About Cooking Green

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”) is the working title for Kate Heyhoe’s eighth book. Cooking Green will be published by Da Capo Books (Perseus Books Group) in March 2009. [Perseus Book Group was named 2007 Publisher of the Year by Publisher's Weekly.]

To learn more about a key concept in the book, visit Shrinking Your Cookprint.

Solar Music for Picnics, Concerts and Parties

“If you say you can remember the 60’s, you weren’t really there.”

While Bill Graham’s Fillmore pulsed with San Francisco psychedelicos, the Vulcan Gas Company was blowing open its doors to a nascent Austin counterculture, deep in the heart of Texas. Then came the Armadillo World Headquarters, where acts like BB, ZZ, and Zappa played to a mixed bag of hippies, cowboys and suits.

Now, Austin, TX has rolled out a new music stage. Literally. It’s on wheels, it’s green, and it may be heading for a town near you.

Austin remains an incubator of cutting edge everything, from music to tech to green. Besides billing itself as the Live Music Capital of the World, Austin is host to SXSW (the South by Southwest Music, Film, and Interactive Festival), and the PBS series Austin City Limits, on air since 1976 and now an annual festival in its own right. So it’s not surprising that a portable solar powered music stage has fired up here.

Sustainable Waves converts trailers to green music stages: Solar panels generate enough energy to power up sound equipment, as well as charge reserve batteries for use on cloudy days. The sides of the trailers lock down in transit, then pop up upon arrival. In just minutes, the stage is ready to rock and roll, compared to the hours a crew of stage hands needs to mount a traditional stage. And because it’s completely self-powered and self-contained, without wiring or plug-ins, music can go wherever the trailer goes, to parks, lakes, ranches, beaches or neighborhoods. Sustainable Waves rents their big green music machines to bands for performances both in town and on the road.

Plus, listeners get to hear solar energy in action. They come away with a good time and a greener perspective. So far, the Sustainable Wave and its Eco Tune package has made a splash at venues in Telluride, Joshua Tree, San Diego, Santa Fe and other hip places.

Polar Sperm Bank for Plants

Think of it as protection for plant progeny: a high-tech fortress designed to preserve three million seed varieties. Hopefully, we’ll never have to make a withdrawal from this “doomsday” shelter. But if certain agricultural gems start to disappear, or an agricultural catastrophe strikes, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault may save the day. To be completed in fall 2007, the vault is chilled by the permafrost of its island location (deep inside a mountain, some 600 miles from the North Pole), and by sub-zero coolers powered by a nearby coal plant. Even if the power fails, the permafrost will keep the seeds in a frozen state (unless, of course, global warming melts the ice). Norway owns the vault itself, but the seeds will be the property of their contributing nations, about 100 countries.

Spearheaded by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the vault preserves its seeds with state-of-the art materials, including hermetically-sealed envelopes adapted from the pharmaceutical industry (five-layers of mylar, plastic, and foil), air-locked entryways, and barcodes linking each envelope to a genetic database. If you think this Noah’s Ark of seed DNA is eco-folly, consider this stat from WIRED magazine: Of more than 8000 different crops grown in the U.S. in 1903, only 600 still existed 80 years later. (I wonder what crops we lost in that time…) At any rate, starting with the A’s, I sure hope the vault stocks artichokes, arugula and asparagus. Without them, cooking and eating just wouldn’t be the same!

Ginger-Poached Chicken & Broth

A Green Flame Recipe

Serves 4 to 6

Green Meter:

Green Goodness: 15 minutes of cooktop fuel cooks a whole chicken, with healthful broth
Prep/Cooking Times: 5 minutes prep +15 minutes active cooking + 60 minutes resting time
Prime Season: year round
Conveniences: Can be made 1-2 days in advance and refrigerated.
Morphable: Use the broth wherever chicken broth is called for; shred meat into soup, salads and sandwiches, rice paper wraps, spring rolls, tortillas, or serve pieces hot with soy sauce and rice. Vary the seasonings for a Mexican, Indian, or other flavorprint. (See specific recipes in headnotes below)

In this Chinese poaching method, chicken simmers for a short time immersed in seasoned water, then the flame is turned off and the chicken continues to gently “cook” in the hot liquid. The meat is far more tender and moist than if boiled until done, and the resulting chicken broth fills the house with aromas of ginger, green onion, and sherry. My favorite cure for a cold? A bowl of this chicken and broth, with noodles, and bok choy or shredded Chinese cabbage. Even without a cold, you’ll feel healthier.

