(upbeat music)
- You ready to spend the day with us?
Let's go, come on!
Hey everyone, it's Sustainability Week here at Bazaar.
I'm Lauren Singer, and I'm going to show you
how I go through my entire day, breakfast, lunch and dinner,
without creating any trash, any waste, or use any plastic.
I'm going to walk you through my routine,
starting with breakfast, which I don't eat,
and haven't eaten since I was, probably, an infant.
I think a lot of people think that eating breakfast
is super important, the most important meal of the day,
bla, bla, bla, but for me,
I believe it's more about listening
to your body and what works for you.
And what works for me, is just having a nice cup of coffee,
and taking my day slowly,
and then going into lunch and dinner later.
I make my coffee in a French press.
I do it because, one, I drink a lot of coffee,
and we can fit a lot of coffee in here,
but two, because I buy bulk grounds and I put them in here,
and after I'm done with my coffee I compost them
in my freezer, bring them to the farmer's market.
So it's a really amazing, waste-free way,
to enjoy what is the most important moment of my day,
besides cuddling with my dog, Rose.
After I finish my coffee, we are going to head out
and go and buy some food for the day,
so I'll show you what I bring when I go grocery shopping.
So I've been living a zero-waste lifestyle
for eight years now, and the one thing that I've really
learned is it comes down to being prepared,
and being prepared helps to prevent
all of the circumstantial trash and waste
that can enter your day at any given point.
When it comes to buying food, I like to be prepared
with things like silicon bags for produce.
Mesh bags as well, for things like bread and vegetables,
and then I always like to bring a second bag with me
that's expandable, in case I decide to buy something extra.
I don't wanna have to get a paper bag
or another type of carrying device,
so this really helps prevent all types of waste
that I can encounter when I'm shopping for food.
I'm gonna throw all of this in my tote bag
and head out to get some ingredients, let's go.
(upbeat music)
We're here at Marlow & Daughters,
it's one of my favorite places to go
in between farmer's market trips
or to grab bread or something
that I need to supplement in one of my meals.
(upbeat music)
Okay, just got back from the market,
and I'll show you what I got.
And as you can see, totally plastic free,
so it's doable, possible, easy, it happened.
Usually when I make lunch I try to keep it as healthy
as possible, but make enough of it
so that it can get me through the day.
Very often I'm so busy that I forget to eat,
and I like to be really kind to myself
and have enough ingredients, or food made, on hand,
so that when I am in a situation where I'm rushing,
that I'm not grabbing something that's packaged.
I'm eating something that's really good for me,
healthy real food.
Even though I'm not always the best to my body,
I can treat it well when I can.
So we'll just do a big salad of different cut up vegetables
and call it a day.
Some would call it a panzanella,
but I just call it a big-ass salad, with bread.
I think something that I see a lot
is people buying pre-washed greens, instead of a whole
head of lettuce, or prepackaged cut vegetables
instead of cutting them themselves.
It takes, basically, zero time,
and often you can get non-cut items for less money.
So you save money and you save waste.
For me, composting is really easy.
When I'm cooking I just take any scraps that I would have,
and I put them in a big bowl.
When I'm done preparing whatever I'm preparing,
I take everything and put it in another bowl made of metal
that's flexible in my freezer.
And then every Saturday, I take that out and put it
in a paper bag that I find in the recycling room,
and I bring it to the farmer's market to compost.
And I freeze my compost so that it doesn't start
breaking down or smelling in the refrigerator or my counter.
You can really compost anything
that comes from something that grows.
You can compost anything from paper, leaves,
dead house plants, rest in peace, any kind of scraps
or peels, meat.
But you have to just check with your local municipal
composting program to see what they accept and don't accept.
But anything that comes from something that's alive
can be returned back to the Earth, that's the beauty
of our ecosystem.
I don't really think there was anything
that was super hard for me with going zero waste.
Honestly, one of the biggest things that I realized
was that I couldn't buy my way out of plastic.
I couldn't walk into a pharmacy or grocery store
and just buy everything
that was in my daily routine without it.
That's why I started Package Free Shop,
was to make it easy for people to have access
to the tools that help you reduce waste every single day.
The only thing that I'll buy online
is maybe secondhand clothing.
I don't think you ever really have to buy
any new clothing anymore.
And then I'll just make sure that I ask the seller online
to ship it totally plastic free
and they never have a problem with it.
Rose likes to cook too.
She feels really left out if she's not involved
in the process.
Let's make a quick dressing to put on the salad,
and then we'll pack up the food and head out.
We're gonna do some
kind of measuring measuring, some capers.
(pepper grinder crunches)
It's not bad, you know.
(spoon clunks)
Mozzarella cheese, some herbs.
Let's get the bread.
So I love bread, but I don't buy packaged bread
or bread with preservatives,
so I usually end up buying baguettes.
But as a person living alone, sometimes I won't make
it through a whole baguette, and it gets stale or hard.
And a really great way to make sure
you're not composting bread every week
is to let it dry out, put it in the oven,
make it into croutons and it's great for a salad like this,
like a panzanella.
Also you can run bread under some water,
put it back in the oven and make it work again.
You could also take stale bread, put it in a food processor
with some garlic and herbs, and it's a great breadcrumb.
So, the most common question that I get is,
"I wanna do something
"and I don't know where to start."
That's very much why I started my blog,
"Trash is for Tossers".
I mean, that's almost eight years ago.
