8 Ways to Green Your Holiday Cooking

This story is part of Earth911’s “Green Eight” series, where we showcase eight ways to green your life in various areas.

Cooking during the holidays can be a stressful event. You may have to learn new recipes, accommodate extra guests and prepare additional courses.

With all this work, eco-friendliness may take a backseat to culinary perfection. But with all this fuss, you can still set an extra place at the table for Mr. Green this holiday season.

1. Shop Local

The holidays may not provide the best weather for walking through a farmers market, but locally grown produce will be fresher than what you can find at the grocery store and won’t have a large environmental footprint for transportation. You can find local food options through Local Harvest.

Local produce can often be delivered right to your door.

2. Make Your Own Sauces and Spices

You can surely find garlic salt and gravy at the supermarket, but it won’t be as fresh and you’ll have packaging to throw away. Plus, making your own rendition can account for dietary restrictions (such as low sodium requirements). All you need are basic ingredients and a blender or food processor, or a mortar and pestle if you want to cut energy use.

3. Recycle Food Cans

Winter feasts are the only times when people actually enjoy seeing food in the shape of its packaging (ie: the “canned cranberry” effect). This will hopefully serve as a reminder to recycle all your food cans, because they are generally made of steel. Metals are the most valuable products you can recycle because they’re in limited supply and are easily transformed into something new.

4. Avoid Instant-Read Thermometers

If you’re cooking a large amount of meat this holiday season, you’ll likely want to use a thermometer to monitor optimal cooking conditions. One product that has gained popularity for this purpose is the instant-read thermometer, which gauges temperature in a matter of seconds.

The problem is you can’t leave these thermometers in the oven while your food cooks, and each time you open the oven to measure meat temperature, your oven temperature lowers 25 degrees. This waste of energy can be avoided with a thermometer you can read with the oven door closed.

5. Reuse Cooking Water

So you’ve just boiled some vegetables on the stove and have a pot full of water left. Instead of pouring it down the drain, use it to water plants (once it has cooled). Nutrients from foods like pasta and veggies will serve your house plants well, giving them added vitamins that would have been washed down the drain.

6. Limit Paper Towel Use

You may not think about it, but you probably go through 1.5 rolls of paper towels each week. This could easily increase when cooking holiday feasts. Using dish towels to clean up spills and dry your hands will create zero waste, as they can be washed and reused. Use paper towels on raw meat, though, to avoid spreading bacteria.

7. Create Table Accessories

Part of cooking is your food presentation, so you may feel like jazzing up the dining room table with decor like place mats, napkin holders and centerpieces. All of these products can be a great art project for the kids (or a kid at heart) while reusing products around your house. You could:

• Turn old greeting cards into sentimental place mats for your guests to take home
• Make napkin rings out of paper towel/toilet paper tubes
• Mix flowers and a candle to produce a scented centerpiece

8. Pack Leftovers in Reusable Containers

It’s a foregone conclusion that holiday meals will leave you with leftovers, but plastic wrap and wax paper are not recyclable (aluminum foil is in some recycling programs; it can also be rinsed and reused). Tupperware comes in many sizes to cover your various dishes, and another item that works well is empty butter containers. These containers are dishwasher safe, temperature flexible and should last you many holidays.