actually it's not the earth that we're trying to save, because the earth, as you said, the earth will be here. The earth is going to survive. It's whether or not we will survive as a human species. If the weather becomes too extreme, then it becomes too difficult for us to survive. The stakes are high, but we are coming at it from a place of action and empowerment. Is this a salve for climate anxiety? In many ways. Do you know that you're contributing to the solution through your food and wasting less food and aligning yourself with farmers who are growing food organically and who are in alignment with nature? Do you find that's helping you when we're hearing all of this negative news around what's happening around the globe, with our planet around the globe?
Speaker 2:with our planet. Definitely, you can feel very hopeless if you listen to the news and you start believing that there's nothing that you can do about it. And I think it is all hands on deck. I think that if you are on the deck trying to save the boat, you're going to feel better than if you're inside in a corner. That's true, that's how. We're in the corner, just waiting for someone else to do it for you. It makes you feel empowered and it makes you feel better about what your part is in this effort. You're not just waiting for someone else to do it. And if you really think about, like you're mentioning, the collective, this thing spread and one friend can bring another into it. And movements don't usually start by a thousand people doing one thing. It usually starts with one person and then from there it just grows. So that's a movement start. So we're part of this movement right To incorporate the saving of the planet and be very conscious in the kitchen that we can do our part.
Speaker 1:I love what you just said. I wonder is there any advice that you could give someone who wants to start meal planning, who wants to start using their food as an action to heal this planet? Where would you suggest that they begin?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think organization really organizing your kitchen. I'm glad that when I was reading your chapter, the first one I read was about kitchen organization, because I think it does start there, because once you organize your kitchen, you know where things go, your mind feels clear and your kitchen feels more welcoming. It's a place where you want to be, spend time in and cook. I think it just gives you that motivation. I would start by organizing it. Just start by organizing the kitchen removing the clutter, creating space, creating space. Organize your pantry, your spices, and once you go through all the spices that you didn't even remember you had, you're going to start wanting to use them. So that just starts you in the path. And then I would say, start the meal planning, because now you have space to create space too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story, opening up your kitchen to us, your pantry, and showing us what you've done and how you are incorporating kitchen activism into your daily life and how the rewards go well beyond the money saved, although it's a lot of money, but how it's improved so many other aspects of your life that maybe we don't think about. Thank you so much, eva, for being here and, for those of you who are listening, I want you to know that you can also join us with meal planning and kitchen organization, with meal planning and kitchen organization and, if you want to join us in the Kitchen Activist Collective, that will be opening up for new members on Earth Day. So I hope to see you there as well, eva. Thank you again so much, and we'll just keep at it.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm happy to be here, florencia.
Speaker 1:Thank you.