It was to give people who wanna have a positive
environmental impact really simple, practical steps
to reduce their waste that don't have to cost anything,
or don't cost much at all, but have a big impact.
So, I would say, if you wanna reduce your waste,
I like to say, just start somewhere.
Every positive change is positive,
so if you do something as simple as say no
to a plastic straw, you're still having a positive impact,
so reward yourself for everything choice that you make
that benefits the environment.
So about to get lunch ready to go.
I'm putting them in my favorite containers,
they're stainless steel, we sell them at Package Free.
They're totally airtight, which means you can put things
like soup or salad dressings in them.
It just makes it really easy to bring lunch.
So I'll just dump my dressing in one.
And then we'll pack my lunch for the day in this.
Because I wait so long to eat usually,
I like to pack, almost more food than I think I'll need,
so I don't end up making food purchasing decisions
that could result in waste.
We're all packed up, ready to go,
and I will see you guys for dinner.
(bright music)
Usually when I make dinner, it's something really quick
because I'm usually running between work
or coming from something, and I have a child,
who is very high maintenance, and I'm usually number 45
on my list of things to do and people to take care of.
So I like to make things that are really easy,
fast, simple, with ingredients that are fresh
but easy to prepare.
I'm going to make tacos, which is one of my favorite
things to make.
I usually keep flour in my house,
because it's a super-versatile ingredient.
I like to make fresh pasta and also tortillas.
It sounds really intense and hard,
but it's actually super fast and simple.
It's cheap, it's a really good hangover solution.
So I usually make tortillas if I'm feeling hungover
and don't wanna go out and get food.
So, tacos it is tonight.
So there are a bunch of different ways to make tortillas,
there's flour, there's corn.
This is as simple as it gets.
It's literally just two cups of,
I use organic all-purpose flour,
but you can use different types of flour,
and/or gluten-free flour if you're gluten-free.
3/4 of a cup of water.
Three tablespoons of olive oil and about a teaspoon of salt,
but I like kind of saltier tortillas,
so I add a little bit extra.
I just blend all the ingredients in a bowl,
and I'll add a little bit of water at the end,
and let it sit for 10 minutes so the gluten develops
in the flour.
And then I just roll it out, and it's really, really,
as easy as it could possibly get.
After 10 minutes it gets a lot stretchier than it would be
when you first make it.
The main reason I make tortillas from scratch,
one, because I'm usually ravenous and need something
really quick, and they're just super fast.
But two, because they all come packaged
in single-use plastic
which isn't recyclable really anywhere.
'Cause I like to ask myself the question,
is the benefit of having this thing
worth the trash that it will create?
Tortillas, definitely not, especially because
they're so easy to make.
So that's why I do it myself.
So you just need a little ball of dough.
And then just roll it out.
It's like, there's no perfection here,
especially when you're cooking for yourself.
The cool thing about making these
is that you can freeze them
and reheat them, and have taco shells, or tortillas
without having to have the plastic.
And then you can have it be like a grab-and-go thing.
Now time to cook tortillas.
Really simple, they look like this.
This is a really ugly one, not round,
but we still love it.
And just throw it on a super hot cast iron pan.
No oil or anything like that,
but it has to be really, really, really hot.
And then you have to watch it.
It kind of bubbles a little bit.
I'm gonna finish up making these tortillas,
and then we'll go onto all the good shit
that goes inside of them.
Pre-made some rice.
I have a really good rice trick.
Instead of putting the water in
and boiling it with the rice,
I just boil two cups of water for every 3/4 cups of rice,
and it works really well.
So you boil the water, and then you put the rice in,
and then you let it sit for 18 minutes,
and then you turn off the heat, let it sit for five minutes,
and it's perfect, perfect rice.
So we have some ingredients
that I'm gonna finish chopping up.
For me, tacos are kind of like, the trash meal.
Meaning that, if there's anything left in my fridge,
I just take what's in there, chop it up
and throw it in tortilla and it's tacos.
For these I'm just doing mushrooms, squash, tomato,
maybe make some bootleg guacamole rice.
I have beans.
I've been living a zero-waste lifestyle for eight years now.
When I started I ate straight up crap.
When I got rid of packaging as kind of like the parameter
for how I shop and buy food, I was kind of left
with just real fruits and vegetables,
and ingredients like bulk rice and pastas.
And eating in alignment with a zero-waste lifestyle
has helped me feel better than I've ever felt.
Also, I usually cook more than I need for one meal.
So I'll separate the ingredients,
and if I make a salad or something like that,
it's great to just have all of these pieces,
so I can use them for other meals.
(pan sizzling)
I don't eat meat in my house.
I never have.
I was vegetarian for six years, I started eating meat
because I had a boyfriend who was a chef.
He killed his own animals, and I realized from that,
that not all animal agriculture is equal.
In my ideal world, nobody would eat animals,
but because people do, I like to support
a type of animal agriculture that is more in alignment
with sustainable practices and kind treatment of animals.
But I definitely don't believe in judging other people
for eating, or not eating meat.
Taco making, really easy.
I think most people have probably made tacos.
But if not, let's go.
I like to do rice first.
(pan sizzling) (upbeat music)
And then just squash.
And that's it, we have tacos.
So at this point, we've had breakfast,
lunch and dinner together.
I think one of my favorite things to show people
is that sustainable cooking and living is really easy,
it saves you money, makes you feel healthier.
I hope you've learned something in this episode,
and hopefully we can hang out again soon.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)