For those of you who have stumbled on to my blog before, you will know that one of my husband and mine’s biggest hobbies is cooking. We love experimenting with different flavours and food combinations. In lieu of our ‘be as green as we can mission’, I thought I would share some of the things we are doing to make sure we cook green that you could try too.

• Bring re-useable bags to the grocery store. I actually use these for all of my shopping and they work great. They are strong, durable, and washable.
• Buy organic when we can. Because of where we live, we have limited options to what we can buy organic but when we can we always make sure to do so. It may be a bit more expensive sometimes, but knowing we are purchasing high quality, great tasting, and eco-friendly produce makes it worth it.
• Reduce the number of processed foods we buy. We really try to buy limited processed foods. Not only is this healthier but it also is greener. With the exception of the odd box of crackers, some sauce bases, and tortilla chips, we don’t consume anything processed.
• Stop using chemical cleaners in the kitchen. I am on a mission to clean out our cleaners. I am using up what we had from before but after that I will be making our cleaners out of borax, vinegar, and baking soda. This is a greener and cheaper option.
• Make compost. We own three compost bins which come in really handy for my garden. We compost everything that we can so we can limit the amount of garbage we generate from our kitchen.
• Grow our own food. This past year we grew our own garden which was quite profitable. I will be sending out a report on my harvest shortly. Not only does the food taste better but it also has no carbon footprint. Just me walking out my door to my deck.
• Buy local. This year we joined a CSA to supplement our own garden and we fell in love with it. It felt great to support a local farmer and to know that we were consuming eco-friendly produce.
• Buy in bulk. Not only does this limit our trips to the grocery store but it also lets us save and freeze stuff for later use.
• Collect rain water. We have a rain barrel which we use to water our plants and lawn. This helps cut down on using our hose. Plus it provides extra nutrients to our plants as well.

There are so many benefits to taking these steps- becoming less reliant on the food industry and more connected to the community, cooking healthier meals, and knowing where our food comes from and what has gone into it.

So are you going to take the cooking green challenge? What things are you already doing to limit your eco-impact in the kitchen?