If you cook this dish in advance and refrigerate it, the fat hardens and you can just lift it off. Also, the chicken meat stays moist in the broth and is easier to shred when cool. I usually stretch this dish across three meals: I first serve most of the chicken pieces with a sesame-soy or Vietnamese style dipping sauce and rice. The broth can go into Wonton Soup, and I shred the remaining chicken into a sophisticated but amazingly easy Hazelnut Chicken Salad on Shredded Napa Cabbage.

1 whole chicken (about 4 pounds), without giblets
2-3/4 teaspoons salt
1-1/2 inches fresh ginger, cut into 6 slices
5 whole green onions, green and white parts diagonally cut into 2-inch lengths
2 tablespoons dry sherry

1. Rub the chicken all over with the salt, including inside the cavity.

2. Place the chicken (and neck if available) in a pot just large enough to hold them. Add the ginger, green onions, and sherry to the pot. Fill the pot with enough water to just cover the chicken by 1/2 inch.

3. Bring the water to a boil. Using a slotted spoon, skim away the brown scum that rises to the top and discard. Partially cover the pot and reduce the heat. Simmer the chicken 15 minutes.

4. Turn off the heat. Leave the chicken fully covered in the pot for 1 hour. Serve the meat and broth as a soup, or separately in other recipes. If desired, refrigerate overnight before use. Before serving, skim or remove the fat and discard the cooked ginger, garlic and green onions.

Cooking Methods

You can, but you don’t have to, go vegan or grow your own vegetables, just to go green in the kitchen. This site is more about how you cook than what you eat. Not that organics and local foods aren’t important. They’re hugely important. But don’t we already get that message?

There are so many other ways not being addressed by media or publishers to reduce greenhouse gases and shrink your eco-footprint. The real news, the untold story, lies in the fuels you use, the method (steaming, boiling, baking, for instance), the cookware, and the clean-up. Let’s apply a concept of “bright green cooking,” very specific actions and totally practical plans that have more impact than “light green” steps alone, but are just as easy to do.

As a bonus, stretching energy consumption directly relates to saving time, too. Less time in the kitchen means fewer lights on, less cooking fuel used, and more personal time for you to do other things.

About Kate Heyhoe

In 1994, Kate Heyhoe launched the Web’s first food and cooking e-zine, GlobalGourmet.com (The Global Gourmet) http://www.globalgourmet.com where she says, “At Global Gourmet, we bring you the world on a plate.” From 1995 to 2000, Kate and her partner Thomas Way produced two food sites for America Online, where Julia Child and Jacques Pepin each made their online debuts. The award-winning Global Gourmet site sports a coveted pair of “sunglasses” in Yahoo’s recipe site category, and for more than a decade has been deeply linked though all search engines, reaching more than 350,000 unique readers per month.

Recently, she uploaded the entire contents of her first book, Cooking with Kids For Dummies, to her site at CookingWithKids.com. The site is getting rave reviews.

Kate’s books have been praised by Mollie Katzen (who also wrote a foreword), Martin Yan, Mary Sue Milliken, Graham Kerr, James McNair, Michael Chiarello, Marcel Desaulniers, and even AOL’s Steve Case, among others. Her books include:

Great Bar Food at Home (John Wiley & Sons, Oct. 2007)
The Stubb’s Bar-B-Q Cookbook (John Wiley & Sons, April 2007)
A World Atlas of Food (McGraw-Hill, 2006)
Macho Nachos (Clarkson-Potter, 2004)
Harvesting the Dream: The Rags-to-Riches Tale of the Sutter Home Winery (Wiley, 2004)
A Chicken in Every Pot: Global Recipes for the World’s Most Popular Bird (Capital, 2003)
Cooking with Kids For Dummies (IDG Books, 1999)

Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”) is the working title for Kate Heyhoe’s eighth book. Cooking Green will be published by Da Capo Books (Perseus Books Group) in March 2009. [Perseus Book Group was named 2007 Publisher of the Year by Publisher's Weekly.]

