Recipes with Great Taste & Less Waste

The Novel

Growing up, my experience with cooking was minimal at best. My mom is probably the worst cook I know, and my dad was more inclined to take me out for a “divorced dad meal” than teach me how to make dinner. Most of my “home-cooked” meals consisted of canned Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, the worlds most watery spaghetti, or the occasional two chicken wings with a side of rice and butter. By the time I moved out, my culinary knowledge was as limited as my interest in going to college.

A few years later, I stumbled across a video of someone attempting to go zero waste for a month and soon I found myself committed to a zero-waste lifestyle. This meant I had to start cooking from scratch to avoid unnecessary packaging. Initially, it felt like a chore dictated by my newfound eco-conscious ideals, but eventually, I discovered I actually enjoyed it. Cooking became my way of reducing waste and a surprisingly rewarding hobby. I hope you’ll enjoy the recipes I’ve learned to love along the way—each one a calculated effort to turn my kitchen into a low-waste zone, because who knew saving the planet could taste this good?