Food, sustainablity, and some other stuff
J and I recently ran out of gochujang, a spicy fermented red pepper paste ubiquitous in Korean cooking. Since I’ve been trying more than usual to not buy things in plastic packaging, I was hesitant to buy a new container. (Although Wholly Jang offers gochujang and other products in glass, the company is currently on hiatus as they move to a different facility.) Fortunately, I discovered that you can make your own at home with just a few ingredients!!
Now that I’ve worked the kinks out of my mom’s bun recipe (the first version she sent had a few typos in it…), I can share it with you! These buns are delicious– slightly sweet, moist, fluffy. Even when I substitute a ton of the ingredients, they still turn out completely fine!
1 1/8 tsp yeast
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter, softened (1/4 cup butter can be used for lower fat)
1 egg
1/2 cup mashed potatoes
1/2 cup rolled oats
3 1/2 cup bread flour (Start with 3 cups. Reserve 1/2 cup for adjusting the texture of the dough.) Continue reading “My mom’s potato bun recipe!! Delicious!”
I’ve recently been using The Korean Table, a Korean cookbook by Taekyung Chung and Debra Samuels. This book is okay, but there are surely much much better Korean cookbooks out there. (Have you seen Maangchi’s website?) Overall, the book is well laid out and has pretty pictures, but it substitutes ingredients too much. Continue reading “The Korean Table book review”
This simple recipe is from The Korean Table by Taekyung Chung and Debra Samuels. J posted pictures.
2 cups (350 g) corn kernels
1 Tbs miso
3/4 cup (100 g) flour
1/2 cup (125 g) water
1/4 tsp salt
Mix. Fry in oil ~3 min on each side. Serve with dipping sauce of choice.
We added some kimchi (~40 g) and some finely chopped leftover pork ( ~20 g), and ate it with mayonnaise and tempura dipping sauce. The fritters were pretty good! Surprisingly sweet because of the sweet corn, but a pleasant change from eating it on the cob.
As a followup to my Low-waste dental hygiene post, I’ll tell you which options I’ve chosen and what I plan to change in the future.
This topic is kind of complicated, because there are no obvious best answers. And you don’t wanna skimp on your teeth – like with health, prevention is a lot cheaper and a lot more effective than treatment. But I’ll give you all the information I have! Continue reading “Low-waste dental hygiene”
Here are some more tips you can use to reduce the amount of waste you produce! Please start with this post for simpler, and more beginner-friendly tips.
These tips are more difficult, simply because you can’t just swap out a reusable product for a disposable one. These require behavioral change (which is hard!). But do your best! You may find some of these simple to adopt. Continue reading “10+ intermediate tips to help you produce less waste”
Zero waste is a philosophy advocating for the indefinite cyclical reuse of materials and resources, often in a way that mimics how resources are reused in nature (e.g. composting). The idea of zero waste has been around for a while, since the 1970s, but has recently been adopted as an individual lifestyle, thanks in large part to Bea Johnson of Zero Waste Home. The goal of a zero waste lifestyle is to produce zero waste.
However, “waste” is rather ambiguous in this context. It can refer to garbage sent to the landfill, or garbage and recycling, or sometimes garbage and recycling and compost.
Additionally, I don’t like the phrase “zero waste”. It’s unreachable, depending on how waste is defined, and thus misleading. And it encourages perfectionism, which is exclusionary and off-putting. I prefer to talk about “waste reduction” or a “low waste” lifestyle, which everyone can adopt to some extent.
So the question becomes:
It can seem really daunting to try to reduce the amount of waste you produce. The extremes are so extreme: hoarders at one end, and the (unreachable) goal of zero waste at the other. Instead of trying to be perfect right from the beginning, make small changes that will have a big impact in your life! You’ll likely find that a majority of your trash is generated from just a few activities; if you can reduce the waste associated with those activities, your overall trash production will go down a lot!
Continue reading “10+ easy things you can do to produce less waste”
The recipe for the banana bread seen in J’s previous post is from the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook (not sure what year, but it’s kinda old).
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup toasted, coarsely chopped walnuts
3 very ripe, soft, darkly speckled large bananas, mashed well
1/4 cup plain yoghurt
2 large eggs
6 Tb butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, walnuts). Mix wet ingredients (banana, yoghurt, eggs, butter, vanilla). Mix wet and dry ingredients together until just combined. Batter should be thick.
Bake for ~55 min (knife inserted into center should come out clean) at 350°F in greased loaf pan.