Kate has appeared in two national television satellite tours, as well as on CBS’ “The Early Show” (Chef on a Shoestring; Super Bowl 2005 segment), and other stations. Hundreds of articles about Kate and/or Global Gourmet have appeared in media as diverse as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Los Angeles Times, Parade, FoodArts; WOR, Bloomberg, and Sony World Wide radio networks. She has written for Better Homes & Gardens, Saveur, Cooking Pleasures, Chile Pepper, Great Chefs, and other magazines.

Kate is a former Production Manager for Warner Bros. and other Hollywood studios, where she balanced the creative, financial, and administrative demands of entertainment media. She speaks frequently at industry conferences, including those of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), Women Chefs & Restaurateurs (WCR), and the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT).

Cooking Green: the New Green Basics Cookbook

Who would believe you can cook a perfect rare roast beef, with a to-die-for garlicky browned crust – using just 20 minutes of fuel? Unlike old-fashioned methods (which burn up two hours of gas or electricity), this “blue oven” method saves considerable energy, spews out fewer greenhouse gases, and yields results that look and taste utterly delicious. Unbelievable. Or is it?

For some time now, my green radar has been telling me that buying organic isn’t enough. I suspected that, as a cook, I could do more to combat climate change. Lots more. The result: A treasury of practices that yield greener results than simply changing light bulbs, but integrate just as easily into daily life. Some methods are old, some new, some I tweaked, and all I refined with good green benefits in mind. Collectively, they’re a whole new approach to cooking the basics. And, they push the concept of “green cooking” far beyond the scope of just local, organic foods.

How you cook is as important as what you cook. Without abandoning your favorite recipes, you can bake, roast, broil, grill, and fry in vastly greener ways, saving fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases, and shrinking your carbon footprint. But “Cooking” has been a seriously under-reported (yet substantial) greenhouse gas creator. In my book, it’s the biggest way for kitchen-conscious consumers to take greener action. Shopping and Cleaning sections tackle the remaining cycle of feeding activities. And these tips don’t just help the planet. Many of my methods save time and money, too, yielding some unexpected side-benefits just for the cook.

So, to get the most bang out of your energy buck, why not start in the kitchen? After all, appliances account for thirty percent of our household energy use, and the biggest guzzlers are in the kitchen. After buying appliances with Energy Star labels, take the next big steps in the ways you use them. How you cook directly relates to more efficient fuel use, and the less fuel used, the fewer greenhouse gases.

Plus, a single family home spews more than twice as many greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere as the standard sedan – mostly from heating and cooling. Cooking can make a noticeable impact on household temperatures and how we adjust our thermostats. Anyone who’s sweltered in a hot kitchen in summer knows the impact cooking has on local warming, not to mention global warming. Likewise, a hot oven in winter can boost the room temperature, giving the household’s central heater a break.

The message: Without changing your politics, or completely disrupting your routine, you can reduce greenhouse gases simply by rethinking what you must do every day: consume food. (Leave the green remodeling and general lifestyle tips to other books.) And with this book’s eye-opening, green-method recipes and its hundreds of idea-inspiring tips, you’ll be eagerly serving up all your favorite dishes in new and greener ways.

As the average reader will discover, the kitchen is ripe with opportunities for going greener. It’s the place where people can make real choices, and take direct control of their impact – without letting the family feel deprived, hungry, or stressed. In fact, everyone will feel better just knowing they’re helping the planet – and they can do it one bite at a time.

Kate Heyhoe’s Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way (Hundreds of tips and over 50 energy- and time-saving recipes to shrink your “cookprint”) will be published in March 2009 by Da Capo Press, a division of Perseus Book Group

Note: Perseus Book Group was named 2007 Publisher of the Year by *Publisher’s Weekly*.

Got some fresh ideas of greener ways to cook, shop or clean? Post a comment!