Happy Belated Earth Day!

Photo source: http://food-management.com/colleges-amp-universities/low-carbon-food-earth-day-2013

Earth Day was on Monday, so I'm a few days late, but I wanted to share this article about a cool event that occurred at 500 college-campus cafeterias and cafes managed by Bon Appetit Management Company:

The catering company hosted Low Carbon Diet Day, as it has been doing since 2008, replacing typical dishes with versions with a lower carbon footprint.

Foods that have a high carbon footprint that they eliminated included beef, cheese, milk, and fresh air-freighted fruit.

Instead, they cooked edamame burgers, pesto (cheese-less) pizza, and almond-milk smoothies with flash-frozen fruit.

Photo source: http://twincommodities.com/Almonds.html

As their VP explained regarding the impact of cow's milk and fresh berries, “Cow’s milk…is a high-carbon product—of all food animals, cows produce the most methane, a greenhouse gas that is accelerating climate change... Meanwhile, instead of using air-freighted berries from another continent, we can use berries that were flash-frozen last summer at the peak of ripeness, retaining all of their flavor and nutrients.”

See the entire article here.

I thought this event was a great reminder of the carbon impact of a lot of common food items, and also of what types of foods can be used as replacement ingredients if you decide to have a low carbon diet day. Happy Earth Day!

Thai Market in Silver Spring

I've had a Thai cookbook for the past year or so which I've been meaning to try some recipes from, but I got stalled every time I did because I couldn't find all the ingredients at my typical grocery stores. Luckily, there are a few specialty grocery stores in the DC area that sell Thai groceries, and one in Silver Spring a short walk from the Silver Spring metro, called Thai Market.

 

As a huge food nerd, I thought this was a lot of fun. It was exciting to walk around a store with such a variety of unusual (to me) ingredients and pick things to try. In general, they have much more dried and canned items than fresh foods, but I found almost all of what I was looking for. And for really good prices. 

I bought: a couple types of dried red chiles, fresh green chiles, dried shrimp, jarred shrimp paste, oyster sauce, fresh lemon grass, fresh Thai basil, cardamom pods, garlic, dried kaffir lime leaves (which smell amazing), soba noodles, and several packages of really awesome-looking rice noodles for making Pad Thai and Drunken Noodles later.

I wanted to buy, but didn't want to carry home, one of their huge bags of jasmine rice.

They also had several types of coconut water and juice and lots of types of soy sauce and fish sauce... and a lot more.

I spent $50 on all of this, which I feel like is a really good price for the number of things I bought, especially since spices and sauces are usually expensive at regular grocery stores. I've been having fun trying out some of the things I bought, and will have a lot on hand for a while, so this is definitely a good place to go and stock up. And I'm sure I'll be back.