Roasted food and bad lighting
Tonight, I’m having an otherworldly experience with my food that I’d like to share, but the lighting is terrible. It’s dark, I have fluorescence to deal with, and I’m impatient. I don’t want to wait for the perfect light to share this bowl of deliciousness because it’s too good, and why wait, right?
Sooo…I’m not gonna wait!
But lest you think this post is all about my food vanity, hear ye! There’s more to it than that, obvi. In keeping with the idea of food as a solution/conduit/tasty fix (click that link or see below) to tackling this stupid plastic problem (and our health!), I present a meal made possible by bulk-purchasing: Smitten Kitchen’s Miso Sweet Potato and Broccoli Bowl.*
Not only is this dish super easy and unbelievably delicious, but the ingredients are also readily available in bulk at most food stores. Plus, it’s Smitten Kitchen! Everything Deb Perelman makes is delicious, and her stories are top-notch. I mean…
“Before one swan dives into a vat of thick cream and baked cheddar and passes out on a Yorkshire pudding pillow only to revive oneself with a deep inhale of horseradish-triple cream sauce, one must reset their system, so to speak. One must prepare. At the very least, one must dust off their gym ID.”
Hilarious!
Now, let’s get down and dirty with the goods.
*Recipe mod: I sautéed onions and bok choy with bacon and threw them into the mix. I’m not sorry. 😇
The ingreds
This dish could not be simpler: roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli, rice, and an umami-rich sesame-miso dressing. D-r-o-o-l! For the purposes of this post, I’ll be focusing on the main ingredients. But you can surely find the dressing ingreds in bulk, too!
I used yams for my dish (they are different!), and when I say I bought them in bulk…I am not kidding: they came in a gigantic cardboard box, plastic-free. The onions also came in a bulk bag. This bag was, unfortunately, one of those plastic netted bags. Womp womp. But…it was, like, a big bag. Think: 50 lbs of onions. I might be exxagerating, I’d never seen that many onions before!
For some reason, I did not also bulk up on broccoli, likely because storing 50lbs of broccoli would require another fridge, and I am not made of money! Thus, the one (or two? Who can remember?) of broccoli was thrown in the cart bag-free because why would you even bother wasting time putting it in a bag? Srsly. It’s awkward, and you’ll be washing it at home anyway. Save the damn bag!
As for the rice, while I do have access to a few bulk food stores that offer rice in quantity, I’m working through existing stock and wanted to finish that up before buying more. One principle of zero-waste is to use up what you have first before buying new. The rice I’m working with came in a huge multi-pound plastic bag, enough to last for months (at the rate we eat rice).
The reality behind the bulk
Here’s the thing: “Bulk” doesn’t have to equal “eliminate the plastic.” That would be a good goal, but the reality is that sometimes you need to buy the 50lb netted bag of onions and a gigantic bag of rice because the end of the world is nigh because it’s a slammin’ deal and you’re trying to be economical with your shopping. To me, it’s more important to select where and when to eliminate the plastic, because eliminating it all at once is enough to give you a headache. It will also make you want to give up.
Let’s say you’re buying two heads of broccoli. An easy starting place to use less packaging would be to plop them straight into your shopping cart. (See above, wasting time.) Better yet, bring a reusable produce bag and feel like a badass in the produce section when you whip it out. I started bringing a stash of bags and jars around if I know I’ll need to load up on some bulk goods while I’m a-shoppin’. Sure, this requires a wee bit of planning, but eventually, if you stick with it, it’ll feel like part of the routine. And at some point, it won’t even feel weird to be toting around bags and jars because it’s actually kind of awesome. It’s like a magic trick: watch me pull an empty jar out of my hat!
The pièce de résistance
There is something so blissfully wonderful about finding all this food, making a gloriously delicious meal out of it, and knowing that you not only saved mucho dinero while shopping, but you probably saved a bunch of packaging at the same time. You did your best, and that (to me, anyway) makes the whole experience taste spectacularly bomb-diggity.
