lunchbooks

[telophase]

I bought a lot of used packed-lunch-specific cookbooks because we want to try to get away from our default of driving through somewhere and eating in the car when we want to get out of the house (and instead make our own lunches and drive somewhere to eat in the car...).

This one is written by a woman who invented a reusable bag. Well, good for her so far. And then every recipe is accompanied by an "eco tip" to help you reduce plastic waste which are usually obvious and banal--when buying lunch meat go to the deli counter and get just as much as you need, and bring (one of her) bags with you to put it in instead of prepackaged slices!--but sometimes are "Bzuh?"--shop bulk and bring your own glass jars to put the bulk stuff in! I mean, what grocery store is she shopping at that allows you to bring your own jar to weight the bulk stuff in? The scales in the ones I see are all tared for the containers they provide!

This is, of course, completely ignoring the facts that (a) a small fraction of the public is in the position to actually get to and shop at the sort of upscale grocery store that provides bulk foods and (b) the problem of overused plastics is huge and systemic and individual consumer's use is but a small fraction of that, so even if all her readers stopped using plastics altogether it wouldn't make a fucking dent. And convincing individual consumers that the problem would be solved if they stopped using plastic bags turns attention away from the real sources of the problem.

I mmmight be a wee bit bitter.

Some more tips...

Eat your leftovers. (At the end of the week have a "smorgasbord" meal. Raid your pantry and fridge for leftovers and things nearing their expiration date , and throw them together in fried rice. It's a great way of cleaning out the pantry before shopping for the next week.)

Did you know that non-meat options exist? (For a meat-free option and a lower carbon footprint, swap the roast beef for a veggie patty.)

Bakeries exist! (Buy your bread fresh from a bakery instead of the supermarket. Buying local is one of the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint,* and you'll avoid the plastic that most supermarket bread comes in.** )

She does have some decent tips, like listing out which nuts use less water in their production, which isn't common knowledge***, and I like the chart at the beginning of the book that lists one base foodstuff you can prep on Sunday and then recipes you can use that base in for the rest of the week, but so much of this book is so obviously aimed at a tiny, privileged, fraction of the population that it grates on me.

The book, safely below the cut here, is Let's Fix Lunch: 30+ Litter-Free Lunch Tips by Kat Nouri, Founder of Stasher Bags.**** The recipes are decent, and we'll do what we usually do, which is to take the ones that sound good and put them into our recipe app so I never have to look at the ridiculous tips again.

--

* Well, you're displacing the major-hub trucking and train systems that carry large amounts of foods great distances in favor of ones that mean a lot more little trucks and trains carry small amounts smaller distances. The ecologic savings there is not as much as people would like to believe. I still like to buy local to keep money locally and to take it away from factory-scale food production, but I can afford to and factory-scale food production still has a place in getting food to people who otherwise couldn't afford it. Systemic problems, systemic solutions, not individual ones.

** Most of our bakeries sell the bread in plastic, because of food hygiene. I don't live in a place like France, with small bakeries every fifty feet that sell you a loaf of bread that you eat today, and that you visit multiple times a week. Making one grocery trip a week reduces my carbon footprint more than multiple trips, since I can't walk to a bakery.

*** "Common knowledge" being defined, naturally, as "stuff I know."

**** Who lives in the Bay Area, go fig. She could reduce her carbon footprint more by moving out of the fucking Bay Area so that food doesn't have to be shipped in.

Comments

[jenett]

This is an excellent rant, and I wish to subscribe to future newsletters. (as one does.)

A couple of the co-ops I've used in the past (in Minnesota, so it's been a while) would let you bring in your own containers, so long as they had the proper tare markings (which are a mystery I do not understand, but I think most of the Ball/Mason jars do, for example, and some of my eco-friendly reusable metal containers do.)

But you do need the sort of place with extensive bulk food, and that has set themselves up to handle that smoothly, which is not your average place. (Even my local Whole Foods has a limited bulk food section: the co-ops had not only nuts and some other baking goods, but a whole rack of herbs and teas, pasta and grains, all sorts of stuff. Maybe 3-4 times the amount of what my Whole Foods has.)

oops more ranty

[telophase]

The grocery store we go to sometimes (it's farther away and more expensive than the local Albertson's) with the biggest bulk section is the HEB Central Markup, er, Market. They've got grains, nuts, candy, snack foods, herbs, tea, nuts, coffee, and even a peanut grinder! They're also the store that carries grass-fed meat and a bunch of local produce, cheese, and other products (that we also see at the local farmers' markets), and has a wonderful in-store bakery with all sorts of bread. And whose produce section you get stuff from and weigh it yourself to print the price tag.

And still packages everything in plastic. XD Not a much as the Trader Joe's, which has vast amounts of prepackaged produce and trucks its bread in from far enough away that the bread is old enough to start molding in 2 days.

