CLOSED-LOOP COOKING | Helping you avoid taking out the trash since 2018

Tastiest Toasted Squash Seeds

November 13, 2018 by hawnuh lee Leave a Comment

Last week I got my salad love on with one of my new favorite dishes – this cauliflower and winter squash salad (perfect for Thanksgiving if you’re wondering!) It’s bright, flavorful, and filling, perfect for some much needed vegetable action as it gets colder. One of the best by-products of this salad is all of the extra seeds that come from scooping out your squash innards. Toasted squash seeds are quite literally the BEST snack! Versatile little flavor vehicles that just get my true snack self. You can season squash seeds to your liking, sweeten them up with a bit of cinnamon or go wild with nutritional yeast. It’s a roller coaster of taste over here friends.

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Thanksgiving Cauliflower and Winter Squash Salad

November 6, 2018 by hawnuh lee 7 Comments

Thanksgiving is in the air people! I’m VERY excited! I love a day devoted to cooking and sharing a meal with the people you love. Or people you are obligated to come together with once a year. As long as you’re eating. With the change in season comes low – zero waste inspired recipes to make the most of your vegetables. It’s absolutely possible to make a sustainable supper happen with a few impactful dishes. This salad is one of them! A Thanksgiving cauliflower and winter squash salad captures some of my favorite fall flavors and is sure to be a hit with everyone at the table. Unless you don’t like olives and then I can’t help you.

thanksgiving salad vegetables overhead - cauliflower, winter squash, tomato, shallot

An imperfect cauliflower – those brown spots can be scraped off, this piece of produce is perfectly fine to use! It doesn’t have to be picture perfect. <3

You can use whatever winter squash you have on hand! I used delicata squash from a friend’s garden and kept the skin on. It’s thin enough that it cooks right through. But if you have a squash you end up peeling, like butternut, save those peels in the freezer for your next vegetable stock night. And once you scoop those seeds out, clean the extra pulp off (stick it with the peels in the freezer for stock) and roast them! You can save seeds in the fridge for just about 2 weeks until you’re ready, but honestly, now is as good a time as any for roasted squash seeds.

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Living Sustainably with Amanda McLemore of Baguette & Butter

October 30, 2018 by Maia Welbel Leave a Comment

The contents of Amanda McLemore’s pantry look more like what you might find in your great grandmother’s kitchen than that of a typical 2018 home. Trained chef and founder of the website Baguette & Butter, Amanda seeks to teach a sustainable American food culture through kitchen, garden, and simple life skills. Her shelves are stocked with fruit preserves, dried herbs, fermented vegetables, and homemade condiments in varying supply depending on the season.

After graduating from culinary school in 2014, Amanda decided to give up shopping at the grocery store for an entire year. During that time she learned how to sustain herself in a truly closed loop kitchen.

I talked to Amanda about her “grocery store detox” and how simplifying her kitchen habits made her a happier cook.

Amanda in her beautiful kitchen | photo from @baguette_and_butter

What made you want to start Baguette & Butter?

I’ve known I wanted to cook since I was five years old—one year I asked santa to get me a set of knives and a blowtorch because I wanted to make creme brulee. When I went to culinary school I was learning traditional cooking methods and how to make things from scratch, but then we would go to the cafeteria and eat mostly processed and packaged food.

Eventually I started to read the packaging and it led me to question everything. I realized that instead of trying to cook for other people in restaurants, I wanted to start from home. So many people in the industry are burnt out and don’t take care in how they feed themselves. Helping the people in my community became more important than being a restaurant chef.

Making the most out of orange peels for at-home cocktails, inspired by Amanda’s sustainable entertaining series.

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4 Great Ways to Use Strawberry Tops

October 23, 2018 by hawnuh lee 6 Comments

So you’ve got strawberry tops intended for compost? Those cute lil greens with the awkwardly cut strawberry meat still attached? Well hold on friend, don’t compost those! A little shared secret about strawberry tops – you can totally eat ‘em! They’ve got the same lovely strawberry flavor and the greens are packed with vitamins! Most folx don’t see this as a normal ingredient in general food stuffs so these strawbabies usually get tossed. If you’re someone who doesn’t have the context for what to do with this sort of plant part it can be hard to know what you’re looking for. To help us get started, I’ve rounded up 4 ways you can use strawberry tops in your next meal.

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Beet to Stem Spread

October 16, 2018 by hawnuh lee 10 Comments

I love beets. I will do my best to avoid any beet puns for this recipe write-up. No promises there. But I do promise you will l-o-v-e this easy spread that uses any leftover beets your have rolling around in the fridge AND the beet-iful stems they come with. (That pun doesn’t count.) When you grab a bundle of beets from the grocery store or farmer’s market I hope you’re getting all of the greenery to go along with it. Beet greens are delicious and very easy to cook with and beet stems are just as versatile! They don’t get enough love because they aren’t used as often as the root of the vegetable but can add that same lovely color and flavor to most dishes. This beet to stem spread is great on toast or a sandwich, crackers, by itself, with other veggies (meta-snacking) and quick to whip up!

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What made you want to start Baguette & Butter?

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