Speaking of breaking habits, some pretty fabulous bloggy-peeps have been participating in EYCC!
- Yancy over at Five Seed has committed to stop printing receipts for her customers. I've always just thrown the receipts away anyhow- and when you order online the employer has your info there anyway... so it's a perfect and easy step! Go Yancy :)
- EcoGrrl has suggested keeping a spare junk towel for wiping your cast iron pans- definitely a great idea to delegate one (or two) specific rags for this job.
- Alli over at Ocean Treasures has taken a huge step and I am SO excited for her... she's going CLOTH for TP. LOVE this! Read the first step of her journey- I am in love with her anatomically correct starfish. I can't wait to read more about her cloth TP adventure and be inspired!
- Rachel from Suburban Yogini suggests using newspaper for mopping up bacon fat instead of paper towel (perfect!).
- Brenda of Grounding Thru the Sit Bones suggests using old cloth diapers- super absorbent! It's also great that they will have a use post diaper stage.
How about it? Have any suggestions on how to decrease paper products in your life? How has the Challenge to increase our connection with the Earth been going so far for you?
As we committed, Andrew has managed to make delicious pizza dough from scratch... and freeze two of them! As a result, we'll be able to have frozen pizza sans boxboard or preservatives. And it actually wasn't that difficult (says the person who really just watched Andrew put it together lol). Sadly, we forgot to take pictures of the process, but lets just say they were perfect and tasty!
I will apologize in advance, since Andrew insists on weighing everything... and therefore the recipe is in grams... According to google, 230g is about a cup, depending on the density of what you're measuring.
Homemade Pizza Dough:
- First: combine water, yeast and honey:
- 230g of water
- 5g of yeast
- 2g of honey
In another bowl add:
- 375g of flour (Andrew used whole wheat)
- 8g salt
- 9g oil
- 4g of sugar
Let rise for 1 or 1.5 hours (Andrew's answer to my shocked face was: "Hey, that's how you develop gluten").
Put in the mixer at 2nd speed for about 8 minutes (or kneed by hand forever... Andrew's words. He loves the stand mixer).
From here you can either portion out two pizzas, freeze both OR portion out three-freeze one, cooking the other two. Roll them on using a rolling pin. With pizza ingredients make sure you bake at 500F for 5 minutes (or less) OR if you have a pizza stone, less than 5 minutes.
To freeze: roll out and place on a cookie sheet and then in the freezer (you might need to make some room while it freezes). Once frozen, take out and put in an old bread bag... or pita bread bag. Voila- frozen pizza dough :)
Blessings!
article copyright of EcoYogini at ecoyogini.blogspot.com
YUM.
ReplyDeleteQuick comment on the newspaper for bacon fat - remember it now has to go in the garbage (can't recycle with food particles, animal fat will attract rodents in the compost pile).
Great tip from Yancy! Another thing I learned about receipts? They are made from lowest grade and are actually not recyclable. So when I do have to get receipts, I am putting them (along with the occasional frozen food & butter boxes that can't be treated) into a paper bag to use as 'kindling' for my summertime fire pit.
Mmm, pizza.
Here's my paper-reducing tip;
ReplyDeleteBe sure to select paperless billing for all credit accounts and/or online bank and credit statements. It's a simple step that saves SOOO much paper waste.
LOVE. We've been contemplating for months freezing homemade pizza dough and I have no clue why we haven't tried it yet....afraid to lose it maybe? Glad to hear it works---we'll have to give it a try! I wonder what would happen if you topped it and then froze?!
ReplyDeletethe thing i can't figure out is this: it's great to make food from scratch like pizza and bread and freeze it for convenience, i do it a lot, but but i still need to use plastic bags for the freezer, and i wish there was a way to cut down on plastic in this respect too.
ReplyDeleteI love EcoGrrl's tips about using receipts for kindling. My receipts were on regular printer paper - recyclable - but I realized it was unnecessary. Anyone who orders from me can go to their account page and see any of their invoices any time. There's no need for a big piece of paper!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the inspiration! Can't wait to try this dough, either!
All of you are AMAZING! I am inspired!
ReplyDeleteI never thought of honey! What a great idea!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Andrew. I LOVE my stand mixer...I got it for x-mas and still haven't posted about it...Part 2 of my cloth TP story coming soon!
Here in Halifax where eco yogini and I live, all box board goes in the green bin:) We save that stuff for kindling too.
ReplyDeletejust wanted to add that you can sometimes take your own containers for ready made foods when you want to get something convenient without the packaging. My favorite local bulk tea place won't let me reuse their bags or bring my own container though:( But pete's frootique (at least the downtown one) is happy to put any of their deli stuff in a container that I bring with me.
the thermal paper receipts are horrible things covered in chemicals and they should not go in the recycling with other paper.