And as to Trader Joe's, we can't have been the only people who complained. A month or so after they opened...and we'd already returned 2 loaves of bread for molding two days after we bought them...a sign went up saying their bread had no preservatives and you should refrigerate it. REFRIGERATE! BREAD! Which STALES BREAD FASTER! They should have said FREEZE but apparently people who shop there care more about health than flavor. Anyway, Central Markup bakes onsite, also has no preservatives, their bread doesn't start to mold for almost a week after you buy it, and has a larger variety anyway. (OK, I lie about the plastic--you can get some loaves in paper there.)

This is also why myrialux and I, when eating regular bread that we've purchased from a regular grocery store, will look at each other and say "Mmmmmmm, preservatives!"

Re: oops more ranty

[movingfinger]

There is a local bakery whose loaves I stopped buying because they would start molding on the store shelves (I did complain and the store pulled them) and I could tell from the dampness inside that it was because the bakery was slicing and bagging (plastic of course) the loaves while they were still warm. Someone decided to trim some time off the production line, maybe!

Re: oops more ranty

[telophase]

Yikes!

[thistleingrey]

I commented, and then I finished reading the post and deleted my earlier comment. :) The thing about bread in paper bags is that it also tends to lack the dough conditioners and stabilizers that my kid is allergic to.... Mostly, she doesn't eat bread.

I think there may be a middle space somewhere, even so. Not all of the places that permitted bringing containers pre-quar are upscale.

[telophase]

Things with no allergens are good! :)

Not all of the places that permitted bringing containers pre-quar are upscale.

I'm sure that's true; they're just pretty rare on the ground in the areas I've lived in.

[thistleingrey]

Agreed with the larger sense that bulk bins are not where efficiency really occurs.

[movingfinger]

It's very easy to live the lifestyle she describes in much of the Bay Area, particularly in Emeryville where she's based. In fact, it* may be the only place in America where it can be so easy to live that way, and I'm including New York City. The writer has access to multiple farmers' markets, stores with a good bulk section (good="less likely to be infested"), Berkeley Bowl I need say no more, bakeries that do pack the bread in paper (Acme and others) and that sell bread that will be edible for more than a day. She can ride a bicycle or walk to all of these things and she has no idea what other regions, even other regions where like-minded people live, are like.

Washing the food bags and keeping them free from molds or spoilage taint is going to require using more water. Someone else is making wax-infused cloth wraps for food, and again these need to be cleaned and maintained---more work for Mother!

*The Berkeley-San Francisco region specifically; even in the suburbs spreading down the Peninsula and around the Bay, you can find most of these things, but the density of compatible shops and resources in Berkeley-San Francisco is the highest.

[telophase]

I would love to live in an area like that! Alas, I do not have the income...

[indywind]

I agree with your rant.

And I've always been puzzled by the advice (not limited to greenwashing ecohispters, goes back to the Depression-influenced Home Ec cookbooks and housekeeping manuals) to throw all the week's leftovers in a stirfry or casserole or stew, because if I did that with my leftovers the result would be an inedible mess of spaghetti/fried rice/sweet potato mash/bread pudding.

[telophase]

Yup, I can imagine the fried rice made with leftover Tuna Helper, baked potato, pepperoni pizza and teriyaki tofu, to use the sort of leftover that's normally in our fridge...

[dhampyresa]

I don't live in a place like France, with small bakeries every fifty feet that sell you a loaf of bread that you eat today, and that you visit multiple times a week.
I came out to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now

Eat your leftovers.
Is. Is this not a thing people already do? I always cook extra and store things separately so I can recombine them later to eat whenever.

even if all her readers stopped using plastics altogether it wouldn't make a fucking dent.
I Know and I am SO MAD. SO MAD that responsibility is (once again) passed on to the people with the least power to change things on a global scale.

[telophase]

Yeah, it's like it never occurred to people to eat the leftovers in the fridge before!

[emceeaich]

I do want to clarify that in the Bay Area many of our food suppying farms are just outside SF, Oakland, and San José (where cynthia1960 and I live) so that my chicken comes from Petaluma, my milk from Sonoma County, my eggs and garlic from Gilroy, and my favorite tortillas from Morgan Hill.

But COVID-19 restrictions have curtailed us from using the bring your own bag or jar.

Also nobody can make a loaf of rye to save their lives. My pastrami and mustard cry with me.

If I had a yard, I could have hens, but not roosters. It'd be nice to have some egg layers. The cats would be fascinated.

[telophase]

That's pretty nice! And it's no pretty clear that the author has no idea what it's like outside of that area.

Our HOA* specifically disallows non-pet animals**, which is annoying. Not that I want to raise chickens myself, but I wouldn't mind cadging eggs off the neighbors. XD

* I know, but it was either buy into an HOA, live in an area next to crack houses, or drive for 45 minutes to get to work on our budget.

** It also specifically mentions that we're not allowed to park hovercraft in front of the house, which makes me wonder about whatever neighborhood they swiped the wording from...

[viridian5]

The Whole Foods I sometimes go to has substantially decreased their bulk food section over the course of the pandemic, probably for the same reasons they got rid of their food buffet.

[telophase]

Central Markup here hasn't decreased it, but they've prepackaged it all: you can't get your own now.

[viridian5]

Mine has also prepackaged a lot of bulk foods, which bemuses me. I know why but it’s still...

[adafrog]

:) Thanks.